Traffic control and car forwarding

 I controlled traffic on AIR1 with TTTO. While I was not the first model railroad to bring TTTO to local model railroads I was a big promoter of TTTO in the metropolitan Los Angeles area. When I was building my crew, very early on I became friends with Paul Grayless, who was very knowledgeable in TTTO operation. He and I introduced TTTO to pretty much all the rest of my operators. Every session brought several hotly debated questions to our groups forum and the OPSIG. From the OPSIG we relied on three major contributors, Dave Husman, Mark Amfahr, and Dave Sprau. Since then I have made contact and corresponded with several others. 

I used and will continue to use the Western Maryland July 1, 1939 rule book, and all questions that come up during op session are referred to and filtered through that rule book. If it’s permitted or prohibited by that rule book, that’s the rule on the AIR. if it is not in that rule book it’s not in ours, for example there is no provision in the WM book for a “Form V Check of Register”, but there is a section on the WM clearance card for this information. In short we TRY to do it the way the WM did.

(I have two modifications to the WM rule book. On the AIR I require the DS to call out in writing which train is to take siding. I can’t remember the other!)

I like TTTO because it gives so much freedom to train crews. I love that it gets rid of those DAMN radios, especially head sets!

What I don’t like is the operator position. The delays caused by the bureaucracy created with dictating and reading back orders is mind-numbingly aggravating to me. Dispatchers that do not think through the actual process of issuing orders to trains is a bugaboo. If a DS waits until a train is ACTUALLY ready to proceed to issue a movement order has driven me to drink.

So pluses and minuses there…

On AIR 2 I am entertaining further aggravation by actually building in to the layout workspace for TWO operators, and GOD alone knows why I’m doing that! On AIR1 the operator was at a small desk I built in the middle aisle, and was frequently in the way of passing crews. These build in work stations should remedy that. HOWEVER, Adding two operators to a session will cause additional delays in issuing orders because of the nonsensical reading back of orders by two different operators. I am stockpiling scotch right now!

I LOVE TTTO overall, but there are SERIOUS capacity issues that were unforeseen. TTTO limits the number of trains and your DS can dramatically limit your traffic density further. I have dispatchers that could move 32 trains not counting helper moves in a five hour session, and I have dispatchers who could only accomplish 24 moves, COUNTING helpers. That’s an OUCH with two “O’s”!

To forward cars I used Car Cards and Waybills (CCWB), But it was a system I greatly modified. Let me state that who ever invented CCWB’s was a genius. They have developed a derogatory connotation of late, and I believe they are named poorly, but the name callers are people who I think are ignorant of how Waybills are actually formatted and how they work. In addition I think CCWB ARE themselves a dynamic switch-list, one that you can reorganize in your hand as the day wears on. Also let me state that I LIKE switch-lists and frequently use them in combination with CCWB.

-OKAY-

I had a great deal of experience with operations on Gary Siegel’s L&N EK Division layout. His CCWB system, created by Tom Turner, incorporated a great deal of colors, multiple colors. Quite a few operators complained that the system was too complicated. After ten years of hosting my own op sessions on my own layout I learned that Gary’s system WASN’T too complicated, people were just lazy.

Well I digress, in response to the complaints that Gary’s system was to complicated, I made mine REALLY easy. My waybills were one sided, single use bills, with one major exception, Mine Tags, which I discussed in a coal operations post.

Basically I had four staging yards representing off-layout destinations. Waybills read: WEST, EAST, ‘SOUTH, WM

That’s it. And believe it or not a lot of operators couldn’t figure that out either. 

Those bills were also color coded, WEST was blue, EAST was green, SOUTH was yellow, and WM (Western Maryland) was dark grey.

Waybills for industries on-layout we’re white. 

Because of this yardmasters could simply block all the “blue “ cars together. Simple.

I also added a two letter station code for on-layout locations. These were meant to assist YM’s, he could simply just put all the “WF” cars on the same track, and later place the WINGEDFOOT (WF) block into the appropriate train.

The idea with my waybills was the YM’s would read the top line: WF.

The local or switch crew would read the second line: Newsprint loading warehouse

The switch crew might also read the third line: Door #3

There might also be some commodity information, but as a general rule I did not list commodity or shipper information. I was only concerned with where the cars were going to, not coming from.

MTY cars were simply returned to their railroad or region (WM, EAST, SOUTH, WEST) of origin, which was printed on the car card thusly: WHEN MTY RETURN TO: WEST. 

During re-staging I found that even if I had to replace EVERY BILL on the layout, waybills only took about one hour to do, so I do not think my single use bills were ever a problem. Many people use the four sided bills, but I find those bills too restricting. 

I discussed action bills in another post so I won’t cover them here.

Waybills for passenger cars is where this gets kind of prototypically skewed. Passenger cars do not, to my knowledge, travel on Waybills, but I do such intensive switching with my passenger trains I need some sort of procedure to guide crews. It’s possible that I may change to switch lists to accomplish this, but on AIR1 and for the foreseeable future on AIR 2 I used and will use CCWB.

Passenger CCWB had a color coded text box in the upper right with the train number in it. For example train number 16, which ran from Chicago to Miami had a yellow text box with the #16 printed in it. Crews could fan through their car cards quickly, spot a lack of color (Meaning a set out in Littlerock) or a different color (Meaning a set out in Littlerock for a connection to that CCWB designated train) and KNOW at-a-glance they had work to do.

This system work well for me for ten years of operation using CCWB for freight and passenger trains.

Are you interested in TTTO? How do you implement it? Do you use CCWB? Do you stick with the basic (Rail Graphics/Micro Mark) system or have you modified it?

I’m really interested in your thoughts on these topics.