Freight House Operations: LCL Waybills

The difference on the model railroad between “regular” carload operation and Less Than Carload, or LCL, operation is with traditional carload operation one simply moves railroad car models around their layout, generally with some type of car forwarding system. LCL represents many packages, all going somewhere different, loaded in a boxcar going to a freight house.

In the steam era LCL provided railroads with huge revenues and was a large percentage of tonnage. We can ignore this, or model it. If you model LCL operation how do you simulate the movement of these packages.

Let’s back up a bit and define, for the purposes of this debate, what LCL cargo is. A carload boxcar load is, to keep this simple, an entire boxcar of one item, going to one consignor, in one location.An LCL boxcar load is a boxcar filled with MANY different packages, each package going to a different consignor, in a multitude different destination,  VIA A SINGLE distribution point, IE., the railroad freight house (FH). 

Consignor’s may call for the item at the Railroads FH or their may be railroad trucks that deliver these packages or a separate delivery company may deliver the package.

It’s easy to see how a car load of feed gets delivered. In my case using Car Cards and Waybills(CCWB) that AIR boxcar, loaded with 40 tons of bulk feed, gets spotted at the feed mill. But how would six sacks of feed,  specially ordered by Farmer Brown, shipped on a LCL bill of lading, get his feed delivered to him?

Either his feed is picked up by farmer brown at the FH. In this case we simply simulate this by spotting the LCL boxcar at the FH and imagine that farmer brown has driven into town and picked it up.

Or the feed gets loaded onto a truck at the FH and we imagine the truck delivering the feed to Farmer Brown.

It’s the one car being set out at a time that is cumbersome. While it’s common for a boxcar of LCL to be set out on a house track, in the case of a small LCL load more prototypically there would be a Peddler car in the train, loaded with MANY different LCL packages,  and each package is off loaded during the trains station stop. When the local arrives at the depot near Farmer Brown, his six sacks of feed would be off loaded.

It’s that procedure that is the rub. Do we simply stop the train and count off the seconds while we stand still for “three minutes” pretending to unload the sacks of feed?

Or do we develop a procedure that calls for out local crew to set out a waybill from the peddlers car card pocket that represents the six sacks of feed? In this case the local crew actually has some sort of positive action to perform in order to simulate the delivery of the LCL package. I think that procedure is more interesting than counting off minutes pretending.

However I think it’s unrealistic to have enough waybills in the peddler cars card pocket to represent the hundreds of LCL packages it might contain. I think we need a healthy dose of “Selective Compression” here.

I have learned several different procedures to simulate LCL packages. Ralph Heiss uses a system based on 100 units equals a car capacity, that loads on his waybills might be twenty(20) crates of eggs, thirty (30) barrels of flour, fifty (50) tires which equals 100. Cars may only be loaded up to 100 “units”, but they may carry less, often far less. In another system, Al Daumann uses waybills based on 1/4’s if a car load. For example He will describe a LCL load and in the upper right of the waybill is 1/4. Other loads may be 1/2 or 3/4. In any case these bills are added together to fill a car, 4/4 being full car. 

I am somewhere in between. On AIR1 I placed bills in the peddler car card pocket for delivery, but I did not specify what constituted a “Fully Loaded Car”. The reason was I never asked a freight house foreman to load cars. I wrote the bills and placed them in the peddler car’s card pocket during the staging process.

If we move the reconciliation of the LCL waybills from a procedure performed during staging the layout into the hands of a crewman during a session then I believe we must establish a point where a car is deemed  to be loaded and another car must be selected, or spotted, to be loaded with additional LCL “Packages”.

I think this game really only works at the Transfer Freight House, although LCL loads received at the Inbound FH COULD be transferred, the idea of routing them to the inbound house is that these LCL loads all terminate in Littlerock. 

-AND-

All the functions of Inbound, Outbound, and Transfer Freight house could in fact all be accomplished at one facility, but that reduces the play value of three FH’s on the model railroad (Remember Koester’s rule of industries on model railroads,  if one is good three is better. I have modified that to, “If one is good, ten is better…”).

So the function of the Transfer FH is for inbound LCL cars to be unloaded, their cargos sorted into loads going in like directions, and then reloaded into LCL boxcars which are then forwarded towards their final destination. An LCL package may get loaded, and unloaded, only to be loaded again MANY times before it arrives at Grandma’s house in Possum Trot, TN. Also ever door at a transfer house loads for a specific destination, that is, At unloading time all doors are simply receiving doors, but at shipping times each door has a destination. This fact adds to the intense switching at a transfer house, so if AAR car use rules are to be followed a car must be forwarded to its home road or TOWARDS its home road. These rules were not always followed to the letter during crunch times, but there might be enough time during the package sorting period to re-spot all the doors correctly. On the model railroad, well I don’t know. This is up to you.

-SO…-

if we decide to use multiple waybills to represent LCL packages what procedure will we establish to load LCL boxcars? He is my proposed procedure for the Transfer Freight House:

1) inbound loaded LCL boxcars are spotted (At this point blue flags might go up)

2) all waybills are removed from all card pockets.

3) This is optional; all doors are re-spotted as per their loading destination (Door #1 loads for Chicago, so you spot a CNW boxcar at door #1). Once all cars are spotted blue flags go up.

4) waybills are sorted into like destinations. I call this RECONCILING the waybills.

5) LCL waybills are re-inserted in the car card pockets as per door/car destinations

6) Blue flags are removed and cars are pulled, and forwarded to their final destination

Phew!

If we assume some sort of similar function is performed at ever FH on-layout you begin to see just how complex this procedure can become.

Thoughts?


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