Transfers: Consists, Waybills, and foreign lines

 My idea is to use transfers between the Atlantic Inland and several connecting foreign roads as a means to compensate for the differing ability levels of different operators. If a crewman can switch 100 cars during a session, he can request additional cars which come to him via these transfers. An operator with a lower skill level, who might only switch 20 cars in the same session, will obviously not require as much work.

Unfortunately there are practical limits to this, once every car spot is filled, cars can be off-spotted, but if cars continue to arrive they will stack up, trailing off into the distance. Once the initial “pulls” have been accomplished, these would be staged in between sessions, no more pulls would be available ASSUMING there is no re-staging during a session (At Gary Siegel’s layout, admittedly many years ago, cars would be quickly restaged after the lunch/dinner break. Gary did not require paperwork on coal hoppers; his coal loads always went in the same direction, mine require waybills)

I believe a simple solution would be to flip SOME waybills after the lunch break. Those operators who are accomplishing a phenomenal amount of work will HOPEFULLY be plainly evident, “The Wingedfoot switcher finished all his work, let’s flip some of his waybills”.

-ANYWAY-

Waybills for cars COMING from each of these foreign roads will be the standard, basic, primary waybill. Some might have “Action” bills as well, Reefers interchanged from a foreign road still might need ice, and the idea is to give a more skilled operator MORE work, not get cars to a specific place.

It’s the waybills that move these cars TO the foreign road that might need to be somewhat different. It’s here the so-called “VIA line” of the waybill might come into play.

I believe a waybill that simply reads “ TO: C&O Interchange” should be enough, but when there is room for misinterpretations, there WILL be misinterpreted bills, this is why railroads named EVERYTHING. So bills routing cars to a foreign road interchange must include a more specific destination: “To: C&O interchange VIA Chatsworth, WV”.

The consist of these transfers needs to be crafted in such a way as to “target” these incoming cars to specific industries. If the switch job working the Paper Mill wants more work and he requests a transfer, that transfer should not contain a significant percentage of cars for the Cement plant.

THIS idea flies in the face of the “Dogs Breakfast” nature of foreign transfers, but the idea of these transfers is to provide specific operators with additional work, not flood the layout with cars.

I am still designing the layout, as well as it’s industries, and have not yet designed the jobs; which switch-job works what industries. Once I’m farther along with layout design, I can better assign which transfers will better target which industries (I believe however the cement plant will fall into the Western Maryland's transfers because of the car fleet I own; I own a lot of cement hoppers from Alphabet Route roads).

Another issue I’m confronting is the further away from the end points of the layout several larger industries are, the more trouble I will have moving these cars that arrived from transfers from foreign roads. They need to the move to industries where they are billed, but not require direct action by the AIR dispatcher and train crews.

The idea of these transfers, here repeated ad nauseaum, is to get cars to switch jobs when those jobs need them, with out impacting on the AIR itself. Transfers arriving within yard limits, and being billed to industries within yard limits is what I’m talking about. Once these cars need to move outside yard limits then they need to go into trains which will need orders to move. That defeats the purpose of these transfers.

I believe the Cement Plant is outside yard limits and it’s primary source of cars is from transfer’s from the Western Maryland.

One solution I thought of was copied from Don Florwick’s NYC layout. Don has an auto plant just outside his main yard’s yard limits. He built a secondary main track from the yard to the Auto plant. Main line traffic bi-passes the Auto plant, while the switch job travels over this secondary main track to reach it. The switch job does not get orders to travel to the Auto Plant. What if instead of the secondary main track, a Western Maryland track ran over to the cement plant. A Western Maryland train could proceed over this track, isolated from the Atlantic Inland main track, and requiring no orders from the AIR dispatcher. At points along the route this WM freight could drop blocks at interchange tracks, and finally reach, and switch, the cement plant. He would be on WM tracks and could travel at will out and back with no impact on the AIR other than providing interchange blocks to industries along the way.

I like the idea of a second railroad being present on the layout, but on its own tracks. Line side structures in WM company colors, and different color ballast, could also provide clues that this track belongs to another company.

Further study is required.