TTTO: OS-ing

 I ran a large TTTO layout for ten years in So. Cal. That layout was AIR1.  Initially I installed a fairly flexible phone system, you could call anywhere on the layout from  anywhere on the layout, and I intended that crews would call in with their OS*

What happened, from the very first instant, was a non-stop cacophony of phone calls in the DS office that was completely unmanageable. 

Within minutes of the end of that session I started beating the bushes for a solution. A friend from Illinois suggested I do what he did, use post-it note OS’s. When trains reached a point where they were supposed to OS, crews would write on the post-it note their train, location, and the time. The crew member then walked over to the operators desk, and dropped the post-it note in the OS box. The operator would then transmit these OS’s to the DS during a lull in the session.

Here’s an important, and apparently secret note about OS’s. They are not as VITALLY important to the DS as everyone makes them out to be. The DS NEEDS an OS from each train at the following three places, AND THATS ALL:

1) When the train initially departs its originating station.

2) When the train ends its run.

3) At any register stations.

Otherwise it’s most efficient to leave the trains, and crews, to their own devices. Generally at meets an OS is not important**.

In any case, within minutes of using this post-it note system, I knew we had solved that problem. On AIR1 we never had another problem with OS’s, with regard to transmitting them to the DS. I put some lipstick on this pig by printing small slips called “OS Reports” with the vital information requested,  pre-printed on the slip:

1) Train Name

2) Location

3) Time

All crews had to do was fill in the blanks. SIMPLE!

You’d be surprised how many operators think none of that is necessary! (We got tons of slips with just the train name written on them, or even better just a time, but no name or location.)

Additionally OS-ing is a bug-a-boo on a lot of layouts. Most often trains do not OS leaving dispatchers in the dark.  Other times they OS to often.

On AIR 2 I hope to slay the biggest demon on TTTO layouts, IN MY OPINION, the Operator position. Unfortunately like the hydra, you cut off one head, another pops up. Without an operator who will transmit the OS’s to the DS?

Currently my simplest solution is to have the DS walk the twenty feet from his desk to a point where a OS Slip collection box will be located. 

The most expensive solution is RFID scanners at T.O. Stations***. The computer geeks out there really like this idea. An RFID tag on the engine and caboose can establish direction of travel as well as identity. Me, I’m not so sure. 

I will concede that NEARLY any cost is worth it to me to get rid of the operator position, and those mind-numbingly wasteful, and traffic slowing,  Train order dictations and read-backs! 

Whenever would-be dispatchers suggest I add a SECOND operator position I become apoplectic!

Initially when AIR2 does start operations, it will be a OS’s slip in a box that we begin with. It works really well.

How do you transmit OS reports to your dispatcher? Are you experiencing a bottleneck because of too many os’s for the DS to handle at times?



*An OS is, to oversimplify, a report from the train crew to the dispatcher of their position. Dispatchers like to know where you are ALL the time, so they can micro-manage the traffic flow!

**Dispatchers who require an OS for a meet are actually doing a poor job IN MY OPINION. And every dispatcher who REQUIRES these OS’s will argue ad nauseam how import these OS’s are. 

***T.O. Station is short for “Train Order Station” where orders are transmitted to train crews, and OS’s are generated and transmitted to Dispatchers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wingedfoot Paper Part 2: Pulpwood

 On AIR1 a large, centrally located industry, was Wingedfoot Paper. As Jon Cure is fond of saying, a paper mill is the perfect Model Railroad industry. The major raw material is wood pulp. In 1952  pulpwood, cut and stacked like cord wood, was shipped to mills in a variety of cars. Nearly any car you can name was used, or modified in such a way as to become, a pulpwood hauler. Generally pulpwood was not valuable enough to travel far. The collection of pulpwood racks I have,  needs a great deal of repainting and re-lettering.  I just don’t think it’s likely to see Atlantic Coast Line cars hauling pulpwood into central WV! I have been toying with the idea of repainting cars from distant foreign roads and just adding a simplified lettering, using the premise that they are not for interchange. We’ll see. [4/19/22 this afternoon I went through the box of pulpwood cars. I think with only a few exceptions I’m going to have to repaint these flats and letter them for the AIR....
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL and Freight Houses

 LCL is a huge source of revenue, car loading, and tonnage for railroads of the steam era. By the end of WWII numbers dropped fast, mainly due to trucks and roads. But to be honest LCL continued to be a big part of railroading. Today all that UPS traffic is LCL. There has been a lot of discussion of late about how to implement LCL  on a model railroad. My feeling is I do not want to perform a function by simply standing and counting off the seconds, pretending to off load LCL packages. What I did on AIR1 was to print up Waybills that simulated packages of LCL.  The peddler car was placed in the consist of a local, the car card for the peddler car had multiple bills in it, and as the local got to each depot, the train crew would check their LCL bills to check for a set out. You did not set out the car, you set out the BILL.  I extended this procedure for REA packages, US Mail, passengers, and now I plan to add this function for loaded milk cans, but more on all that l...
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL from Foreign Road Freight Houses

 On AIR 1 while WM , N&W, CRR, and VGN trains had trackage rights over some or all of the layout, there were no freight houses for these foreign roads. Often in towns served by two or more competing lines one will find a freight house for each of these roads. In Winchester, VA the freight houses for the PRR and the B&O still stand today. On AIR 2 I do not plan model the extensive trackage rights as on the first layout. I plan to have these foreign roads to come on to the layout via either a short run of their track, visibly modeled, terminating at an interchange point, or simply a transfer from an off layout staging yard. In short fairly limited presence. However at each of these interchange points there should be some foreign road structures in their colors to give strong visual clues that these tracks do indeed belong to someone else. In a few cases, WM and N&W  for sure, some of these foreign road structures will be a freight house. Again, relying on the Kalmbac...
Read more