Working a yard

 When you arrive at a yard and none of the cars on the tracks are classified is there a faster way to classify cars than pulling each track and beginning to classify?

It’s actually a serious question because I’m concerned I’m doing it wrong.

The first thing I do is look at the card boxes for each track to establish if there is a system laid out.

Next I actually look at every card in every box to check that all the cars on each track are blocked according to the car card box label, or are there some random cars that will come back to bite me later, 

-OR-

Is the track a “dog’s breakfast” and it must be classified.

Next, but actually accomplished while scanning all the cards in the boxes,  I look for cars going to a like destination. Is there a predominance of destinations, does one track have a lot of cars going to the same destination. 

If the card boxes are labeled as to destination, AND I have found a lot of cars for a particular destination I make a judgement call and begin blocking cars for which I have the most cars. At this point I need to digress, if I have instructions to get cars for a specific destination first or early in the session I choose those cars first. If the card boxes are not labeled as to destination, again I make a judgement call and choose to classify the cars on the physically LONGEST track, using that track for cars billed to the most popular destination.

Once I’ve blocked the cars for the primary destination, either by instructions or by my choice, I move on to the next most cars and so on until the entire yard has been pulled, track by track, and classified.

While classifying a yard I also try to reserve one long-ish track for “For Now’s” .

At this point if I leave the yard, the session ends, or we switch positions, the next operator gets a yard that is partially or wholly organized. 

Usually during the time I am classifying, trains arrive and depart, adding to, usually, or detracting from my workload. Also, and this often does not generally jibe with what the layout owner wants, if a train arrives and it takes cars billed “EAST”, I will only insert the EAST cars that I have classified. There may be a few or a lot of EAST cars still scattered through out this unclassified yard. I DO NOT CHERRY PICK THOSE CARS OUT OF THE YARD. I believe this is inefficient and delays trains.

 I think that if cars miss a train because I did not cherry pick them out of an unclassified yard, it’s  because the previous Yardmaster set me up to fail, not because I failed. Layout owners often do not agree. Usually I bend to their wishes. If they encourage cherry picking, or their system encourages cherry picking I have to go along with it. If it’s their system, pointing it out has mixed results.

At yards on my layout, I tell crews to only insert cars that they have classified, and when pared with another operator (ANOTHER REASON  I dislike two man crews*) I usually tell my partner, in the strongest terms I think are possible, not to hold the train to “get that one last car for Allentown, off track nine”.

Okay once the yard is classified I am free to relax and work each succeeding train efficiently. Working out of a yard that is organized is much more fun.

As is often the case, You may not have enough tracks for every destination. Here’s when good documentation comes in handy. It’s nice to know what cars are needed next, or are not needed at all during the session. Cars not needed until later can be grouped together on one or more tracks. These tracks can be reclassified as the session proceeds on an “as needed” basis. Or they can be left alone until either very late in the session,  when they can be broken down and classified, so the next YM inherits an organized yard.  Or, finally, as a last resort, they are simply left untouched, and at least the next YM has his work somewhat simplified.

Usually I’m very busy the first hour during a session, classifying. Then I’m usually relaxed, or even bored for the remainder. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised, upon arrival at the yard, and finding that’s it’s organized from the outset. But I’d say this is only about 10% of the time. 

Also I find, and generally DO NOT LIKE, that once I’ve got the yard organized and I’ve got it running smoothly, layout owners will look at me, say “You need more work” and run trains into the yard to artificially increase my workload. 

*Twenty years, or more, ago, someone asked to pair up with me because he wanted to learn my secret to running the yard so efficiently. This yard was notorious for its difficulty, but I seemed to make it sing every time I ran it. We began classifying the yard tracks. By the time we got to the second track my partner says, “This is mind numbingly dull, let’s do something more fun”…

It was obvious he did not want to learn my “secret”, so I sent him off to switch a local industrial area.