MTY car request procedures

 Filling MTY car requests is a complex procedure. Establishing this procedure is a lot more difficult than I initially thought.

A car is spotted at an industry during the January op session. During the February session the car is pulled from that industry and returned to the yard. The car is MTY and wants to go to its home road where it can be reloaded.

Simple. Hardly. I don’t even know where to begin this cycle, so let’s assume TWO things happen at the same time. 

1a) An MTY car is ready to pick up.

1b) Another industry has a load it needs a car for.

Along with this whole MTY car request thing is the desire to TRY to follow car service rules SOMEWHAT. To over simplify, Car Service Rules direct that railroads must TRY to match a load going to Ft. Worth with a car belonging to a railroad based in or near Ft. Worth ( You can insert any city in North America). The gross oversimplification of these rules is “Send it home and keep it home”, that’s the car we’re talking about. 

Back to MTY car requests. In addition to matching the car to the loads destination, we have added the further twist of “Grading” the car as to suitability for particular loads. A boxcar with an “A” grade is a boxcar that is clean, tight, and is suitable for food grade loads. A boxcar with a “B” grade is suitable for loads that are more industrial in nature, do not require that the car be totally tight, but that the interior of the car is not contaminated with dirt, oils, chemicals, poisons, etc.

A “C” grade car is old, dirty, shabby, has broken boards, a leaky roof, and is good for loads that do not need total protection from the weather, dirt, oils, etc. like a load of cast iron stove parts, or a load of 2x4 lumber.

Finally there is size and capacity of the car. A load might fit into a 36’ boxcar, it might need a 40’ boxcar, or it might need  50’ boxcar. So the shipper might ask for a car that is 40’ grade “B” or better, for a load going to Seattle, WA.

XYZ Manufacturing has a car load of Gonkulators going to Tucumcari. ABC industries just released a 40’ ATSF boxcar, it’s MTY and ABC wants it picked up. The Gonkulators are boxed, and clean, and will not contaminate the car, so this seems like a perfect match. 

In fact it is. 

Now each railroad is given a zone or zones that comply with car service rules. The AAR established roughly 20 different zones, from West to East. I only concern myself with the Steam Era, so a Southern Pacific Boxcar might cover zones from Portland to New Orleans. 

Car service rules state that an MTY SP boxcar in Portland, ME is suitable for a load going to Portland, OR. What if you don’t have a load going to Portland, OR? Car service rules also state that if you don’t have a load going to the roads home state or zone, the zone directly adjacent is good. So that MTY SP boxcar could be loaded with a load going to Seattle WA, or Ely, NV.

In short the car service rules state if you can find a load that meets any one of four or five destination conditions if the load is going IN THE DIRECTION of the railroad in question, good. It actually does state that when all else fails if the only car you have for the load does not match in any way the criteria, load it anyway; the most important thing is that the load get moved, and the car gets used.

How do I ( We) want to simulate this in a workable manner on my (our) layout?

The first thing I did was to compress the rules regarding home road Zones. I took my layout set in West Virginia and adopted a set of general compass points using my layout as the center. I then lumped every car into one or more of these general compass directions. An SP boxcar, for example, obviously goes WEST (Los Angeles) from my layout, but also SOUTH (New Orleans). 

Next I did away with 50’ boxcars.

Also each car card has a line on it that reads “Empty car return WEST” (Or Mid-West, East, WM, or South)

I also placed a letter grade on each car card A, B, C. Now I actually do have two cars lettered for “Hides only”, but as a general rule I have few C cars and need more A cars because I have a lot of food related industries on my layout.

Finally at the start of each session I give each YM a stack of waybills billing cars to one of the industries on the layout or one of the five off-layout destinations

Every 40’ boxcars on my layout that is deemed to be MTY gets a tag/waybill* that reads “return to _______ Yard for inspection”. 

When these cars arrive at the yard they are all placed on one track. When enough cars are accumulated AND the YM’s have time* the YM will pull the inspection tag and insert one of the extra waybills he has. He will then pull the track, and reclassify the track, since now all those cars have new destinations.

I also intend to have YM’s impound gondolas and flat cars as well. 

We’ll have to see how this works.

*Tag/Waybill: I make a distinction, that will get lost on EVERYONE else. On my layout I print Waybills that are all a uniform size, to fit in the car card pocket. 

On the other hand MTY car request “bills”, in fact ALL Action Bills, are taller and thinner, and I refer to them as “Tags”. Frankly I doubt that anyone will see or make a distinction. I do, but I will not belabor the point with crews.

*Time, this will be the litmus test of this whole operation. Does the YM have time? I do not intend to do this job during re-staging. If YM’s more often than not fail to accomplish this task, I’ll do away with the whole procedure.