Operations is all about moving cars from one location to another. A car movement system provides a way to determine which cars are moved from which sidings to which other sidings. It also passes this information along to train crews. On the lake Town & Shire we use a paperless system which is simple enough for young operators to understand and use.
You start preparing for your car movement system even when you are designing your layout. You must decide which industries to model. Each industry should send, receive, or both send and receive goods by rail. You will have to decide what kinds of cars each industry will use to ship its products.
One versatile type of industrial siding is the interchange track. This is a siding where cars are swapped with other railroads. Since the interchange track represents a connection with the rest of the world, any kind of load can be sent to or received from an interchange track. With an end-to-end or a loop-to-loop railroad, it is common to locate an interchange track or two at each end of the railroad. This allows local industries to send goods to both ends of the railroad, allows local customers to receive goods from both ends of the railroad, and also allows through traffic to pass from one end to the other. On the Lake Town & Shire, we have one interchange with the Middle Earth Railroad (MERR) in the center of the layout at Rivendell. This interchange is represented by two long spur sidings.
Another useful kind of industrial siding for operations is the team track. Almost every town on a railroad has a team track. This is a siding used by several producers and merchants. Often none of the customers who used the team track have a building along the track. Instead, there is be a loading dock and perhaps a small warehouse that is used by several customers. For example, a hardware store and a general merchandise store might receive goods on the town team track, and a small chair factory might load cars on the team track with chairs to be delivered to other towns. Five of the six towns on the Lake Town & Shire have combination team tracks. These are long tracks with an industry on them plus a loading dock for other customers to use. The sixth town on the Lake Town & Shire has a team track that is separate from any any industrial siding.
Besides traffic too and from interchange tracks, you will probably want to model some car movement between local industries. To be realistic, you need to think about which industries serve which customers. Make a list of the industries you want to model. Include information about the destinations to which they will send products and the types of cars they will use. Here is part of an industry list we created for the Lake Town & Shire. It shows the industries in the two towns of Hobbiton and Bree. Each town in the table has its own siding.
| INDUSTRY | USES CAR TYPES | SHIPS TO |
| Shire Grain Co-op (Hobbiton) | boxcar | Stoutfoot Brewery (Bree), interchange (Rivendell) |
| Farmer Maggot's Produce (Hobbiton) | reefer | Team tracks in all other towns |
| Stoutfoot Brewery (Bree) | boxcar | Team tracks in all other townsinterchange (Rivendell) |
| Cattle feed lot (Bree) | stock car | J. Gilly Meat Co. (Bree) |
A full version of this table tells us what kinds of cars we will be using on the Lake Town and Shire. We have have 6 boxcars, 5 flatcars, 3 reefers, 2 stock cars, and 2 gondolas. Since we limit freights to three cars plus a caboose, that's plenty of cars for our operating sessions. Of course, you don't need to have this many sidings or cars to run effective operating sessions. But you do need to give some thought to the dynamics of your layout. You can get by without any industries modeled on your line. With an interchange track and two or three team tracks, you can generate a lot of traffic. Just invent some industries "out of sight" which send out goods using the team tracks. And of course you can have any kind of industry you want shipping to your railroad through the interchange track. But whatever you do, prepare a list like the one above.
Suppose we have a load of grain going from Shire Grain Co-op in Hobbiton to Stoutfoot Brewery in Bree. On a real railroad, when the car was picked up at the Co-op siding, the conductor would receive a waybill. This would tell the conductor the shipper, the receiver, the location of the siding to which the car is to be delivered, the type of load, the car type, and the car number. But all our operators need to know is which car is to be delivered where. Just a piece of paper with the car number and the destination would serve us just fine. How can we eliminate this piece of paper before our six year old operator loses it?
We turned the piece of paper into a large metal washer with letter painted on it. The letter tells us to which town the car is going. Since our grain is going to Bree, we will paint a B on the washer.
How do we put the car number on the waybill? We don't have to! Instead, we attach the waybill (the metal washer with a black H on it) directly to the car. To do this, we use silicone cement to glue a small magnet to the inside of the top of the boxcar. Then when we place the washer on the car, the magnet will hold it in place. Anyone who looks at the car will see the washer and immediately know that it is to be delivered Hobbiton.
You can by round magnets at Lowe's or Home Depot that work great. I actually put two magnets, one on each side of the car above the doors, to make it easier to find a spot to attach the washers. If you have two towns beginning with the same letter, then figure something out. If you deliver cars to more than one siding in a town, use different colored letters for each siding. We now have a paperless car movement system. To "load" a car, just put an appropriate washer on it.
What about cars without roofs, like gondolas or flatcars? You don't need a magnet to hold a washer in a gondola, and I have found washers will ride around on a flatcar without any problems also. But there is another method you can use. On the Lake Town & Shire, we ship coal on gondolas and lumber on flatcars. I built some coal loads out of Styrofoam with gravel painted black on top. I built lumber loads out of stacks of scale lumber glued together. For the coal loads, a destination letter can be painted inside a white circle directly onto the coal. I have seen lumber on trains wrapped in plastic with the name of the company printed on the plastic. I tape paper around my lumber loads with "Mirkwood Lumber" on the sides and the destination letter on top. To ship coal or lumber, we just place a load on the car. It is already labeled. When the load is delivered, someone takes the load back to the originating source to be used to load another car later.
Suppose a flatcar of lumber is delivered to the team track in Bree. The only industry using this track for shipping is Stoutfoot Brewery, and they don't use flatcars. So we want this car to be picked up empty and delivered to some industry where it can be used. To show that a car is empty and ready to be moved to another siding, we place a blank washer on it. Then the next train crew that has room on its train will pick up this car and take it to the next siding where an industry can use it.
I didn't invent the car movement system I have described. I first read about it in a model railroad magazine - sorry, don't remember which one. While this car movement system is paperless, it sounds as if the operators will have to memorize a lot of information. They must remember the names of the towns and they must remember which type of car is used by each industry. Without this last bit of information, they would not know where to leave empty cars. What I did invent was a system of siding labels which eliminates all this memory work.
A siding label is a piece of styrene cut to fit between the rails on a siding. It has three kinds of information on it. First, the label tells you at which siding you are looking. Second, the label tells you which car types the local industry uses. Third, thelabel tells you to which destinations the local industry ships. Here is an example of a siding label.
H |
BX -> B R R G D L |
The large H tells us that this is the team track for Hobbiton. Any car with an H on it should be delivered to this siding. The letters BX tell us that a local industry using this siding ships in boxcars. If a train has an empty boxcar on it, that is, a boxcar with the blank washer attached, then it can be left at this siding. The small letters (B, R, G, D, and L) tell us that this industry ships to Bree, Rivendell, Gridley, Dale, and Lake Town.
The only information the train crews need to consider are the large H and the letters BX. This tells them which cars to deliver to this siding: all cars with an H and any boxcar with a blank washer. The other information is used by the shipper. This is the operator who comes along and puts new washers on the cars so the train crews know they ready to pick up. To any boxcar on the siding, the shipper should attach a B, R, G, D, or L. For any car other than a boxcar, the shipper should attach a blank washer.
At the beginning of an operating session, a shipper places appropriate washers (or marked loads) on every car on the layout. As crews deliver cars, they remove the washers (or the marked loads) and take them to the dispatcher who keeps a tally of how many cars have been delivered by each crew. The shipper then goes around the layout
It still helps if all of your operators know the names of the towns on the layout and their relative locations. You don't want to pick up a car bound for Hobbiton if that is the town you just left and you are now moving away from it. You want to leave that car for the next crew going in the other direction to pick up. Otherwise, you will have to take the car all the way to the other end of the line and back again before you can deliver it. However, neither the train crews nor the shipper will need to memorize anything else since the rest of the information they need is either on the car or on the siding labels.
I use a label printer to make the labels. Then I attach them to pieces of white styrene cut to fit between the rails on the track. Before each operating session, the labels are placed on the sidings.