New paperwork

Based on the last few operating sessions with Eric and Jack, I've rounded out the paperwork for running the trains. In the past, I would point to a track in one of the offline staging yards or had them a packed of cars and provide verbal instructions what to do. This was because I was making it up as I went! Once we worked through some of the kinks, a sequence of trains and switching tasks began to develop and I feel I can finally create a documented process.

First, from the beginning I color coded the waybills to indicate where the car is headed. Plain waybills are set for one of the sidings on the PRR tracks:

• West Penn, Stetson Convention Service or May Stern Furniture in East McKeesport
• Irwin Industrials, Heinz, or LAS Fabrics in Irwin
• WCC Mine 4 in Herminie

Waybills colored blue are routed to the P&LE interchange track either for one of the industries (Keystone Sand & Supply, Pittsburgh Brewery, A&J Tool & Die Co. or Dailey Coal & Fuel) or to head north to Erie PA (P&LE staging track). Green colored waybills go east to Greensburg and pink waybills go west to Pittsburgh.

Color coded waybills show where the cars are headed

Today, I added two new forms to the operating session. First, I created train slips (not sure what else to call them yet) which provide the train number, description, and sequence of tasks. This is paper-clipped to the packet of car cards and tells the operating what to do with the train. The other form is a pseuo-time table that provides the sequence of trains and duplicates the tasks each performs to keep track of the flow and help the Irwin yard operator determine when to set out cars for east and west bound trains.

In the past, I have worked the Heinz and LAS Fabrics sidings from the Irwin yard which is pretty unrealistic so the next session will have these and possibly the Herminie mine run trains operated by the road crews (Eric or Jack).

Train slip (left) and timetable

Now the verbal instructions should be reduced to coordinate when a train comes onto the layout rather than what to do with the train. Tune in and we'll see how well this works!