Operations 1 New Car Cards and Boxes

Its time to talk about how I run my layout.  When I first conceived the layout's track plan I was most interested in creating a long main line that would allow me to run two trains simultaneously.   I succeeded with that goal and am pleased that it takes five minutes for a train to run the entire circuit.  Although not really operations-minded at the time, I did have the wherewithal to add a long siding that goes from one side of the layout to the other that provides opportunities to switch a train while the continuously running trains go by.   That decision set the stage for me to develop an operations scheme in later years when the "ops bug" bit me.  

I'll describe my new car card boxes today and expand on how I run the layout in future posts.  Up until recently, I've shied away from car cards and preferred to use switch lists, or else simply did the exchange-a-car-for-a-car approach to ops without noting things like car numbers.   For a while I was using a simple but effective system I learned about from an article on the online Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine.  Here is a video from that article describing the ops scheme.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3c1ppFB4rs

I made some modifications to the idea and posted my own video:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq2qKciGRDk

Some recent conversations about operations with model railroad friend John R. led him to email me a link to this Penn Central Car Movement Card found on the Penn Central Online site in the "Library" section.   http://pc.smellycat.com/docs/index.html

 

I was immediately interested in this card and thought it would be fun to use it in model railroad operations.   After more conversations with John about the possibilities of using such cards, I decided to print a few hundred (with the image on both sides) on 100 lb. manila colored card stock, courtesy of Office Max's printing services.   They have a nice prototypical look and feel.

Since then, I've been filling out cards to reflect rolling stock that might be shipped to the various industries on my layout.  Since the cards are printed on both sides I can create a two-cycle operations scheme for each car.   I'll describe this in more detail in future posts along with a cool "virtual ops" scheme with the car cards that's developing between me and John, even though we live over a thousand miles apart. 

Using cards requires some organization.   I've seen the car card boxes commercially available at MicroMark:

http://www.micromark.com/SearchResult.aspx?deptIdFilter=0&searchPhrase=car+card+boxes

... but wanted to make my own.   I came up with this design:

I wanted to avoid having them stick out too far from the fascia so I made them pretty flat.  Each has enough room to hold 25 cards though, so they'll fit the bill just fine.  The maximum number of cars any of my industries might accommodate is the rare 25 cars at KP Steel.   I made one for each industry (only a few are shown above) including those that are "off layout', (i.e. represented by hidden staging tracks and not actually modeled).   I'll actually be posting more about these off layout industries and a way I'm developing to make them seem more real. 

 More examples of the card boxes:

The box for Hedberg Aggregates with the industry shown on the upper level in the background.

The two cards in the box note the empty open hopper and the tank car sitting on Hedberg's spur.

GERN Industries, Battaglia Bros. Warehouse, Blue Ribbon Flour

  Empire Grain

 Sal Monella's Auto Salvage

 The West Mill Car Float Yard

I'm just getting started but I'm finding the cards enhance operations and fun!