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Monday, January 31, 2011

Waybills, Part 2

I have added a version of my waybill article from the April 2010 issue of The Dispatcher’s Office (pages 17–24) to Google Docs. Anyone is permitted to download and, if desired, print this document. It is available with the following link:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bz_ctrHrDz4wMDhmMDk1N2MtNzY2MS00Y2RlLWI4MGMtMGJjODBiNGRhZWIy&hl=en&authkey=COyo7MQN


     There are two reasons why I am doing so. First, some errors were made in the version which appeared in the magazine; most noticeably the car initials and numbers were omitted in magazine production from the waybills which were submitted to accompany model photos. Second, as the Dispatcher’s Office did not use full color images at that time, neither the pink perishable waybills nor the model photos were shown in color. However, the layout and overall appearance of the magazine article were generally good, and I think it looks attractive in the magazine.
     This article was written as a follow-up to my article in RMC (“Prototypical Waybills for Car Card Operation,” Railroad Model Craftsman, December 2009, pp. 71–77) and was so cited in my first post with this title, posted on December 9, 2010 (available at:  http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2010/12/waybills.html). The DO article was intended to explain the various parts of prototype waybills, which is essential if blank waybills are to be filled out properly for model use. Hopefully making it available with corrections and color will assist in that direction.
Tony Thompson

6 comments:

  1. Tony,I've read with great interest both articles and the first one in RMC. I definively agree with you on your prototipical approach and will adopt something similar to your design, except maybe devoting a bit more space for Route & Junction.
    Your waybill can replace the usual two pieces (carcard+4 move waybill) but I've found that the car-card, specially if hold a picture of the car as well car #, is still very usefull, in particular in N scale and for operators nor very familiar with your roster.
    So I think to mantain the car-card (I use the Dave Husmann DB to generate it) as "holder" of the waybills. In fact assigning a job to a specific available car means simply place the waybill on a specific card. What I've still to find is a "mechanical" format to fit one on the other.... but I guess a visit to an Office shop will help.
    Keep the good job on this great blog alive!
    Enzo

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  2. Thanks, Enzo. My comments in the article about possibly replacing the combination of waybill and car sleeve with a single item were only intended as an exploration of possibilities. I'm not doing that on my own layout. I don't think it is practical for free-running cars.

    I did the experiment to generate a prototypical waybill at the size used in "mini-bills" (the Micro-Mark and Old Line Graphics commercial products) just to show that it could be done, for those already invested in a large set of car cards. I'm not using them myself, as my waybills are larger.

    I know that a number of N scale layouts use car cards with a photo of the car, and I can see that this addresses the problem with the smaller equipment. For me, I want the "paperwork" to look as much like the prototype as possible, so my car sleeve has only minimum information, something that's practical in HO scale.
    Tony Thompson

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  3. In response to a question received via e-mail, I should emphasize that the waybills shown in the article linked to my January 31, 2011 post (above) are NOT the currently used waybills in my system. Those were shown briefly in my post of December 9, 2010 (beginning of the "Waybills" thread), and I should have explained that.

    This does relate to the comment of Enzo Fortuna, above, about more space for routing and junctions, which was one of the goals of my revision to the waybill design. In a future post I will show some examples of filled-out waybills in the new format.
    Tony Thompson

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  4. Dear Tony, I am just in the process of setting up initial baseball-card-waybills for my layout. Thanks for the great ideas. I will be moving a lot of LCL cars in and out of one large freight house. Do you have suggestions for the best paperwork to put into the pocket for LCL cars? -Bob Sterner

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  5. Good question, Bob. I apologize for the slow reply, as I've just returned from two weeks in Australia.

    Here's a couple of options. First of all, the AAR standard waybill forms included one for LCL, so one option would be to cut that one down, in the same way as I described in my fourth post on Waybills, available at http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/02/waybills-4.html. If you'd like to pursue the standard LCL form, it's AAR Number 99 and can be found in the AAR book, "Railway Accounting Rules," cited in the same "Waybills-4" post just mentioned.

    A simpler approach would be to use the format of my perishable waybill, which provides space (as does the prototype AAR bill) for reconsignment or diversion. This is very similar to how the standard AAR Form 98 provides for partial unloading (the "stop car" provision). I have not yet created a waybill for this use, but plan to do so for flexibility in my house track deliveries (small-town equivalent of a freight house).

    My perishable waybill form was shown in my RMC article, December 2009, and in my Dispatcher's Office article, April 2010. Both are cited in my first post on Waybills, back in December 2010, and the DO article was also provided (in corrected form) via Google Docs, as shown in my post 2 on Waybills; see http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/01/waybills-2.html.
    Tony Thompson

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  6. Thanks, Tony. I'll look into options.

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