Any dedicated car ideas?


MOWboss

Well-Known Member
Anyone have a daily, no matter what, dedicated car scenario?.
Looking for ideas about that one car that causes headaches for the train crew when they're making their run.
Here's a couple of examples...

My mentor has a logging, milling operation in the mountains - there's NO water! Every day - no matter what - a tank car of water has to go to the site and an empty returned. Sounds simple, but locate that car in your delivery plan and its empty.... Oh, and today there's 2 lumber loads to go out and 2 empty cars to drop off....... Headache....

I have a mine quite a distance from town. Every morning a goose takes workers to the mine and brings them home at night. (Suppose to bring them home at night....) My challenge begins when I need to get the goose to the mine turntable and turn it around for the return trip back to town....
Headache....

I suppose a lot of us have those ash cars, or sand cars, that get swapped out on a "when you get around to it" schedule... And if we're honest with ourselves most of the freight we peddle is on a "when you get around to it schedule."

This could be an opportunity for that "I only have a few minutes so I'll just run that dedicated car to the..."

Me, if I have a few extra minutes I might just send the goose back to the mine to bring the miners back home for the night.
 
I don't know if this falls under your scenario or not. I have a flour mill with two spurs, one that is dedicated to grain unloading, the other is shared by flour loading and a spot for spent grain to be loaded into a covered hopper for shipment to an animal feed industry. Sometimes in my scenario, I have to move a half-loaded airslide covered hopper of flour out of the way to get the loaded covered hopper of spent grain remnants (hulls, bits of stalk etc). I can spot the half-loaded car on the grain unloading spur, but there remains the hassle of moving it out of the way and moving it back after the other hopper is exchanged.
 
I don't know if this falls under your scenario or not. I have a flour mill with two spurs, one that is dedicated to grain unloading, the other is shared by flour loading and a spot for spent grain to be loaded into a covered hopper for shipment to an animal feed industry. Sometimes in my scenario, I have to move a half-loaded airslide covered hopper of flour out of the way to get the loaded covered hopper of spent grain remnants (hulls, bits of stalk etc). I can spot the half-loaded car on the grain unloading spur, but there remains the hassle of moving it out of the way and moving it back after the other hopper is exchanged.
Good frustration having to move that partial car.
I'm always interested to learn about "satellite" industries. Never considered spent grain going to an animal feed industry..

I'm curious, how do you determine the car is half loaded? Is it a spur of the moment idea or do you have some way to trigger that scenario? I would suspect you have an order to pick up the full car, but the assumption would be that the car is free and clear. Woops - there goes the schedule....

I have removable loads for flats, gongs, and hoppers but I've always struggled with the notion that a box car (or cover hopper, tanker) is either empty or full. I've heard of a small hole in the car roof so a thumb tack could designate empty or full status. Do you have a physical designator that a covered car is empty or full?

Thanks Willie. This conversation just gave me the idea that it might be interesting to make a physical half load for my flats, gongs and hoppers. I don't think I've ever seen a model presented as a "half empty status."

If nothing else this conversation has sparked another idea and got some juices flowing....
 
Right now it is a spur of the moment decision. At some point in the future when I implement a switching program, I will program in a load interval to determine that factor. An example here would be that it takes two days to load a full hopper of flour, and it takes eight days to load a hopper of spent grain. So there will be an overlap in the switching program. For the flour hopper, I don't always put in an empty when I pull a full, as there is space in the mill for temporary storage. There always needs to be a hopper available for spent grain though.
 
I'm curious, how do you determine the car is half loaded? Is it a spur of the moment idea or do you have some way to trigger that scenario? I would suspect you have an order to pick up the full car, but the assumption would be that the car is free and clear. Woops - there goes the schedule....
If you run with some "loose" system of "pickup whatever car you feel like" it would be a spur of the moment decision.

If you run with a "set out and pick up like cars" (1 for 1) it might be a spur of the moment, or you might not have a like car to replace it with so you skip it.

If you run with a computer switch list, you can configure the system to leave a car for multiple days/sessions for [un]loading, and the system would not tell you to pick it up (so you don't).

Similarly if you use a car card/waybill system, you can put a little instruction on the card to "hold x days", and then track via some method like attaching a paper clip to the card how long it's been there before turning the waybill to the next (pick up) "move". Or just sort of decide "spur of the moment" - but while the layout owner is setting up and turning the waybills before the session - which waybills to turn for pickup that session.

In real life not every car and industry is switched every day. Some really large and busy industries get multiple switches a day.
 
"I'm curious, how do you determine the car is half loaded? Is it a spur of the moment idea or do you have some way to trigger that scenario? I would suspect you have an order to pick up the full car, but the assumption would be that the car is free and clear. Woops - there goes the schedule...."
Just like every other car at every other industry. The industry tells the railroad. The railroad puts the work on the switch list. On a model railroad, it's just like every other car on the layout. The owner decides (or has set up a process to decide) that the car should be moved at some point.

"I've always struggled with the notion that a box car (or cover hopper, tanker) is either empty or full. I've heard of a small hole in the car roof so a thumb tack could designate empty or full status. Do you have a physical designator that a covered car is empty or full?"
It's called a waybill. It says whether the car is empty or loaded. Full isn't a thing. About the only cars that are shipped "full" are hopper cars of coal and tank cars of gases. Most cars are rarely "full". Cars have two capacities, volume and weight. It is very rare that a load reaches both of those limits at the same time. Tank cars and covered hoppers frequently reach the weight limit, but not necessarily the volume limit. The reason tank cars come in so many lengths and diameters is that they are designed to be "full", reaching both the weight and volume capacities, when loaded with the design commodity. If you load a car with a different commodity, then it will miss one of the two capacities. Boxcars are may reach one or the other and probably in many cases (especially if you are modeling pre-1980's) neither. It was very common in the 1950's and earlier for a boxcar to be carrying only 25-50% of it's capacity (by both volume and weight). A car can be a "load" and be completely empty too (a load is a car moving on a revenue waybill, a movement the railroad is being paid to make).

I use car cards and waybills, it's s model system that more or less duplicates the prototype waybill system. Each car will have a waybill that says whether it is a load or an empty, what's in it and where it's going. If the waybill says the car is going someplace other than where it is, pull it. If the waybill says hold the car hold it. If the waybill says the car is where it is destined, leave it there. Other people use three "boxes" to hold the car cards at a station, one for set outs (cars inbound that have been spotted), one for holds (cars being loaded or unloaded) and one for pick ups (cars that need to be moved).

"This conversation just gave me the idea that it might be interesting to make a physical half load for my flats, gongs and hoppers. I don't think I've ever seen a model presented as a "half empty status.""
Mostly because that's not really a status. A car is either placed (on spot for loading or unloading), in movement status (has a waybill to send it someplace else, or on hold (waiting for something else to happen). What Willie is describing is a switching move. That isn't covered by a waybill, and the car's status hasn't changed. The car is still placed at the industry, they just order a switching move, no waybill involved. There is no "half loaded" waybill.

Probably many of your flats and gons are already "half loaded", you just don't realize it. For example, if you have a flat car with a bulldozer on it, it's loaded but it's only "half loaded". A bulldozer weighs 15-25 tons and a flat car has a 50-70-100 ton capacity (depending on era). So it's only half (or less) loaded.

"Woops - there goes the schedule...."
Not really. It's part of the schedule. It's normal everyday operation on a railroad. It's not necessarily a "headache", that's what crews are paid to do, that's what operators on a model railroad are there to do is switch cars. The switching isn't a headache, the only time it's a headache is when the switching area is poorly designed (short tail tracks, short runarounds, lots of switchbacks, etc) or there are too many cars on the layout (the switching area is all jammed up.)
 
Good frustration having to move that partial car.
I'm always interested to learn about "satellite" industries. Never considered spent grain going to an animal feed industry..

I'm curious, how do you determine the car is half loaded? Is it a spur of the moment idea or do you have some way to trigger that scenario? I would suspect you have an order to pick up the full car, but the assumption would be that the car is free and clear. Woops - there goes the schedule....

I have removable loads for flats, gongs, and hoppers but I've always struggled with the notion that a box car (or cover hopper, tanker) is either empty or full. I've heard of a small hole in the car roof so a thumb tack could designate empty or full status. Do you have a physical designator that a covered car is empty or full?

Thanks Willie. This conversation just gave me the idea that it might be interesting to make a physical half load for my flats, gongs and hoppers. I don't think I've ever seen a model presented as a "half empty status."

If nothing else this conversation has sparked another idea and got some juices flowing....
Railroad moves are usually made long distance--one old rule I remember was 400 hundred miles or upward, because SWITCHING costs made moves of only those minimum lengths even remotely profitable. There might have been exceptions, such as coal trains or (in season) harvest trains, but as a rule the more flexible trucking industry handled the shorter runs and more profitable tonnage. There are parking moves or ramp unloading moves in trucking. It wouldn't surprise me to learn those are charged too, as with railroading, albeit...in theory...cheaper. But I'd just be guessing....
 
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Interesting. Model RR in Holland hardly have a fixed schedule. When I see large layouts from a club they often shout at each other to take the train over. What i read about rr sessions in the States (and Canada) is more the real thing. One has to puzzle to fix the printed schedule for that day.
This is done by carcards. Therefore it's obvious what are empties, going to be loaded or full. Every car has a card (either a physic card or programmed) and every train has a schedule. In real its very important for the traindriver to know the weight of the cars, since it determines the brake distance of the train. Once riding in a car with the head operations, he showed me the yard. Suddenly he stopped, contacted the dispatcher that was about to give a GO to that train. Due to 1 empty flat the whole train was delayed. That empty was not supposed to be right behind the locomotives. It was a heavy train, so the empty was a danger. (could be lifted a little and derail). For me, not a technical girl, it was clear, getting a train together is not just putting some loco's and cars together and move the stuff.
 
Suddenly he stopped, contacted the dispatcher that was about to give a GO to that train. Due to 1 empty flat the whole train was delayed. That empty was not supposed to be right behind the locomotives. It was a heavy train, so the empty was a danger. (could be lifted a little and derail).

Those are called "train placement rules" and are typically found in the timetable special instructions and are considered "system" special instructions because they apply to the entire railroad. Some railroads publish the system special instructions as a separate booklet.

Since they are a separate booklet that shows there are a fair number of them. They can be speed restrictions associates with certain cars (certain types or series of cars are speed restricted) or train placement rules. There are lots of different train placement rules. A train can't have an empty flat cars within so many cars of the engines, you can't have a car less than 40 feet coupled to a car more than 80 ft long (long-short error), you can't have 20 consecutive loads immediately behind 20 consecutive empties. There is a formula to determine where to place mid train helpers have to have the proper tonnage ahead of them. There are tables of the pulling power of engines to determine how many engines of a consist can be placed on line (pulling the train).

There is a separate booklet with all the rules for the placement and handling of hazardous material.

On a modern railroad the computer systems warn the yardmaster if they have built the train wrong and will put a warning on the crew's consist if it's built wrong. When trains go by AEI scanners (automatic equipment identification) the consist is automatically checked against the train placement and hazmat rules and the dispatch office may be notified of the error so they can stop the train verify the error and fix it (if required). One of the last things I did before I retired was help verify and update the 200 plus possible error/warning messages for placement errors.
 
Railroad moves are usually made long distance--one old rule I remember was 400 hundred miles or upward, because SWITCHING costs made moves of only those minimum lengths even remotely profitable. There might have been exceptions, such as coal trains or (in season) harvest trains, but as a rule the more flexible trucking industry handled the shorter runs and more profitable tonnage. There are parking moves or ramp unloading moves in trucking. It wouldn't surprise me to lean those are charged too, as with railroading, albeit...in theory...cheaper.

Some of this is era dependent. Back in the day before WW2 and definitely before WW1, there were a lot more short moves. I model a 70 mile long branch in 1900-1905 and have verified dozens of hauls of less than 100 miles, many less than 50, that were made on a regular basis. However on a modern railroad you are entirely correct, most shipments go in excess of 400-500 miles and the majority of line hauls involve more than one railroad.

A lot of the boxcar traffic left boxcars but is still on the rails in the form of intermodal. A shipping container has an equivalent capacity as a boxcar in the 1900 era.

Normally, a car gets one free switch each to spot the empty and pull the load at the shipper, and one free switch each to spot the load and pull the empty at the consignee. If the shipper or consignee wants any additional switching, such as pulling that car before they finished loading it, spotting another car, pulling the other car and respotting the partial load to finish, the railroad can charge the shipper or consignee a switching charge to perform that work. The last time I saw figures for that (many years ago) it was between $50-75. To make that little move with the covered hoppers mentioned at the beginning of the thread, it could cost the shipper $300 extra, on top of the line haul freight charges. Modelers like situations where cars are being switched around from spot to spot because it creates a lot of activity in a small space, but on a real railroad, for a real customer, it could be very expensive.
 
If ya didn't have the headache issues, the railroad wouldn't have any business and you wouldn't have a job.
Need to practice, "Service with a smirk".
 
Wow - never expected this to be so intense.
dave 1905. Thanks for your tutorial. I'll put you down as a NO for a dedicated car scenario... Not really the direction I was hoping for.
Many don't have a RR empire that can support or justify an order system.
Perhaps looking back I should have titled this something like what do you run if you only have half an hour and why.
My intent was to present this idea for fun and frolic... I (and perhaps others) find it entertaining to have a story or excuse to justify a half hour jaunt ; No permissions, no apologies and no orders.

So what do you run if you only had a half hour and why?
 
Wow - never expected this to be so intense.
dave 1905. Thanks for your tutorial. I'll put you down as a NO for a dedicated car scenario... Not really the direction I was hoping for.
Many don't have a RR empire that can support or justify an order system.
Perhaps looking back I should have titled this something like what do you run if you only have half an hour and why.
My intent was to present this idea for fun and frolic... I (and perhaps others) find it entertaining to have a story or excuse to justify a half hour jaunt ; No permissions, no apologies and no orders.

So what do you run if you only had a half hour and why?
I will look at the layout and wonder if a loco has been sidelined too long. If so, it comes out to shift some cars. I have a few industries and maybe move a box car to the potato warehouse, then hook up a string of cars from the grass warehouse and move them to a siding for temporary storage.

Last eve I had taken out my one combine cause it has been off the layout a long time. I will make up a train like one of my pictures and stop at the depots for the daily schedule.

I will make up a plan in my head that involves moving a few cars and doing some drops/pickups and stick to it. That is as rigid as I get.

NP 328 1948, Wyoming spur.JPG


Here is NP 328 at the Wyoming Depot, courtesy of the Northern Pacific Railroad Historical Association.

Dave LASM
 
I guess part of the issue is knowing what a "dedicated car" even is.

I have cars that haul iron ore from the mine at St Peters to the furnace at Birdsboro or the steel mill at Coatesville and that's almost all they do. The steel mills at Coatesville use bituminous coal so they get most of their coal from the PRR. The PRR coal cars mostly cycle between the steel mill and the interchange. Is that what you mean by dedicated? Mostly the same cars making mostly the same trips every session.

I also have an LCL car on the local that has to be spotted in front of each depot or freight house to load or unload LCL. It's not the same car every trip, it can be any boxcar, but it is a "special" move. Is that what you mean by a dedicated car?
 
So what do you run if you only had a half hour and why?

I can run part of any of the industry work at any of the three major yards. I can do part of the Kentmere local or the north/south locals I can run a turn from the yard on either end to the yard in the middle and return or I can run a through freight or passenger train from one end to the other. If I need to move cars around or to restage something I will run a through freight or passenger train, If I just want to switch I do some of the switching around a yard.

When done, I can either rebill everything or just flip the waybills back so all the pulls become spots back to where they were and all the spots become pulls. No harm, not foul.
 
Once your iron ore cars arrive at the furnace how are they broken down? Is there a dedicated (there's that word again) on site switcher to perform the unloading process or is the ore train a "dump and run" procedure?
I think what I'm asking for is those scenarios where a rr work function isn't tied to some outside control, something like a large industry that has its own motive power. A logging RR comes to mind as an into the forest and back to the mill operation.

I have a remote mine that owns the track and rights to haul traffic to a harbor interchange. At the harbor interchange a private company owns the car ferry and the engines to load/offload the car ferry. A dedicated mine engine hauls full cars to a siding at the harbor and collects empties to take back to the mine. The harbor engines are responsible to load and/or off load the ore cars and set them on a siding for the road engine to collect. At any given time - to kill an hour or so - a) the mine road engine needs to haul a load down to the harbor. or b) a harbor switcher needs to off load and spot empties, or c) harbor engine needs to load the ore cars. or d) the mines road engine hauls a string of empties back to the mine.

The mine is located about 14 feet away from the harbor. For convenience and reference I generally park the road mine engine along there. It gives me the time and space shunt cars at the tipple. A process that takes quite a bit longer. (Another operation using a mine switcher) Parking the road engine also allows space at the harbor for the car ferry to be loaded or off loaded. Parking that string of cars actually represents the 4 hours that the trip takes and in real life gives workers a chance prepare for the next operation.
 
Once your iron ore cars arrive at the furnace how are they broken down? Is there a dedicated (there's that word again) on site switcher to perform the unloading process or is the ore train a "dump and run" procedure?
They are spotted and switched by the same railroad switcher that switches the yard and rest of the industries at the station (about 6 industries with over 2 dozen spots, two yards, a class yard with 4 tracks and an "interchange"/junction yard with 4 tracks.) The local brings the cars from the mine to the yard and terminates. The Birdsboro switcher switches up the local (most of the cars go to the junction), then when it's done with it's yard work it will start switching the industries, one of them being the furnace. The cars at the mine are spotted by the local that serves the branch on which the mine is located (as well as all the other industries on the branch).

All of my industries are switched by my railroad switchers or locals. There are no trackage rights trains or private switchers on the layout.

Really whether it's a shortline or an industry switcher or whatever switcher really doesn't matter that much. If you had one of your railroad's engines switch the mine instead of an engine owned by the mine, it won't materially change how things get spotted on your layout.

Real world lesson, not saying you have to change anything or have to do anything I describe. An industry can have a switch engine that switches it's facilities and serves it's own internal needs. However as soon as the switcher starts serving another industry that interchanges with the railroad network, it becomes a "common carrier" and a "railroad" and is now subject to all the laws, restrictions, and paperwork that a "real" railroad is subject to.

Some people ignore the differences, others try to leverage it in their paperwork and operations. Not saying either is right or wrong. Just how the real railroads work.
 
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I guess part of the issue is knowing what a "dedicated car" even is.

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure either, as the original post basically just described normal wayfreight operations (delivering cars of water and picking up loads of lumber). Just replace the commodity names with anything else and that just what a RR does.

If you're talking about cars that aren't actually heading to a customer destination, but are just thrown into the train just because they need to be in the train, there are limited examples of this.

Some RRs running through remote, dry regions would run water cars for firefighting, which would be added to any train that run through the area, but weren't otherwise switched anywhere.

A more modern thing is some RRs have started to operate automated track inspection boxcars. These are just put into freight trains to run around and inspect the tracks. (CN likes to put these in intermodal trains which don't really get switched anywhere. They don't really run on branch lines.)


But this isn't so much of a headache, it's just one extra car in the consist of your train, and it doesn't need to be set out or switched anywhere. It's just added to the cut in the yard while the yard builds the outbound train. And yard ops is nothing but shuffling cars around (to oversimplify somewhat...)
 
When they were designing a new prototype tank car they needed to test the prototype car in trains, so the car was filled with water and shipped around the railroad. It was set up to automatically be billed to a distant destination. For example, Houston to Los Angeles, LA to Seattle, Seattle to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Ft Worth, Ft Worth to Little Rock, Little Rock to Houston and repeat. That way they got tens of thousands of miles in actual service in actual trains. It was never spotted, it would just be in a train moving. Nobody (except the research people) knew it was in the train and it could be anywhere in the train. It was just another black tank car moving around.
 
When they were designing a new prototype tank car they needed to test the prototype car in trains, so the car was filled with water and shipped around the railroad. It was set up to automatically be billed to a distant destination. For example, Houston to Los Angeles, LA to Seattle, Seattle to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Ft Worth, Ft Worth to Little Rock, Little Rock to Houston and repeat. That way they got tens of thousands of miles in actual service in actual trains. It was never spotted, it would just be in a train moving. Nobody (except the research people) knew it was in the train and it could be anywhere in the train. It was just another black tank car moving around.
Thank you Dave for all your knowledge. You explain it all in very understandable manner
 



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