Train Order Cards

New Train Orders, white cards with black printing.

These cards have an east and west side and will be folded and glued. At the top they have the direction of travel, then the consist of the train, and the starting location. Listed in the body are the towns, industries and jobs to be completed at each location. As an example, the West bound card lists Heron Landing as the first town visited. A box car of appliances is set out at Jackson Transfer and a box car of lumber is picked up. After the last job, switching Gay Lea Foods in Lincoln, you continue on to Wellington where the train is staged. The card is flipped over, as instructed on the bottom of the card, and placed in the rack corresponding to the track it is staged on. The east bound side of the card still uses the same group of cars, but switches different locations. All the switching is done on trailing point switches in each direction, easing congestion delays.

The operator should check their train consist against the card when leaving each town, this ensures the jobs listed were done correctly. Any errors should be corrected immediately.

An effort was taken to have the moves concurrent and thus creat the illusion of a  a feasible movement of goods. A result of this creats instances where a certain car my not be switched and should therefore be treated as a through car.

There are 10 cards, each with a different consist, which means there is 20 different trains to be run before the first train is run again. Throw in our other 5 or so special trains and 6 more branchline trains that is over 30 jobs in all.

Our railroad runs on the pretext that if an industry requires, say 2 box cars, they also have 2 box cars to ship, and all our industries are staged to allow for this swapping operation.

There is no need to have each consists cards a different colour, now that the east and west cards are glued together and there are no 2 cards with the same consist.

A spread sheet was created to try and make sure each industry was visited. There was also an effort to ensure larger industries received more traffic.