New Waybills for the GR Terminal

GRT Waybills
Originally uploaded by conford4

Here are the revised waybills on the Grand Rapids
Terminal. After I read an article in the Opsig
Journal, I got to thinking about the model railroad as
an information system. Most users (operators) really
don't know much about your particular railroad, so one
of your jobs as owner is to make sure the information
that is needed to run the railroad is clear and easy
to understand. This is especially true if somebody is
going to be sorting and spotting cars.

Rubber stamps for train destinations. It seemed to me
that the routing instructions on the Old Lige Graphics
waybills were a good idea, but that there was not
enough room for them, and it would have to be in some
sort of code. Then I remembered the tickets we used to
buy when we took the train and the little rubbers
stamps the tickts sellers had for just about every
common destination. Rubber stamps!

I figured color coded rubber stamps could be used to
identify the train that would carry each load to its
destination, and I got a bunch of rubber stamps made
up at the Stamp Connection in Gresham.

Here are the color codes:
Red -- PRR
Blue -- C&O
Green -- NYC

Now each "train" has a rubber stamp that marks the
waybills it will handle. For instance "PRR Fort Wayne"
is for southbound traffic on the PRR; "C&O Local
South" is for C&O local traffic for South of the West
Side Yard. There are about 12 stamps in all, 6 for
PRR, 4 for C&O and 2 for NYC. We'll see how this
works, but it looks good. I only wish I'd gone for a
12 point font rather than 10 point.

Reformatted car cards: I'm on the car cards list, and
somebody posted a modified version of the Excel
spreadsheet used by Wolfgang Dudler, on his Westport
Terminal RR. This was posted by Gerry Hopkins on the
Car Cards Yahoo List. I took a look at the output from
this and recognized that here were car cards that were
easy to read and looked good. I copied these and
revised them for the GRT, removing the colors, and
using a more industrial looking typeface.

You can see from the picture what the revised cards
and waybills look like.