Monday, December 1, 2014

Modifying my tabs and labels


After the dry run of the Tab On Car system a few weeks ago, I encountered one problem.  When I was setting out the White Pool Track tabs for the captive service cars I ran out.  So I used the tabs for the cars final destination for that session.

Pool Track cars are captive service cars that do not go back to the main yard. These are the tank cars and pulpwood flats that run between the ICG junction at Ruston and Ohlin-Chlor and Crushmoore at Malvern. Then the open hoppers that originate at Gritty Gravel at Malvern and go to A&A cement at Dubach and back.  

Since they ran at such times that they would not catch the proper trains that could deliver them to their final destination for the current session, they would layover in the yard at El Dorado and will move on the next session.  So they were segregated onto a track in El Dorado that we called the Pool Track which kept them separate from the other through cars for easy sorting, hence the PT designation on the tabs.

What we came to realize, by that using the final destination tabs, the cars can now sit in El Dorado mixed in with the other through cars and are easily distinguishable to the El Dorado yard crew when they are sorting them.  So I asked Steven to make me a few tabs for these cars;

BLUE tabs for ICG & AAP
YELLOW tabs for OC, CP and GG2 
I also asked him to make some more NB and SB labels as well.

We'll see how this plays out on the next session.  The only confusion this will add to the road crews will be there are not JUST White tabs to pick up now, there will also be a few YELLOW and BLUE tabs to grab as well.  I think most of the guys know these cars are captive service and shouldn't have much trouble remembering this?  We'll see...

Now I need to get some kind of marking on the layout for the industries so we can easily match the tabs to them. 





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