M-I traffic management is handled with Car Cards and Waybills. I started with Micro Mark cards, then printed my own custom Car Cards and Waybills to best fit the needs of the railroad.

There are 4 main items on each Car Card: the car’s reporting mark and road number are boldly displayed against a background highlighting the car’s color.  One or two letters in the right upper corner identifies the AAR car type.  This allows nearly instantaneously recognition of a particular car.  My AAR codes are limited in length to keep things simple.  The layout’s industries do not require the complexity of full AAR codes.

Along with the Car Cards, Waybills are also printed in-house. The typewritten billing information is printed with a blue Andale Mono font with a drop shadow. This helps the type stand out better for legibility and mimics the look of a carbon copy.

Micro Mark bill boxes are fastened to the trim fascia at each switching location with a slot for each track.  Extra slots are used to store Bad Order slips and may also be used by crews for temporary storage of cards.

When a train arrives at a location, the conductor can easily tell which cars are to be moved.  If the Car Card/Waybill packet is facing outward toward the aisle, the car is ready to be moved.  Conversely, if the packet is facing backwards, the conductor knows that the car is to remain and not be picked up.

If all track spots on a given spur are full and a car is unable to be dropped, the conductor will set out the car at the nearest convenient location and place an Off-Spot notice in the Waybill pocket.  The next train that comes through will see this and re-spot the car to the proper location once room has been made for it.

Waybills show the town where a car is to be delivered along with the industry to receive it (Consignee).  It’s easy for a crew to determine layout locations.  It’s more difficult when a car is bound for a station and consignee which exists off layout.

The layout has 4 points at which cars exit the layout bound for other parts of the country.   The northernmost point is at the Thomure river transfer boat.  Next is the Frisco interchange at Ste. Genevieve.  The third and fourth locations are at Derby Jct.  The Ste. Genevieve subdivision interchanges with the M-I’s Bonne Terre (BT) subdivision at Derby Jct. and two spurs are used for these car movements.  The lead and mineral mines on the BT sub generate a lot of traffic moving northward/eastward across the river.

The last interchange point is the southern terminus of the subdivision at Bismarck where the M-I interchanges with its parent line, the MoPac.  The Derby Jct. Turn extra train may pickup and set-out cars for the MoPac interchange on the Derby Jct. spurs.

To aid crews in determining how a car moves off-layout, the routing portion of the Waybill is completed specifying exactly where the car is to be delivered. One of the aforementioned interchange points is typed under the Waybill’s Route section. For example, a car bound off-layout for Centralia, Illinois, will move across the river on the ferry boat. Therefore, its Waybill will have BOAT entered in the Route space. Other annotations include SLSF, BT SUB and BISMARCK.

When a car is found to be defective (eg, broken coupler, missing ladder/step, derailing frequently,  etc), the crew shall pink-tag the car by slipping a Bad Order card into the front pocket of the Car Car/Waybill packet.

Dangerous loads, such as fuel in tank cars, should not be entrained adjacent to a locomotive or a caboose.  The Waybill for these loads contains a bold notice of DANGEROUS CARGO printed in red. This alerts the Yardmaster or train crew that there must be at least one car in between this car and a locomotive, caboose or passenger carriage.

Additional Waybill-sized inserts were created for the Engine and Caboose Cards. Train orders for a particular job are inserted into Engine Cards and an Employee Time Table is slipped into the Caboose Card.

Aids for Operators

Along the light fascia of the layout are aids to assist the operator as to their location and track capacity. Here is one example…

New Operator’s Primer

The M-I layout represents a single subdivision of a 43 mile branch line. Therefore, cars are rarely moved from one industry to another on the layout. Most car movements involve entering or exiting the layout through various points. New operators who are not familiar with the layout geography may be unaware as to what cities/stations are on the layout and which are off-layout. This primer will help eliminate confusion.

The first step is to glance at the car’s Waybill – if the third line (the Route field) is blank, then the the top field (To) destination is guaranteed to be on the layout and will be one of five (5) station locations. Therefore, this car will end up in one of the following locations: Ste. Genevieve, Mosher, Weingarten, Millers or Derby Jct.

If the Route field is completed, then one can ignore the To field designation. Follow the Route entry – that car is destined for one of four locations on the layout and will be for either interchange (SLSF, BISMARCK, BT SUB) or for the car ferry (BOAT).

The second field (Consignee) is the name of the specific industry to receive the car. Examples include Peerless White Lime Co., Shapiro Brothers Scrap Metal, Falk Electric Supply, etc.  There are times when an industry is listed with an abbreviation of TM TK or HS TK – these are situations where the car is to be spotted on the location’s Team or House Track. These spots are for businesses which do not have their own industrial spur.

So, what are these Route designators and what is their purpose?

• BOAT means the car is to be loaded on the ferry boat crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois (located at the far north end of the layout past Thomure yard)
• SLSF is the interchange with the Frisco railroad and located on a spur just south of the Ste. Genevieve depot
• BT SUB is the M-I’s Bonne Terre subdivision which runs north of my sub and is switched using the interchange tracks at Derby Jct
• BISMARCK is the prototype’s end of the line where it connects with the Missouri Pacific; on my layout, Bismarck is not modeled and is off-layout; it’s treated as an imaginary station. The crew completes set-outs and pick-ups from Bismarck onto a Derby Jct. spur.

In summary, the geography is quickly learned after a session. To recap the basic north to south line……

• Thomure [BOAT]
• Middle Yard
• Ste. Genevieve [SLSF]
• Mosher
• Weingarten
• Millers
• Derby Jct [BT SUB] [BISMARCK]