Tab-on-Car Operating System


I believe it's coloured tabs or dots that ride on top of the car to indicate wether the car is empty or loaded, it's destination, and designation in a train.
At least that's how it was described to me some time back.
 
I'm just planning switch lists for operators to pick up certain cars in a specific order. Of course other cars will be blocking the cars to be picked up to make it interesting for the operators. The cars located could be at various yards or spurs.

The operator(s) will get their locomotive assignments and caboose numbers. All which require moves. Once the trains are assemble, a number of main line laps and then the delivery of the cars.

Thanks.

Greg
 
Rico called it. Its an older (pre-PC) method for routing cars for operation. Colored dots, tacks, etc. attached to the cars roof. Matching colors on industries. Pretty much abandoned.
 
I'm just planning switch lists for operators to pick up certain cars in a specific order. Of course other cars will be blocking the cars to be picked up to make it interesting for the operators. The cars located could be at various yards or spurs.

The operator(s) will get their locomotive assignments and caboose numbers. All which require moves. Once the trains are assemble, a number of main line laps and then the delivery of the cars.



Thanks.

Greg

Greg,

I think your reply took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in an unintended category.
 
I recently saw reference made to "tab-on-car" operating system. Just what is that?
The color of the tab indicates the town the car is going to. The letter or number on the tab is the industry within that town. The tabs I used had a large color and a small color. If the large color part was the town the car was in, the car then moved to the town of the small portion. If the car was in a town of the small color the tab was flipped. So a single tab could cover 4 different car moves.

So a local arrives at the red town. All the cars in the train with a large red tab color are then dropped off and positioned at the appropriate industry. All the cars that are currently at an industry that have a red tab (large or small) and have a color for a town in the direction the train is traveling are picked up and blocked into the train. Blocking is important at the time of pick up to know if the car is advancing to a large or small tab color town.

This is a self healing system in that a misplaced car will find the next train going the right direction.

The real issue with this system is that there are these junk looking tabs all over the cars. It makes it impossible for photography of an operating session to look anything close to realistic, and looks funny to visitors.
 
Look up Ed Ravenscroft in old MR's. He wrote several articles on tab on car back in the 60's and 70's. There are lots of ways to do them.. They can be a thumbtack which fits in a hole on the top of the car (removed with a magnet). Or there can be a discrete pin placed in the top of the car and a coded washer placed over the pin. Or they can be little I-beams with a move on each side and the car type on the edge. Or you can put a magnet in the car on the side of the car and stick a color coded square piece of steel or tin sheet on the side. Or you can glue a thin piece of sheet steel or tin to the side of the car (like a tack board) and then attach a coded magnet to the side of the car. In more modern times there are lower tack marker "dots" of many colors that can be attached to the top of the car.

Lots of options.

These methods are actually quite prototypical since it was common in the steam era days to "card" an inbound cut with the blocking codes on the tackboards. A clerk would get a switch list of the car and walk the track tacking the appropriate coded card to the tack board with a hammer stapler. These methods were used into the 1980's. For example the GH&H (Galveston, Houston & Henderson) was 50-50 owned by the MP and MKT. When a MP train arrived Galvez yard, a clerk would staple blue cards to the cars, when a MKT train arrived, they stapled tan cards. Then the cars were delivered to the Galveston Wharves RR. When they came back, they were switched MP or MKT by the color of the cards.

The advantage of the tag on car systems are they are simple to build and are not car number specific, which makes them great for modular set ups and clubs where the cars (and maybe the industries) will vary from session to session. The down side is that the tags can be considered "unsightly" by some and the idea of physically modifying the cars (hole for a thumbtack or pin for a washer) is a non-starter for others.
 
There's a small 6' switching puzzle at my club, with about 6 cars on it that have to be moved from where they're placed at the beginning of a session, to somewhere else. They have number tabs on the roofs to refer to as to which goes where. Never ever thought it could be a system based on reality.
 
Once again you're an encyclopedia of information! What an intriguing system.
Two of the layouts in the very first operating group I belonged to used this system. Big, small, flip. Most of the tabs on both of them were the "I" beam type (mentioned by Dave1905) because they fit well over the box car's & covered hopper roof walks. I think the tank cars had a straight pin poking out of the center of the dome on which a washer "tab" was placed.

One of these layouts was converted to the standard car/card system in the mid 1980s, and the other converted to a computer generated switch list system (railpro? maybe) in that same time period.
 



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