Operations on the Rio Grande Southern

Now that trackwork has been completed from Durango though Rico to Ophir, I have begun to host operating sessions on the railroad.  While the first two sessions were a "shakedown cruise" for the railroad, I decided that for the latest session I would initiate a trial operating session using card cards and waybills.  I used this system on my previous layout, and liked it.

In this session, I simply recycled the car cards and waybills from the old layout, and made some minor changes to adapt them to the current layout.  I also needed a place to store the car cards, so I made car card boxes and attached them to the fascia in each location where switching was to occur.  I made the car card boxes from nominal 1/4" lauan plywood.  Similar boxes are commercially available from Micro-Mark, but I wanted to customize the sizes to fit my operating scheme.

The following photos illustrate the basic construction of these boxes.  The boxes will be painted green to match the color of my fascia.

These are the parts required to construct a single box, with a coupler pick holder on one side.  The back is 3 1/2" tall, by 2 1/4" wide; the front is 1 3/4" by 2 1/4".  the bottom and side pieces are each 1/2" wide, with the bottom being 2/14" long.  The two side pieces are cut to fit, but will be approximately 1 1/2" tall.

These are the parts for a double box.  The parts are all the same size as for the single box, but are 4 1/2" long.

This is a completed triple box.  This box is 7 3/4" wide.  The attached coupler pick holder is approximately 1" square:  I cut it on my table saw to exactly match the thickness of the completed box.