1) Worked on a turnout for the crossover at the east end of Ottawa Yard.
2) Dug out a barn I purchased at the Old Capital Building in Iowa City. It's actually a pencil sharpener. It seemed to be a good size for N Scale and the price was right ($3.50). I think it will work with a little paint.
3) I came across a thought provoking article on OpSig recently regarding Tab-on-Car Forwarding System. It was written by Mark Dance. I have only operated on one layout that uses this form of the Tab-on-Car practice (my friend Larry's Lehigh & Hudson River). Currently, he uses Avery sticker labels for identification. I have worked Warwick Yard a LOT on his layout and thoroughly enjoy the job. When asked for volunteers, everyone else takes a step back and I'm like Horshack, OOH OOH PICK ME! PICK ME! I have also worked other yards including my own. I must say the easiest and most enjoyable time I have experienced was working Warwick with the Tab-on-Car system. Although not a fan of the stickers per se, I do like the methodology. Many people find the Tab-on-Car method to be distracting and take away from the realism of the model trains. I'm more about performance and overall operations than counting rivets on freight cars or super detailing. I would take more notice of a car's poor performance than a tab on top. When operating at Larry's, I see the overall train and don't focus as much on the tabs.
Anywho, I watched Mark's video and thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought I would share it here. It's something I'm just pondering now, but would open up some operational opportunities for me. I'll discuss those in more detail later.
This evening, I created a small scale test using labels. I created some demand from the industries and the yardmaster (me) selected from a pool of cars available to send out on the local for delivery. I added the decal to the cars for which the local will then deliver. It made switching out the cars much easier to visually see where they go by color (yes, I'm colorblind - go ahead....start with the jokes...lol), than having to reference a switchlist. It's hard for one person to control the throttle, read and handle the paperwork, and keep everything straight while other things are going on in the room.
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