Operating the Winston-Salem Southbound as a card game

When we moved to our new office in Brookfield, Wis., one of my favorite aspects of this new space was the workshop area. Not only do we have plenty of space for modeling and layout building, but we have just enough space for the Winston-Salem Southbound layout to sit next to our workbenches.

One day while I was building my grain elevator facility for our T-TRAK project layout, I decided that I was going to operate the layout while waiting for various layers of paint to dry. I have never operated the layout before, but I knew where all of the car cards and rolling stock were. With the cards in hand, I began to devise my own operating scheme, and soon found myself gamifying the system I had created. The following is my process for operating the Winston-Salem Southbound as a card game.

An operating scheme as a card game

With no room to put up the staging extension, I figured the layout could handle a train of one to four cars. Another key to my operating scheme was to use the green “car on hold — may be moved and respotted” and blue “loading-unloading — do not move” cards. I decided to use these on each car to create a 4-day (or 4-shift) sequence:

Day 1 — Car is spotted
Day 2 — Car is loading or unloading, blue card applied
Day 3 — Car is on hold, green tag
Day 4 — Car is picked up

I’ll draw car cards from a shuffled deck. But I’ll only shuffle the deck once before the session, and discard cards in a separate pile so I don’t repeat cars, as  they’ll most likely be on their way to another destination during that time.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how a typical operating session goes for me.

The setup

Step 1:

Shuffle the deck of car cards, and choose nine cards from the shuffled deck.

Place those nine cards on the layout in their indicated spots.

Step 2:

Shuffle the deck of nine, place in rows of three.

Put green “hold” placards on cards in second row, “loading/unloading” placards in third row.

Flip the cards in the first row to their outbound waybill.

Place those cards in car card holders.

I like to keep the first-out car cards (in order of time, not position the track) closest to me. That way I can see every car that’s ready to be picked up at the same time.

Round 1

The first step is to shuffle the deck and draw three cards. In this situation, since NKP No. 5279 is at Clyde L. Foy Co., I will put N&W No. 44538 at the top of the deck as it cannot be delivered today. Same with N&W No. 73516, which needs to go where VGN No. 13939 is right now.

So our train has only one car today (or this shift). But don’t worry, our fun is just beginning.

To start, we’ll drop our caboose on the main track and then drop N&W No. 248349 off at Atlas Plumbing.

Next we need to pick up B&O No. 274431 and URTX No. 68036 from the freight house and Freeman Co. Dist., respectively. Because URTX No. 87028 is on hold on the cold storage track and can be moved, we can temporarily move it out of the way to pick up MDT No. 11958.

Next we need to pick up B&O No. 274431 and URTX No. 68036 from the freight house and Freeman Co. Dist., respectively. Because URTX No. 87028 is on hold on the cold storage track and can be moved, we can temporarily move it out of the way to pick up MDT No. 11958.

Before we run around our three-car train, we need to move the caboose so it will be on the correct side of the train for the return run.

Next we need to run around the three cars we picked up. This layout has just enough room to run around three or four cars on the passing track.

Now bring the train back to where it began.

Now bring the train back to where it began.

It’s now time to change all of the car cards. We’ll start with the car that was just delivered, it gets a blue tag.

The cars that had blue tags now get green tags.

And the cars that had green tags now get all tags removed and flipped to the next outbound waybill.

The three cars that we just picked up have their waybills discarded. You can either put them on the bottom of the deck or in a separate pile. You don’t want to be delivering a car during the next shift that you just picked up.

Round 2

This time do not shuffle the cards. Since we left with three cars, we’re going to deliver three cars. If we would have left with two, we would only deliver two, and so on. We still can’t deliver to Clyde L. Foy Co. since the car there is on hold. Same with the coal spot of the team track. I pulled cards for both and put them, in order, back on the top of the deck. This time we have a Southern Ry. gondola to the team track. We can place it since we will be picking up NATX No. 7067 and VGN No. 13939 is on hold and can be moved. There will be no issues spotting the other two cars.

Because of space, we will drop URTX No. 87029 at Freeman Co. Dist. first.

Then we’ll drop ACL No. 23046 on the Liberty Annex track.

Next we’ll move VGN No. 13939 to make other moves on the team track.

NATX No. 7067 is picked up and SR No. 198004 is dropped.

NATX No. 7067 is picked up and SR No. 198004 is dropped.

Respot VGN No. 13939.

Shoving NATX No. 7067 in the team track allows us to shove our caboose in the clear so we can build the outbound train.

Next we’ll pick up CNW No. 141352 from George White Lumber.

Finally we’ll pick up NATX No. 7067 and URTX No. 87028 and run around them, shoving back to make our train.

Finally we’ll pick up NATX No. 7067 and URTX No. 87028 and run around them, shoving back to make our train.

Flip the waybills to the next routing back to Winston-Salem and discard them.

Then it’s time to change all of the car cards.

The cars that were just delivered get a blue tag.

The car that had a blue tag now gets a green tag.

And the cars that had green tags now get all tags removed and flipped to the next outbound waybill.

Round 3

It’s time to draw the next three cards. We can now draw one card for Clyde L. Foy Co. as there will be a car departing today. We can’t draw the second one, and we can only draw one card for the team track with VGN No. 13939 departing today.

So we have N&W No. 44538, N&W No. 73516, and MDT No. 13085 to deliver and VGN No. 13939, NKP No. 5279, and ACL No. 91279 to pick up.

The first thing we’ll do this round is move our caboose into the clear.

Next we’ll shove N&W No. 73516 into its spot and pick up VGN No. 13939.

Next we’ll shove N&W No. 73516 into its spot and pick up VGN No. 13939.

After that we’ll pick up NKP No. 5279 and drop off N&W No. 44538.

After that we’ll pick up NKP No. 5279 and drop off N&W No. 44538.

And the last drop off, MDT No. 13085 on the Liberty Annex track.

We have to move the caboose into the clear to finish building our train. Then we pick up ACL No. 91275.

Finally we drop those, run around the rest of our train, and put it together.

The last steps are to flip the waybills to the next routing back to Winston-Salem and discard them.

Then it’s time to change all of the car cards.

The cars that were just delivered get a blue tag.

The cart that had a blue tag now gets a green tag.

And the cars that had green tags now get all tags removed and flipped to the next outbound waybill.

And that’s the end of your third shift or day. Keep repeating this as many times as you want, or just run a few moves per day.