Introduction

Ship It! Car Cards can help you in producing car cards, waybills, Form 19's, Form 31's, and switchlists for your model railroad. Without getting into the complexity of computer-generated traffic, Ship It! Car Cards enables you to utilize your computer and printer to produce some of the nicest-looking railroad paperwork around. The switchlists and Form 19's are based on prototypical samples from a variety of railroads.  Ship It! Car Cards gives you the ability to change fonts, add graphical logos, print in color, and design operations the way you want, all at a low cost.

Make Your Layout Come Alive With Ship It! Car Cards

What industries, interchanges, and yards (yes, yards can ship and receive goods on a model railroad) on your model railroad ship and receive goods? What products do they ship? What trains are scheduled, and what towns do they stop at? These are just some of the questions you'll be answering as you fill out the database in Ship It! Car Cards.

Easy To Set Up

This is not computer-generated car movement (like Ship It!) You build your car movement by filling out waybills for each car in an easy to use format. Once there, the car moves can be used to build switchlists (and even block the switchlists, if you have entered train schedules.) You can also build prototypical-looking  train orders to tell your crews when and where to meet other trains and to issue speed restrictions and other items.

Runs Stand-Alone or with Ship It! and Railbase

Ship It! Car Cards can run by itself or in conjunction with Railbase Professional and Ship It! These three programs form the base of our model railroad software "Suite". These programs all share the same database. For example, your rolling stock database is visible (and is used by) all three programs. Ship It! uses it to generate car movement. Ship It! Car Cards can automatically generate a car card for every car in the rolling stock database. Railbase Professional lets you track value, perform inspections, and track modeling standards for all of your cars.

Output Ship It! Generated Car Movement to your Waybills and Switchlists

If you own Ship It!, you can output your car moves to the waybills and switchlists in Ship It! Car Cards. All you need to do is toggle a checkbox in the options window in Ship It! to make this happen. Then, whenever you generate a session, building waybills and switchlists (in the new format) will be automatically generated. The new switchlists can be blocked by simply pressing a button.

Features:

• Create car cards and waybills in two different formats - 2" x 4" vertical and 3"x 5" horizontal

The following images are screen shots of car cards Taken from the print preview window within Ship It! Car Cards. Note that all of these cards and waybills are printed from the same database - you choose what style cards you want to use. This decision on what style to use only need to made at printing time. Change your mind a year from now? No problem - just print out new cards and waybills.

3" x 5" Horizontal Car Card

Customize Your Car Cards and Waybills!

Note the different colors and fonts used on the car cards and waybills above. You choose what fonts, font styles, sizes, and colors you want (fonts are limited to those on your system - Ship It! Car Cards does not come wih any fonts.) This allows you to be creative and come up with some really nice looking cards. Because of todays high resolution printers, you can fit much more information on the waybills and cards, like color and length of car (to help you find the car), and car spotting information on the waybills.

The screen shot above shows the form where you can change the fonts associated with car cards. Font selections are saved in the database. Default buttons let you go back to pre-set fonts.

This is a standard font selection box. Note the selections for font, color, style and size. Use any fonts on your system!

Use Graphical Logos for a Professional Look

You can use a text logo or a graphic logo for the heralds on your print-outs. In the car cards and waybills above, the 2x4 vertical waybill has a text logo. The rest have graphical logos. Graphical logos can be scanned in form existing timetables, switchlists, etc. Ship It! Car Cards comes only with the sample PRR logo shown in the cards above. If you don't have access to any graphics, the text logos will look fine (remember you can choose the colors and fonts used.)

This picture shows the window where you choose your graphical logos.

Building Your Waybills

The screen shot above shows the Update Waybills window. Notice the row of tabs across the top. These are the waybill positions (destinations). In all of these fields (except the special instruction fields, a selection list pops up, allowing you to select from previous entries. Note the add to switchlist button. This lets you populate switchlists from your waybills.

Switchlists

There are three ways to build switchlists. You can build them from scratch and populate them from your waybills. If you own Ship It!, you can output computer-generated traffic to the switchlists. Once there, all switchlist data can be edited.

Blocking

Switchlists can be blocked automatically for delivery to towns along a trains schedule. When a train is blocked, it is re-ordered so that the cars will be in the best order for delivery in towns along the trains schedule. For this to work, you need to have each trains schedule defined.
The blocking built into Ship It! Car Cards works by sorting the switchlist from top to bottom, in order of the towns on the trains schedule. The first sort is done using the "From" column. Next, each block of cars associated with each town is sorted by their destination field (again going from top to bottom in the order of the towns on the trains schedule.)

Blocking will also account for turns and facing point sidings. The trains schedule must have the towns on the return trip marked "Retutn Trip" in the Update Trains window, and the industries must have their direction restricted to "Eastbound", "Westbound", etc. Like Ship It, if a  train is visiting a town twice, and a car needs delivered from there to the very last stop, the delivery will be scheduled for the way back, unless the shippers siding has "facing points" on the way back.

Blocking Example

For example, let's say we have  2 cars leaving Harrison (the first stop) and 2 cars leaving  Thurston (the second stop). The two cars from Harrison would be at the top of the list, and the two cars from Thurston would be at the bottom. Now let's say one car from Harrison was being delivered in Harrison and another car was being delivered in Thurston. The Harrison delivery would appear first in the block of cars from Harrison (because Harrison is the first stop), and the Thurston delivery would appear second (because Thurston appears after Harrison in the trains schedule.) See the right-hand side side of the page for an example. By the way, the train schedule here is Harrison, Thurston, Harrison. All industries in Harrison have Harrison in their name - all others belong in Thurston.

Before Blocking

After Blocking

Train Orders

The train order format in Ship It! Car Cards is based on a Soo Line train order given to me by Bob Wundrock. Thanks, Bob! Train orders can be built and saved in the database. All you do is fill out the information - Ship It! Car Cards takes care of the rest. The text is from an actual B&O train order from July, 1960, loaned to me by Bruce Hullihen. Thanks, Bruce!

Printing

Once your waybill data has been entered, you can print any of the car card and waybill formats pictured above. The 2" x 4" car cards have a waybill with four positions. The 3" x 5" car cards have either a two position waybill or a four position waybill. It's your choice!

Pre-printed Forms are not Required

You don't need any pre-printed forms. Regular paper can be used for both car cards and waybills. However, heavier paper or light card stock will hold up better for the car cards (before using light card stock, check with your printer manual.) The sheets printed by Ship It! Car Cards can also be taken to a local copy shop for printing on heavy stock.

Print on one side or on two sides

Waybills have text on both sides. There are two ways to print these with Ship It! Car Cards. If you prefer to print on one side only, the front and rear sides of the waybills are printed side by side so that after they are cut out they can be folded and taped (or glued with a glue stick). If you prefer to print on both sides of the paper, you first print the front side, reverse the stack of paper, re-insert it into your printer and print the back side. There is even a horizontal alignment adjustment you can enter (that is saved) so that the rear side printing lines up exactly with the front side.

Print In Color!

If you have a color printer, your waybills can be printed in color. Just choose the colors you wish for your fonts. Logo graphics can be printed in color also.

Print a Range of Waybills or Car Cards

You don't have to priint all your cards at once. You can print a range of cards or waybills(each car card and waybill has an ID number.) You can even print out all those with 2 or 4 positions filled.

Sample Print-outs

Above is a portion of a sample print-out of 2" x 4" vertical car cards. Note the fold line for creating the waybill pocket. The small number above the "When Empty..." text is the car card ID number.

Above is a portion of a sample print-out of 2" x 4" vertical waybills, printed in "one-side only" fashion. Note the third and fourth position waybill printed beside the first & second position. The waybill will be folded along the line between them after it is cut out. The waybill ID number is printed beside the position text in the upper right hand corner.

Operating Instructions

Complete instructions are given on how to operate your model railroad using car cards, waybills, switchlists and train orders.

Bibliography

A bibliography is also included with various books and articles listed that will help you operate your model railroad.

2 x 4 Generic Card

Printing
Print Selected Items
Allows you to print selected items for any of the car cards, waybills or train orders. Select the item you wish to print, add it's ID number to the "ID's to Print" window, and select the Print button. You can print as few or as many items as you wish, in any order.

Browse Industries By AAR Types
In the Update Waybill window, you can now select from a list of industries limited by the AAR type associated to the products that the industry ships and receives. There are two benefits here: ease of selection (much smaller selection list) and increased accuracy of your destinations. To use this new feature, press the By AAR button next to the industry entry box you are filling out. You can still select industries the old way (from the full list) if you wish, by clicking in the entry box itself.
Duplicating Car Cards and Waybills
Using the Duplicate Waybill button found in the Browse Waybills window, you can duplicate car cards and waybills.
Duplicating Rolling Stock
From the Browse Rolling Stock window, highlight the car you wish to copy, press the Duplicate button, then enter a new car number. This will create a new car entry
Creating Multiple Waybills For a Car
Using the above features, this can now be accomplished. For instructions on this and all the 2.0 features, please see the Car Cards 2.0 manual addendum.in the manuals section.

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