Category Archives: Operations

On the Forest Industry in Ontario Part 3: North of Superior

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In a couple of older posts, I explored some of the forest products mills to the west of the ACR line on the CN and Ontario Northland railways in north-east Ontario and north-west Quebec with an eye to mills that could have provided some amount of bridge traffic over the ACR. (For mills served directly by the ACR, see these older posts on paper, lumber and other forest products traffic on the ACR.)

I’ve never discussed here anything west of the ACR though, and it is known from photographic and other evidence that shipments of wood pulp, wood chips, logs and lumber to or from various mills to the west to, from, or over the ACR did happen on a regular basis. This posting, similar to ones before it, will try to explore some of the mills north of Lake Superior west of the ACR line.

As usual, if anyone knows of any I’ve missed, or can expound upon or correct any information presented here, I welcome your comments. It’s difficult to actually get a coherent history on some of these mills and companies from online searches.

Note on company names: similar to previous posts, companies are listed by their mid 1980s name where possible, since that’s kinda my operating era, and describe the history within the text as best as I can determine using online resources.

Additional note on corporate consolidations: The Minnesota and Ontario Paper Company (a.k.a. M&O or Mando) operated a several mills in north-western Ontario and northern Minnesota until being acquired by Boise Cascade Company in 1965. In 1995 the former Mando Canadian mills were sold by Boise to Abitibi-Consolidated. Abitibi-Consolidated went through a major merger with Bowater Inc. in 2007 to create the Abitibi-Bowater company, which renamed to Resolute Forest Products in 2011 and continues to do business under that name today.

You’ll notice in the histories below (and in some of the previous postings in this series) a theme of widespread mill closures during the period of about 2007-2009, when the Canadian forestry took a significant hit due to economic factors and trade disputes and tariffs related to softwood lumber between the USA and Canada.

White River (CP) – White River Forest Products (Lumber mill)

Operated by White River Forest Products, this mill is still operational as an independent mill today.

Terrace Bay (CP) – Kimberly Clark (Pulp mill)

This is one of the prime candidates for a large amount of the Canadian Pacific wood pulp boxcars being shipped over the Algoma Central into Michigan and Wisconsin or beyond.

Of additional interest, from the late 1970s to early 1990s Kimberly Clark owned their own fleet of 150 pulpwood flatcars (with KCWX reporting marks) to support log shipments to their mill. For several years they ran a unit train operation of pulpwood logs from a siding at Hillsport on CN to Terrace Bay via Manitouwadge. Reg Fitzpatrick, former ACR agent/operator at Franz, has indicated that occasionally some of the Kimberly Clark cars would be sent up to Mosher for loading, with logs shipped to Terrace Bay or Thorold, Ontario.

Also coincidentally some of the former Kimberly Clark cars were later acquired by WC and numbered into the AC 238500 series in the late 1990s.

Marathon (CP) – James River Marathon Ltd. (Pulp mill)

This is the second major candidate for a source of wood pulp boxcars routing over the ACR from Franz to Sault Ste. Marie for US export.

Like Kimberly Clark at Terrace Bay, this was a pulp mill, producing market pulp for shipment to other finishing mills and not finished papers. The mill (and town) was established in 1944 by Marathon Paper Mills (a subsidiary of Marathon Corporation out of Wisconsin) with the mill completing construction in 1946. In 1957 the mill was sold to American Can of Canada (renamed America Can Canada Inc. in 1980). In 1982 American Can sold assets to James River Corporation of Virginia and the mill became know as James River Marathon Inc. (In 1997 parent company James River Corp. merged with Fort Howard Paper Co. and renamed Fort James Corporation.) In 2000 the mill was acquired by a partnership of Tembec and Kruger and named Marathon Pulp Inc. The Marathon operation went bankrupt and was shut down in 2009, and the mill later demolished.

This mill was the destination for large amounts of wood chips shipped out of the Dubreuil Forest Products mill on the Algoma Central at Dubreuilville. During the 1960s, chips were shipped in regular boxcars (provided by CP for this service). From the mid 1970s to mid 1980s, the mill on the ACR was apparently somewhat dormant from a rail-shipping perspective, but around 1986 they reconfigured some rail spurs into the mill and started shipping out lumber and wood chips again. This time chips were loaded into 50′-60′ gondola cars, again provided by CP for this service. (I’m told CP had about 100-150 cars assigned to this service, with the mill shipping up to 20 cars a day of chips between Dubreuilville and Franz. The ACR ran a dedicated afternoon/evening job for Franz/Dubreuilville switching requirements and empty cars were stored at Wanda siding between Franz and Dubreuilville.) These shipments from the ACR ended by 2007 when the supplying mill at Dubreuilville closed. Chips were also supplied to marathon from a sawmill in Chapleau on the CPR east of the Wawa area.

Also, I’m seeing in early 1950s AC timetables a Marathon Paper Mills spur at mile 294.8 connecting off the AC-CNR wye at Wyborn. It’s possible to infer (though not confirm) that logs could have been shipped from this spur via Franz. It’s also possible they could ship via CNR through Nakina and Manitouwadge.

Red Rock (CN and CP) – Domtar (Paper mill)

In 1937 Lake Sulphite Pulp Company began construction of a pulp mill but went into receivership about a year later and the mill construction halted. After a brief stint as a POW camp during the early years of World War II, the property was purchased by Brompton Pulp & Paper Company/St. Lawrence Corporation and construction on a new integrated mill began in 1944 and opened in 1945. In 1961 the St. Lawrence Corporation was merged into Dominion Tar & Chemical (Domtar) and in 1997 was organized as Norampac, a joint venture of Domtar and Cascades.

Of interest, CP for a time handled wood chips into this mill in 40′ and 50′ de-roofed boxcars although the ACR was not a source for this traffic.

This mill closed down in 2007, a victim of a downturn in the forest industry at that time, and has since been demolished.

Nakina (CN) – Nakina Forest Products (Lumber mill)

There a YouTube video from 2007 of a southbound freight at Franz showing several loads from Nakina Forest Products and Long Lake Lumber (next entry), so this is one we can actually prove as a specific source of traffic.

This mill closed down in 2008, but restarted operations in 2017 as Nakina Lumber Inc., owned by Buchanan Sawmills. I couldn’t find much other history online on when this mill was established.

Longlac (CN) – Long Lake Lumber (Lumber mill)

Once again I couldn’t find much detailed early history on this one, but in 2012 the bankrupt mill closed but was reorganized and re-opened in 2013 as Longlac Lumber Inc.

Dryden (CP) – Weyerhaeuser? (Paper mill)

The beginnings of the current mill at Dryden were built in 1913 by Dryden Timber and Power Company. It went through a few ownership and name changes afterwards; in the 1960s it changed to Dryden Paper Company, and after a few more changes at some point (the when is not clear) it was acquired by forestry giant Weyerhaeuser, who in turn sold this mill to Domtar in 2007, who still owns and operates the mill today.

The Dryden mill produces a full range of finished and coated papers.

Kenora (CP) – Kenora Forest Products (Lumber mill)

I couldn’t find a lot of history on this mill but it was acquired by the current owner in 1994 and idled in 2008, but reopened in 2015.

Kenora (CP) – Weyerhauser (lumber mill)

Thanks to a commenter on this post who highlighted this mill. Opened in 2002 by Weyerhaeuser, this mill produces laminated strand lumber (LSL) under the brand names Trus Joist and TimberStrand. Obviously that date means it wasn’t around during my own modeling time frame, but it could be a good source of traffic for a contemporary modeler.

Kenora (CP) – Boise Cascade (Pulp and Paper mill)

This mill was originally built in 1924 (although I couldn’t immediately dig up the original company name) and acquired by Minnesota and Ontario Paper Co. (Mando) in 1941, which was merged with Boise Cascade Company in 1965. In 1978 the Kenora and Fort Frances locations were officially renamed Boise Cascade Canada Ltd.

The mill underwent an extensive modernization program in the early 1980s and in 1995 the Boise Cascade Canada mills were sold to Abitibi-Consolidated.

In 2005 the mill was permanently closed by Abitibi-Consolidated.

Of particular interest with this mill, was a group of boxcars owned by the Minnesota, Dakota & Western Railroad (which was a subsidiary owned by Boise Cascade) built in 1969 by National Steel Car and featuring Boise Cascade lettering that were marked for international service and assigned to loading at this mill. These cars were sold or returned to lessor and had their lease transferred to CP in 1987, renumbering into a CPAA series – the only Canadian built cars ever to bear CPAA reporting marks.

Fort Frances (MD&W/IB&T) – Boise Cascade (Pulp and Paper mill)

Established in 1914, this mill has a similar history to the one at Kenora, both being owned by Minnesota and Ontario Paper before being acquired by Boise Cascade in 1965 and sold to Abitibi-Consolidated in 1995. Like the Kenora mill it produced pulp and un-coated paper/newsprint. The most recent owner of the mill was Resolute Forest Products, however the mill has been idle since 2012. As of spring 2019, it appears that Resolute has been entertaining bids for sale of the Fort Frances property.

The Fort Frances mill is pretty much guaranteed to not be contributing any bridge traffic to the ACR though, as they are significantly west of the Superior lakehead and situated right on the Ontario/Minnesota border – actually served by a branch of the Minnesota, Dakota & Western/International Bridge and Terminal Railway running across the river from International Falls, Minnesota. Traffic interchanges to the CN/DW&P via the MD&W in International Falls and any traffic flowing to the US midwest would just go south from there. However it remains an interesting addition to the list and could be of interest to someone modeling other lines pulling traffic from northern Ontario.

Also of note is the even larger mill (established in 1910) immediately across the river in International Falls served by the MD&W, also formerly owned by Minnesota and Ontario Paper and Boise Cascade and now owned by Packaging Corporation of America (PCA).

Log Loading Equipment and an Interesting Idea about Traffic

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Other than iron ore from Wawa, and finished products from Algoma Steel created from said iron ore, one of the primary cargoes carried on the Algoma Central Railway was pulpwood.

Over the years a number of private spurs operated by different logging and forestry companies are listed in employee timetables, as well as other major operations loading from a clearing alongside the railway’s house track at various sidings.

So, with pulpwood loading being such a significant source of traffic on the ACR (or in several locations on pretty much all other Northern Ontario and Quebec lines) anyone modeling the ACR or really any model railways loosely based on Northern Ontario will want to include some pulpwood traffic at least, and probably actually at least one loading spur somewhere to represent this.

So I thought I’d share a series of my photos of different pulpwood loading locations and take a look what such an operation looks like. We find that the common word here is “simplicity”. Loading pulpwood does not require large overhead cranes or loading equipment (although at some larger saw mills like the Tembec mill at Hearst massive cranes make short work of moving tree-length logs between railcars or trucks and a large storage pile and the mill), enclosed loading bays, conveyors, dump pits, etc. All that is needed in most cases is simply a flat cleared area next to the tracks where trucks can drive up and unload their logs either directly into waiting railcars or into a storage pile. There are no fixed structures required to model, but the log trucks and other self-propelled equipment are of definite interest.

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This first photo is from my slide collection (photographer’s name unknown) and is taken at the Hawk Junction in early 1981 showing a pair of trucks loading gondola cars with logs on the team track behind the old railway freight shed (the grey building at background left).

Note that the truck in the middle (and likely the one at left as well) has its own hydraulic loading crane permanently mounted directly to the rear of the truck itself. Not all trucks will have this, but the self loader is a fairly common feature that allows the truck itself to also include the required loading equipment.

Unfortunately I haven’t taken the chance to actually personally photograph any individual trucks directly, but a google image search for “pulpwood truck” will turn up some good results.

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This photo is from the Huron Central ex-CP yard in Sault Ste. Marie. These two south tracks of the yard are always jammed with pulpwood flatcars which are loaded here for shipment to the paper mill at Espanola, ON on the Huron Central between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury. The facility is no more involved than a wide driveway along the track running the length of the yard. For the detail-oriented, I noted in most of my closer shots of individual railcars on these tracks quite a bit of bark and other debris alongside the rails where trucks load the cars.

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This photo was taken at Eton from my trip on the Tour of the Line in fall 2013. Here again we see another log truck equipped with a self loader on the rear loading logs into flatcars on the spur track. While this photo really only shows about a quarter to a third of the operation here (there is a second spur to the left and this shows only a portion of the cleared area) the unseen parts are simply more of the same and this shot really shows all that is required for a log loading operation.

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This last photo was again taken at Eton, this time in 2005, and was sent to me by Steve Watson to illustrate the loading equipment. The machine this time is a SERCO Model 290 log loader; a larger specialized stand alone piece of equipment.

This photo also shows something else that is interesting. Notice the tank car (with diesel fuel placards) spotted at the very end of the spur track. While some pulpwood is delivered via the main highway system and loaded at spur tracks in or near town, some of these logging spurs can be pretty isolated from any regular road system (I was able to actually trace a logging road from Eton through Frater on satellite imagery, but it’s a pretty long and circuitous route over what’s likely some pretty poor excuses for roads, and even then you’re still 100 miles north of Sault Ste. Marie on Highway 17 by the time you get to the main road), making bringing in a tanker truck to refuel your logging trucks and other equipment a difficult proposition.

So an interesting idea to add to your operation, if the logging camp is particularly remote, is to occasionally spot a tank car of diesel fuel at the very end of a spur to refuel all your trucks. This sounds like something I can do at my pulpwood camp at Mosher which was also pretty isolated. I’ve heard this location also had portable unloading ramp on the north spur where trucks and other equipment could be brought in to the camp and older equipment was just sometimes abandoned there since there was little to no access to the outside road system from the logging road network around Mosher at the time.

Waybill Sorting Box

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Just a small project this weekend to make a proper storage and sorting box for my waybills. All cut out of a single sheet of 20×30” foam core board.

The box is made from 3/16″ foam core board and has overall dimensions of (roughly) 10×10″ (precisely, it’s 9 15/16″ wide by 10 5/16″ deep to account for the internal size of the pockets plus the width of all the material) with 24 (4×6) sorting/storage slots that are 2 1/4″ wide x 1 1/2″ deep to fit the waybill cards. The depth of the outer walls is 4″, the depth of the inner pocket dividers are 3″. I cut a drop in the front of the box down to match the 3″ depth of the pockets to made it easier to see and access the front row(s) of waybills. The central dividers are notched halfway up where they cross each other to form a simple but sturdy interlocking series of halved joints (like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halved_joint ) I didn’t glue the dividers to each other due to the nice tight fit of the halved joints, but glued the whole divider assembly, the outer walls and base together with regular white glue.

The labelled card dividers within each pocket are just pieces of card stock (actually just the trimmings of the car card sheet after the car cards are cut out) cut slightly longer than the waybills so they stick up above them.

Excel Car Cards Revisted: Adding Logo Images to the Cards

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Recently I attended an operating session at my club, where we use car cards created and printed from the “ShipIt!” software package. One of the features of the ShipIt! software is the ability to include a railway logo in the top corner of the car card – which I’ve been dully aware of forever since most of our car cards have a CP Rail logo in the upper corner (since our club models CP). However, the guy that prepares and prints out the car cards has actually started using this feature and adding specific logos to cars for different railroads, and the effect is actually pretty sharp when handling the waybills during operations. Thus I got inspired to see if I could add logos to my car cards which I created in Excel. (See my previous post: Excel Car Cards and Waybills)

With a bit of googling, I found this article on ExcelGuru.ca which was exactly what I was looking for. I suggest giving it a read, as this is exactly the information I followed in order to add the logos to my car cards; although I did tweak a couple things in the middle to combine it with my data lookup functions I described in my earlier post on the subject, the original author of that article (Ken Puls) deserves a lot of credit here.

Step 1: Setting up the Image Data

The first section follows the information from the ExcelGuru article pretty much verbatim. We need a new sheet added to the workbook to contain all of the images. Each row in the image table contains two columns, one with the image name, and the second column containing the image pasted into the cell.

There are basically two ways to go about this: define an image for every railway reporting mark you use in your car cards, or just define each image by itself and add in a separate column to the data sheet to specify the image name for each car card. While the second approach causes you to duplicate some value entries in the data table that drives the car cards, it’s the route I ended up going with so that I could optionally use multiple different images against the same reporting marks in order to display lessee logos on privately owned/leased tank cars and not have to define cells for obscure one-off shortlines and companies that I can’t find logos for.

Note that whatever route you go, every possible value that the data could use *must* be defined in the image table, or you’ll end up with the image cell on the final car card displaying a broken reference. If you define an image for each reporting mark, then each mark must be in the image data sheet, even if there’s no actual for that particular mark. There will just be a blank cell defined for that image. For defining images with names, there should be one “Blank” reference.

Each image doesn’t have to be exactly the same size, but they should all fit into the cell on the car card with at least a pixel or two of white space around the edge or it may actually cut off the card border when printed.

Once the table of images to use has been created, we turn each cell containing an image into a named reference that we can use later.

Highlight the table of cells you created, and then under the “Formulas” tab on the toolbar ribbon, in the “Defined Names” group click on “Create from Selection”. Choose to create names from values in the left column. This will use the names in column A to define a specific name for the corresponding cell in column B that can be used later.

That does it for setting up the image table, now let’s make some use of it.

Step 2: Setting up the Data Cells to drive the Image

The middle bit is where my usage may seem slightly more complicated, as in the example in the article, they link the photo to static text whereas I have yet another layer under this, using VLOOKUP functions (which I got into in detail in my previous post) to retrieve text data from another sheet. However, this really doesn’t affect the instructions much, as really the only difference instead of static text in the “driver” cell, the text is returned by that function.

However I do deviate from the article here a little, so I’ll highlight my steps here. First of course, the new data column is added to the Data sheet to specify the name of the logo image to display on the car card. I skipped creating any data validation on these cells.

Then, I added a new cell on the car card template page, just below (and outside the printed border of) the finished car card to output the image name using the standard VLOOKUP functions. I also want the cards to print properly if no logo image is specified in the data, so it’s wrapped with an IF function that returns “Blank” if no value is returned, so the picture cell displays a proper blank cell instead of “#REF” indicating a bad lookup. The final cell formula for the first car card on the sheet then looks like this, where cell E16 contains the starting car card ID:

=IF(VLOOKUP(E16,Data!A:P,16,FALSE)="", "Blank", VLOOKUP(E16,Data!A:P,16,FALSE))

Now, select that cell, and use the “Define Name” tool in the “Formulas” tab of the toolbar ribbon to manually set a defined name (e.g. “Car1Picture”) for that cell that will again be referenced later.

Next, click on the Name Manager tool in the same section of the toolbar ribbon. We want to edit the name we created and modify its reference a little. Select the new entry (e.g. “Car1Picture”) and change the “Refers To” from:

='Car Cards'!$A$13

to:

=INDIRECT('Car Cards'!$A$13)

What this does is allow this name to refer not specifically to this cell, but to use the value of this cell to refer to another cell, which will allow us to look up the correct cell in the Images table based on the changing sheet data.

Step 3: Linking and Displaying the Image

The final steps are again pretty much followed exactly as presented in the posting on ExcelGuru.

On the Images sheet, select the *cell* (not the actual image object) for the first image and press Ctrl-C to copy it.

Then on the car card template sheet, select the cell where the logo will go and paste in a picture link. It’s important to pick the correct paste option here. The ExcelGuru article shows how to do it in Excel 2010 (right click in the cell, and from the pop-up menu choose Paste Special > Picture Link (icon at bottom right like a little landscape picture with a chain link in front of it)). In the older Excel 2007, which I have, select the cell, and then under the “Home” tab of the toolbar click on Paste > As Picture > Paste Picture Link. This creates a picture object that displays a view of the linked cell.

Of course the point is for it to change based on the sheet data, and not just display the same picture, so we want to change the reference. Click on the created picture to select it, and in the formula bar change the reference to the named cell (from Step 2) that contains the image name for this car card:

And presto! The car card now has an image that will change based on the data for the car card. The final result looks something like this:

Files

If you’d like to print your own car cards, here’s an almost-blank copy of my Excel template, with just a few sample cars as data examples.

Excel Car Cards and Waybills

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Here I will discuss how I created my own car cards and waybills using Microsoft Excel’s spreadsheet software.

Note: this will not be intended to be a detailed tutorial on Excel, or the specific features I’m using; I will show enough to convey how I’m using the feature(s), but for additional details I will refer you to Excel’s documentation or other help sites. It should also be possible to achieve these results using similar tools in other spreadsheet software, but I leave that research to the reader as to how the tools in those softwares may differ from Excel.

Car Cards

The specific design of the car cards and waybills is inspired by the ones we use at the club created and printed using the Ship-It model railroad software. They follow the same dimensions and general form factor, although I have tweaked the design a little to customize it for my own purposes (especially of the shipment waybill insert slips – see below).

On the car card, the car information goes at the top, with the most important information (identifying reporting mark and number) in the central place of prominence. Other descriptive information such as type, colour and length are included below to assist in visually identifying the car. The Notes field may indicate other special features of the car, or usage restrictions (for example, “Paper service only” on boxcars meant for such).

The bottom of the card is designed to fold up and be taped to form a pocket into which the shipment/routing portion of the paper work (waybill) is inserted.

Below we see the Excel sheet I use for printing out my car cards. It took some tweaking to get the column sizes exactly correct, but otherwise looks pretty straightforward. However, under the hood all of the fields are defined with formulas that pull data from another sheet in the workbook. I didn’t want to copy and past page after page after page of hand-coded car cards (and especially the waybills with their vastly higher number of fields and flopped orientation) so I made one template page, and used Excel lookup functions to pull the data from another sheet, so the car data could be tracked and manipulated far easier in a standard grid format, and any arbitrary range selected for actual printing. In this way, car cards for a large fleet of hundreds of cars can easily be created.

car car sheet

You’ll see in the first image above of the car card template sheet, a “Starting ID” cell below the cards (in cell E16, highlighted). I’m going to use the value in this cell to feed into the Excel lookup functions, which will extract data from the actual roster sheet, and populate it into the fields in the car card template for printing.

Below is the actual roster information, contained in another sheet within the same workbook. Way easier to read and keep track of, and much more additional notes and information can be added in further columns to the right; our lookup only needs to deal with the first ten columns. Note in particular the first column with the heading “ID”. This is the value we’re going to lookup, and then populate the date from the other columns in the same row into the template sheet for printing.

car card data

Excel has several data lookup functions, and the one we want is the “VLOOKUP” function. The VLOOKUP function scans through a specified range of data, looking for a specific value in a particular column. Once that value is found in the search column, it can return a value from another column in that row. The VLOOKUP function in Excel looks like this:

=VLOOKUP( [value], 
          [source sheet name]![data columns], 
          [column # in data to pull result from], 
          [allow approximate matches])

In my case above, we’re pulling the lookup value (the car ID) out of cell E16, so the reference to that cell is the value. (For the subsequent car cards, we want to pull the next several cars in the data sheet, so the lookup value will be the value of (E16)+1, (E16)+2, etc., so if the starting ID is 1, car cards 1 through 5 will be printed.)

The name of my second sheet with the car data is “Data”, and the data is in columns A through K in that sheet. (The VLOOKUP function will scan the first column trying to find the lookup value.)

The last argument should be set to FALSE as we only want an exact match.

Put that all together, and the lookup for the reporting mark field on the first car card looks like this:

lookup function

One thing to know about the VLOOKUP function in excel, is that if the returned cell in the data sheet is blank, the VLOOKUP function will display that as a 0 in the display cell. For some fields here, like the Notes and Empty return information, I definitely want the cell to be blank if there’s no data, not rendered as zeroes. To protect that, any cell that’s using a VLOOKUP that you want to allow to be blank will need to be wrapped with an Excel IF function, which looks like this:

=IF ([condition], [value if true], [value if false])

In this case, my condition will be if the value from the lookup function is blank (“”), make the cell blank, otherwise insert the returned value. If I do this for the example cell in the image above, it would end up looking like this:

=IF (VLOOKUP(E16,Data!A:K,2,FALSE)="", "", VLOOKUP(E16,Data!A:K,2,FALSE))

… which actually looks far more complicated than it is, since the whole lookup function is pasted in there twice.

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Waybills

I also used these tools to create my own custom waybill template. This was a lot more work than the car cards simply owing to the sheer number of fields involved in each waybill compared to the car card, and managing to fit 10 of them per sheet as opposed to 5 per sheet for the car cards. However, it was largely a matter of just taking the time and effort to copy and adjust the lookup functions much as above. While there are quite a number more fields to deal with, and more waybills fit onto a page than the car cards, the general method is exactly the same. Just time consuming to do that many fields. But once it’s done, you have a dynamic template that can easily and quickly create and print out hundreds of different waybills.

waybill template

My waybills are “two-cycle” with each one printed on one side of the paper and having two separate moves (generally an empty move and a loaded move), one of which is visible at a time and rotated (between sessions) in the car card pocket to display the second move when the first move is completed. This required printing the second move upside-down to the first – although Excel doesn’t allow you to set the text orientation in a cell to “upside down”. It does however let you do “up” and “down”, so I just designed the waybills sideways with each half oriented a different way, as seen in the image above.

Two-sided four-cycle waybills can also be created, just more of the same effort to set up the additional fields on the second page, and a bit of playing with the page margins and column positions to find the proper alignment so that when the second page is printed on the reverse of the first, the waybill edges line up properly for cutting them out. I only needed two-cycle bills, so I did not bother with this effort.

You’ll see that my waybill template includes a block code for switching/routing at the very top, as generally this is the most important information required when switching or handling cars – “Where does this go?” and using a routing or block code at the top of the waybill makes it easier to identify the car’s immediate destination. This is reinforced with a colour-coded bar below the block code which matches the block. (I plan on making a chart of the blocks and a system map readily available to operators in the model railroad’s timetable document.)

To make the colour coded bar, I created a series of Conditional Formatting rules to apply a fill colour to this cell based on the text value in the block code cell above/beside it.

Once the waybill template is completed, it’s a matter of playing around in the data grid to create the various shipment information, and then printing them out in the template by adjusting the starting ID/group to fill in the data and print the results. Cut out with scissors, insert into the appropriate car cards, and voilà:

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Files

A few people asked if I would share the actual Excel files. Here they are.

Notes: The car cards file is useable as-is by anyone. I cleared out my own roster information so the entire world doesn’t know my inventory, just leaving the first few cars behind to illustrate how the data works. For the waybills file, I actually uploaded my file as-is, including all my data. Consider it a gift to other ACR modelers, and shows how the data works. Note that if you’re adapting the file to your own railway and want to include the colour coded bars that match to the destination block codes, you’ll have to go in and edit all the conditional formatting rules for your own station/block names. Note that this workbook also contains the customer order sheet described in my previous post.

If clicking on the link doesn’t open the file properly, right click and choose “Save As…” from the menu that comes up. (Mac users with a one-button mouse, I believe you hold the “Command” key and click for this menu.)

Update: see also followup post where I add company logos to the cards.