Annulling 51 and 52

As I only have one passenger car, one engine and a few freight cars, I’ve only been running the branch line trains. The through trains to and from Ottawa, 51 and 52, are going to need a lot more stock than I have today, and I’ve been eliding them as a result.

This is okay when it’s just me or a very understanding visitor or two, but this week, I’m expecting as many as ten visitors from the North Shore Model Railroaders. At least a couple of the crew are real railroaders, and I can’t expect them to just ignore that column in the timetable!

One solution is to produce a new schedule that excludes 51 and 52, but I like having a real timetable to work to. The right way to manage the lack of stock is for the dispatcher to annul 51 and 52 every day, but I don’t want to add a dispatcher role to my operations.

As I was walking to the shops to pick up ingredients for delicious Jamie Oliver veggie enchiladas this afternoon, I realized I could write the orders for the whole month of August 1905. It was not unusual to write the orders for the day’s trains first thing in the morning, apparently, so pre-writing a whole month is reasonable modellers’ license. If I make a pocket in each of my two stations, I can simply pull the orders from the front of the pile in the origination station and add it to the back of the pile in the terminal station when I arrive there. Then, after an operating month, I can swap the stacks and start over.

I’ve never seen a Canada Atlantic clearance form, so that is based on general practice as best I can glean from a survey of clearance forms. There is a train order at the National Archives, which I will get a copy of one day to improve the form I’m using, but in the meantime, this version will do adequately.

Staplers weren’t yet really a thing in 1905. I have yet to decide if I will pin the sheets together.