Track Scale Paperwork

Paperwork provides the place to record rail car weight and is a job aid that informs operating crews what weighing duties they need to perform. Here are examples and blank paperwork that you can use.

Adapting Car Cards for Weighing

Sample Waybills

Four-sided waybills can be modified to include a field for weighing information (WEIGHED box in the lower right corner of each half of the bill). This field will be prefilled for loads originating off road, and will be blank for loads to be weighed on the modeled portion of the railroad.

Left) This bill (Side 1) requires weighing in Denver's Rice Yard, signified by the highlighted "RY" in the "WEIGHED at" field and the blank space below for the weight. After weighing, the weight is entered with pencil. The weight will eventually be erased when the bill is cycled so it will be blank when Side 1 comes up again in the future.

Right) This bill (Side 1) is bringing auto parts from Michigan. The "WEIGHED at" field is prefilled with a code for private weighing by the Chrysler Corp., along with a weight of 49,200 lbs.

Both) Side 2 of both bills show empty car movements.



Weigh In Transit Form

Merely highlighting a local yard (as for RY in the bill above) proves too subtle for local train and yard crews. A Weigh In Transit form tucked in front of the waybill alerts both crews to weighing requirements for a load.

This WIT form tells the local crew to take this car to Rice Yard in Denver, and the Denver Yard Master to weigh this car before forwarding.

Here is a page of blank Weigh In Transit forms.



Car Cards with Waybills

Left) Car card with WIT form in place.

Right) Once the car is weighed in the yard, the WIT form is removed and the weight recorded on the waybill.



Mine Block Waybill Sample

Block waybills can be used for coal, ore, sugar beets, and many other commodities.

A mine block waybill like this is used to record reporting marks, car number, and gross weight of each loaded coal car. Note that two trailing zeroes are preprinted as weighing is to the nearest 100 lbs.

All the usual waybill information is preprinted on the block bill, as well as where to weigh and where to return when empty. The back side also has return information as the block bill is flipped over when the block is empty.

Here are two sheets of blank Block Waybills. Print double sided for two pages of Block Waybills.

Adapting Other Traffic Generators for Weighing

Other model railroad traffic generation systems create tables of car routings, switch lists, wheel reports, and the like. To add rail car weighing to these systems:

  1. Ensure the appropriate car routings take weighing into account as described in Weighing Loads.
  2. Provide space for recording weights on each car's paperwork.

Other Paperwork

On a final note, we also need paperwork to document the annual weighing of empty cars, and the certification of track scales with Scale Test Cars. Look for examples here in the future.