A simple way to create and edit Stock/Car Cards and Waybills for operation of model railways.
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How it works
Stock Cards
A stock card represents a single item of rollingstock on a railway. It contains details about the item of rollingstock, such as the type (open wagon, box van, etc.), the company that owns it (LMS, Union Pacific, etc.), its number, and a brief description to help identify it (colour, number of axles, etc). Every piece of rollingstock has one stock card, and every stock card is associated with one item of rollingstock. The card is design to be printed out and then the bottom folded up to create a pocket. The pocket holds a waybill, with the top half of the waybill visible when in the pocket. The stock card may also have instructions for what to do if there is no waybill such as returning the rollingstock to a particular yard or siding.
Waybills
A waybill represents a task for a piece of rolling stock. Each waybill holds two tasks, and can be turned around so one or the other of the two tasks is visible when the waybill is in a stock card pocket. The two tasks are numbered so you can tell which order they are done in. Each task gives details of what the wagon is doing, such as a destination station and industry, and what the load is (or empty).
An Example
In reality, an industry may request a box van so they can deliver their products to a client in another town. With stock cards and waybills, we can represent this, and all of the steps needed to carry out the tasks, on your model railway. This gives your model railway a feeling of purpose, which makes operating it a both more interesting, and fun.
Let us say there is a station on your layout called Tuttering Flats, with a siding to an industry, perhaps a furniture maker called Legless Stools.
On your layout you would shuffle the waybills at the beginning of the operating session, then pick several off the top to make up a train. Looking at the first waybill, you see it is for a box van. You have a currently unused box van in your yard (of fiddle yard), a green box van with the number 428. You assign the waybill to the van by placing the waybill in the pocket of the stock card, making sure the first task is visible. Then you repeat these steps for each waybill you pulled.
Once you've assigned all the waybills to rollingstock, it's time to shunt the yard and assemble your train. Then your train is ready to head down the line.
Perhaps you have a large layout with many stations, or maybe you only have a fiddle yard and one station. Either way, the basics of what's next are the same:
When your train pulls into Tuttering Flats, you check the stock cards and waybills in your hand to find anything with this as a destination. You see that Box Van 428 is being delivered here empty, and needs to be shunted to the loading bay for Legless Stools.
However there's already a flat wagon there, number 732, so you check its stock card and find there's no waybill for it. The stock card for the flat wagon says that when empty it should be returned to Main Yard.
So now you shunt the siding, removing the empty flat wagon and coupling it to your train so it can be returned to the yard, and leaving the box van at the Legless Stools loading bay.
Before departing, you turn the waybill for box van 428 over to show the second task, and leave it at Tuttering flats (perhaps in a special stock cards box on the front of the layout). You also add the stock card for flat wagon 732 to the others you're carrying for your train.
Now your train continues on its way, eventually coming to Main Yard, where flat wagon 732 is stored empty, and its stock card added to the Main Yard cards box, ready to be assigned a waybill at a future operating session. Maybe it will even end up in the same train that delivers the (now loaded) box van 428 from Tuttering Flats to its next destination.