Sunday, February 26, 2017

Replicating prototype paperwork: Buchfahrplan


On my prototype (Deutsche Bundesbahn in 1972) the train schedule exists in multiple forms. There's the line diagram used in offices and towers at stations, as well as for planning the schedule. The timetable in tabular format collected in thick books and also the familiar yellow and white posters hanging in train stations. And there is the "Buchfahrplan" which is used on the locomotive. The Buchfahrplan contains detailed time points and speed indications for each train. Here's a scan of a prototype Buchfahrplan from 1966:


Column 1 has the waypoints in kilometer along the track. Column 2 shows how fast the train may go in the given section unless signaled otherwise. Column 3 shows stations, some interlockings, and other way points. Column 4 and 5 are arrival and departure times at the respective locations. If the train is not scheduled to stop, the time is only given in the departure column.
This scan shows 3 train movements: two local freights on different days respectively (Ng 9102 and Ng 9104), as well as a scheduled engine move (Lz).

I took the existing schedule of the Welztalbahn and created Buchfahrplan pages for each train. For the first couple trains this exercise went really slowly as I was writing out way points and formatted the table as needed. However, once I had a table for for each possible relation on the Welztalbahn writing out the remaining pages took only a couple minutes per train. I followed the formatting of a 1972 Buchfahrplan scan I found in the Drehscheibe Online forums, and simplified it a bit for the model train use case, while trying to maintain the look & feel of the original.

We'll see how well this works in combination with the car card pocket sleeves. There's plenty of space, so I added instructions for each train's route and what the engineer is supposed to do during a session.


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