I would love to see a discussion of people's operating schemes. Besides watching trains roll, what do people do, be it using ready-made or one-off switch-lists, car cards, tab-on-car, fiddle-yards, staging yards or any other methods of generating car and/or train movements?
I'll start it off by saying I use a firmware switch-list to make up consists and determine car pick-ups. I use an out-and-back scheme with a fiddle-yard/reverse-loop as one terminus and an industrial area as the other terminus. And yes, a loop is also part of the track-plan 
. Incoming traffic from interchange is generated when the 0-5-0 places a stored consist on the return loop. The assembled train loops the pike (sometimes several times! 
) before doing the switching necessary to set-out the incoming cars and pick-up the outgoing cars. The train finishes the operating session by returning to the reverse loop where a new consist is fiddled-in.
Work at the fiddle-yard:
Outgoing cars are on the track.
The next consist is (1). Th tank cars are re-used in each consist:
Train ready to head for town.
The next after that is (2) followed by (3). The next train after that will be made up of the cars presently on the track and so it goes.
In town the refinery always has (4) outgoing loads and (4) incoming empties. Two cars are off-spot on the Refinery spur as well:
The grain elevator always has an outgoing load and an incoming empty and there is always a second grain hopper off-spot. The tipple occasionally receives a load which is empty by the next session and it is always pulled then. Two 2-bay PS2s cycle through the consists serving the tipple.
A scrapyard load is pulled only when there is an incoming empty. Three mill gons serve this customer, likewise cycling through the consists. Similar to the mill gon the tank car remains spotted until an empty is incoming.
The paint factory receives a tank car of resin on most days, one day receiving none and another day receiving two, depending on which consist is incoming. Every day but one there is an outgoing boxcar load of paint and on the off day it is an incoming boxcar load of pigments. There is usually one off-spot tank car and always one off-spot boxcar, sometimes two.
It is all automatic, determined by which of the five core consists is incoming and by the customers' requirements for car pick-up.
What does everyone else do?
Lew
