I'm dipping my toes into the ocean of operations and struggling some with car forwarding. I have played around with JMRI Ops in the past but thought I would explore car cards and waybills. This post will explore some of the questions and (likely) misconceptions I have about how they are created and used. 

Here is a photo of what I've created to this point. My observations and questions in the next posts. 

I have been helping a friend update a layout. It started out with turnouts being controlled with those old display motors and the occasional Rix turnout mechanism but we have been updating them to Tortoise motors as they have been failing.

He is also endearingly fond of new gadgets. The latest one is Berrett Hill Touch Toggles. He found them before I had heard of them but they are cool.

Which brings us to the crux of the matter: the main yard is run by a rotary encoder and we want to convert that to the touch toggles. Touch the track, the ladder lines for your movement, auto-magical.

You can see the trailer for Understanding Operations here.