| Management |
In my business working environment I have noticed that it is common for people to enjoy being involved in management activity when it is as the executive level. While we in model railroading have be growing systems over the years to simulate the activities of the railroad operating personnel the enjoyable activities of executive management are ignored or covered by the layout owner with a story line.
For many reasons I am compelled to add the missing executive management activity to my layout. Reason number one is that I expect it will add enjoyable activity to my layout. Reason number two is that I expect active management will create increased entertainment in the operating session compared to pretend management. There is to much going on during an operating session to deal with active management so I plan to hold a management session the week before the operating session. A manager on my layout would be a lot like being a manager of a fantasy foot ball team, make your choices and the operating session would give you the results.
A management session would be structured to save time. The details of each session stage are in the link Management Session below.
For many years in the US the executive management of the railroads had to deal with unions, fixed rates and government rules to the extent they were extremely limited in what they could do to adjust their business. The challenge in our model world is to keep the fun choices of executive management and remove or limit the unpleasant aspects of the executive management on the prototype.
Unions and a basement layout do not make a good match. You could take a book of unions rules and apply it to your layout but I do not need that and I expect many others would feel the same. A book of union rules is in small print and runs on for many pages I do not feel that it is reasonable to expect myself or others to enjoy the need to learn them. For my simulated management environment union work rules will be reduced to the requirement that all road crews will have a two man crew.
Fixed rates where the management activity is forced into the lobby of the government for new rates does not seem to fit into a hobby very well. I will set rates by competitive bid for each customer and to account for the limited number of operating sessions a year the contracts will be limited in number of sessions from 1 to 12 by the computer “customer”.
Government rules can be accounted for by limiting government rules to safety rules. I plan to enforce the rules with fines to the company/manger of the trains that break the rules just like the prototype. Because my trains will not have things like working air brakes not all of the prototype rules will apply.
Management is about making wining choices and money is the way to keep score so management on my layout requires a cost accounting system. If you review the activities of the train crews you will see the extra work during the operating session to provide the detail for cost accounting is not that great and in fact from my point of view it is close to zero effort for crews beyond what is needed to control the trains. For the details for my cost accounting system are in the link Cost Accounting below. Yes accounting is part of the background in my professional life and at one time I even knew some accounting jokes but have forgotten them due to lack of demand. One result of my accounting background is the fact I can not help but compare the cost vs the amount of enjoyable time with my hobbies. I expect the total cost of time and money to setup a system to support my management session will be close to 33% of the cost to buy DCC, track and the time to install it. Because the same system that supports my management session will also be used to run the trains the cost and effort seems reasonable.
|
