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For someone wanting to build a scaled down version of TCS here’s some 30,000 foot remarks. These steps loosely resemble how the Mopac implemented the system.
1. Build a station master with city state and circular seven numbers. Mopac had many, many other details but for a model RR this would be a start.
2. Build a customer master (customer name, city, state) we had both an online and offline customer master as it drove sales revenue and car scheduling.
3. Build a Zone-Track-Spot (ZTS) file that is linked to the Customer Master. This also supports team track (99 spot) and exact spots for certain commodities
4. Build a waybill file. In model railroading you probably don’t need a shipper name but destination city, state and consignee.
These four allow Mopac to implement Car Scheduling in December 1975 where once a waybill was entered on a load or empty or a pool was made for empties, or special instructions entered for an empty the car was scheduled all the way to destination or the interchange junction based on the circular seven number and commodity code and any special conditions listed on the waybill. Blocking tables were built to schedule to car to a train (and future trains) down to the industry job spotting the car to a customer.
