Traffic on Martindale Creek is; north bound loaded coal trains to Nelson Bay, southbound empty coal trains to the mines south of Damien's Crossing, interstate freight trains, local freight trains and long distance passenger trains.
Martindale Creek operates to time table. The timetable for an operating session is drawn on a CAD system graph as a train graph. If a train is delayed this is manually marked up on the traffic contollers time table in red. The dispatcher issues verbal train orders to revise the time table and keep traffic moving.
The time table is run to a fast clock running twelve times faster than a normal clock. The fast clock is a battery driven chain store kitchen clock with the second and hour hands removed. The hour hand gives twelve fast hours in a real hour without any reconstruction of the clock mechanism. I'm a mechanical engineer not a watch maker.
Martindale Creek at this stage has no fixed signals. Collisions are prevented by a train staff system. A train crew can't drive a train into a single track section unless they have the staff for that section in their possession.
Freight cars for on line industries are allocated by a card system. The card system is based on the system described by Jim Vail in the April 1991 Railroad Model Craftsman. This system works on commodities, not individual cars. If Peerless Furniture want to ship 40 tonnes of kit furniture to Brisbane they don't care whose box car is used. The cards deliver a car to the required industry and direct the loaded or unloaded car as the case may be, to the appropriate destination.