On our very large Central Vermont in NorCal we have staging at each end, with classification yards near the endpoints of the railroad.? A few of our trains originate in staging and then run though, doing work along the way.? Some trains go from staging directly into classification.? We've been using JMRI Ops since day 1, and we're still tweaking it to accomplish realistic car movement to and from our industries. It works superbly, and our tweaks originate from frequently-updated understandings of a particular industry spot or a specific car's routing.
Yes, car order has been a big issue, both re the trains coming from staging and the cars sitting on tracks in the yard.? Our purists want J to track the physical location of cars in a cut, whether they're on a yard track or in staging.? I agree with many on this topic that tracking physical order isn't possible, given the discipline of boomer and local crews.? The purists, tho, are still walking the yard frequently and hand-writing switch lists.
We've come to a compromise re car order. We recognize that trains going into staging aren't blocked, based on the "lift" order of who worked the train. That doesn't matter, because when the train leaves staging most of the cars will have a different load and destination.? J will produce a new manifest for trains leaving staging that lists those cars blocked by destination.? So what we as a team on the CV have agreed to do is to fiddle the train before it leaves staging so that the cars in the train are in manifest order.? Yes, a pain, but our boomer crews have an easier time understanding what's going on.? And yes, we run 25-car trains.
My personal view is that blocking a train which leaves staging and then goes straight into classification is a waste of time.
At least I've finally gotten our team to agree to let J place cars into the yard based on the classification definitions.? Again, they were doing it manually, painfully in my humble opinion.
Jon
