Pete and Doug,
It was a busy day with the Ops Session yesterday, so I'm just now getting time to operate.? I'm afraid I may have been a bit short in my responses, but I was up against some deadlines and needed to get these builds completed before heading out.
I have suspected that I would run out of yard space and had removed many cars from the yard in anticipation of this.? At the time of the builds, the information I was seeing from JMRI was that the "detailed" build report was saying it couldn't send the cars to Elk Grove because there was no room.? When I looked at Elk Grove, I could see that none of the cars had been assigned destinations although I had schedules for those spurs.? My assumption was that I had done something wrong with those schedules which was preventing them from being picked up.? I confirmed that these schedules were the same as 3 other locals I had just built which is why I spent a lot of time looking for what I may have done differently.
The "very detailed" Build Report, at 185 pages did show that every location was being checked and could not find a location that there was no location that would accept the loads defined in in the schedules.
On one hand, I now learned how JMRI handles this situation, but from a user standpoint, I would have thought the initial build report with the normal detail would have some information about why the cars couldn't be picked up in Elk Grove, thereby causing the cars in Edgerton to not have room at Elk Grove.? It's a long way to a solution to need to review 185 pages.? In hindsight, I understand what's going on and have increased my understanding of how JMRI works.? But as a user learning more and more, I kept looking for a clue to what I had done wrong in what was the normal level of reporting and the observed information in the status of the locations.? I don't know if it's possible, but if the detailed version of the build report had provided any indication that it couldn't move the Elk Grove cars because there was no room, I would have had my answer.
As to the concept of locations in schedules, I've been working on this for a while and thought I shouldn't need to use destinations since the I used the option to send all cars to the terminal, which would be Edgerton.
If I take this all together now, my best option would be to have my schedule set the destination for loads (and probably empties) to go to Edgerton.? I think that if this situation occurs again (there is no room for the defined load at Edgerton) then the build will not try all locations trying to find room.? This will probably make a very detailed build much shorter to read.
Does this make sense???
I'm speaking as a user and how we learn to interpret an error, not how the program operates.? I spent the better part of an hour reviewing what was in the detailed Build Report and reviewing the settings as well as previous builds trying to find what I had done wrong before making my post.? I also walked away from the problem for a while to give my brain a chance to process (sometimes that works for me to suddenly see something my analysis missed).?
No matter what, I really appreciate the help you both provided and the additional information about destinations.
Thanks
Dennis Coglianese
