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I have built a small switching layout closely following this plan: ? The only major difference is that I've put the Carfloat on the baseboard so cars cycle on and off in different sessions.? There is no off layout staging or rotating of cars.?
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Some spurs have limited car acceptance (the Del Monte Flats, the oil tanks), but most do not (including the interchange and Carfloat).
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I'm struggling to combine the following operating objectives in Operations Pro:
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1. Cars from the car float should all be set out to a spot, or placed in the three yard track below the run-around on the right side (essentially an offspot for every other spur)
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2. Cars from the interchange should be treated the same (set out or placed in the off-spot)
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3. I'm wanting each door in the DelMonte flat (top left of the layout) to be a unique location to cause some switching.? Each door is currently configured as a 2-boxcar long spur to allow a car to be routed to either track in front of each door (either directly next to the flat or on the parallel track).
4. The DelMonte doors do not ship to each other, but cars from there can go to any other spur.
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Here is what I have tried so far
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a.? If I build a train that uses a route with a single location with all of the spurs include, with 4-pass Aggressive Build enabled, JMRI does a good job of just shuffling everything around (the Local Switcher configuration from the instructions).?
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However the Del Monte Flat doors ship to one another, which is undesirable.??
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Is there a recommend way to prevent generating car movement between specific spurs??
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I have started looking at Schedules with a custom load for each door, but it seems like I would have to manually fill in the loads before the operating session (undesirable) or have dedicated cars and sequences for the individual doors which I'm worried would gum up the layout a little bit.? I'd prefer "any boxcar from any other spur, or a subset thereof, can be routed to a given Del Monte Door, but not between them"
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b. I experimented with making the Interchange track a JMRI "Staging" track which created a very nice switch list for the incoming train with matching drop offs and pickups, however then there was no local switching between the other spurs.? It seems from the instructions that it might be an either or situation (local switching vs set outs and pick ups).
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Am I missing something that would allow me to combine them?
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With respect, I wonder why you would be moving cars from one industry to another in such a small area. I would thing things would move by pipe, truck, or hand truck for such short distances.
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Mind, I'm not saying there's no good reason for such, I just can't think of one at present.
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Cheers,
/ Bruce / |
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Hi Bruce
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Well, the objective of the switching layout is to create switching moves! I¡¯m wanting to be able to run 1.5-2 hour remote operator sessions, so lots of movement is the goal.
For some prototypical justification, there is an 8 car car float and 5 car capacity interchange track so those are both entries from and exits to to the wider rail network, even if I don¡¯t physically move cars between sessions. ?
I am making some progress in preventing the 6 doors at the Del Monte warehouse from shipping to each other using Schedules. I had misunderstood something earlier but now have cars moving back and forth between a couple of the doors and the car float using schedules and custom loads while the car float also takes and receives from other spurs (that use the default L and E loads).
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So it looks like Schedules are one way to limit the shipping between certain spurs on the layout.
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Do you (or anyone else) have any suggestions of combining the functionality of a staging track (which creates a sense of set outs and pickups for the interchange track) and still generating inter-spur movements?
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Right now I just have everything as a spur and am using the local switcher setup from the instructions that generates ¡°Move¡±s on the switch list, but I did like the sense of a train arriving that the set out and pickup instructions generated. ?
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¿ªÔÆÌåÓýIf a car that has been delivered is then emptied, and another location in the same neighborhood needs an empty car to load with goods to send on . . . it seems quite reasonable for said car to move even if it is going only a couple of feet away.Al Al Frasch Owner/CEO The M&ET in N-Scale Marana, AZ? |
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I'm not sure I have any specific help for you Andrew, but I also use OperationsPro for a small switching layout/puzzle.?
4-6 cars are on the layout at the start/end of each session, each train brings in and takes out 3-5 cars, the main location cannot hold more than 8 cars without getting overloaded.?
It took me a while to get the config right.?
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Have you tried setting up a new location for each spur? You can combine multiple locations using hyphens so they appear as one location on switch lists. Your route can then 'visit' each 'location' with a number of set outs and pickups.
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Thanks Jake
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I did play with that but I felt it created a little bit of an artificial and constrained approach.? The train simply visits each spur and picks up and drops off some cars, rather than having the puzzle of the entire switching area.?
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It certainly works, but takes a lot of work for the conductor out of the picture because all of the thinking is basically done by JMRI although it did force a fair bit of use of the 'yard' area due to the constraints in the run around tail sizes.? However once you have the cars on the right end of your engine it was just back and forth to switch the spur.
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I know it sounds like I'm simply describing any switching but at least for me there's a fair bit more mental capacity required when there's some 27-odd otherwise random move instructions (when the entire layout is one location with multiple spurs)
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Bruce A. Metcalf