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I have a question about a common ops scenario that I would like OperationsPro to facilitate, but I haven't figured out how to yet.? ?So I come here for advice. I have 3 towns in sequence: A, B, C.? Towns A and C have yards while town B has 7 spurs and a siding.? The siding has been designated as an Alternate Track for the 7 spurs to handle off spots (it is categorized as a yard track). The spurs in B are served by a Turn that follows a route A>B>A (and only that route) and that works fine.? Now I would like to add a way freight that follows a route A>B>C, and which can spot cars for B on the siding there, to later be spotted by the Turn.? However, when I try to build the way freight, I never get any work for it at B, despite having several suitable cars available in yard A.? Here is the snippet of the build report that I don't understand:
? ?Find destinations for (NAHX 516177) type (Co Hop Grain) load (L<oad>) at (A?yard, UP A1 / BNSF D1 (2506))
? ? Searching location (B) route id (25r2) for possible destination?
? ? Can't send (NAHX 516177) directly to alternate yard (Siding)?
? ? Can't set out (NAHX 516177) by route (A-B-C) to spur (BB)
? ?etc.
In my reading of this, the last line tells me that a direct spot is not possible because the route A-B-C is not able to serve this spur (even though the car/load is suitable for it), which is what I expect.? But the prior line confuses me: I thought the way freight should be able to spot the car at the siding as an "inbound" car, later to be spotted by the Turn, so I don't understand the logic that precludes that.? Perhaps I am misreading the following two sentences in the Alternate Track documentation: "The program refers to these cars as "inbound" to the spur/industry. For a car to be "inbound" is has to be transported by trains that don't directly service the spur/industry."
Thanks in advance,
Gary
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The way freight needs to have access to the spur, if the spur is full, the alternate track will be used.
Dan
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Gary,
Are you trying to get every train to work the alternate track or the industries?
Matt G?
Cascade Rwy
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Thanks for the responses.? Dan, I agree that if I grant the way freight access to the spurs then it will have access to the siding, but I don't want the way freight to stop and switch the spurs, just spot the cars on the siding and get out of town.? My reading of the Alternate Track documentation led me to believe that this should be possible the way I set this up, but perhaps I am misreading it (the quoted sentences at the end of my original post).? Is there another simple way to achieve the desired outcome?? (Note that I'm fine building the Turn after the way freight spots cars on the siding so that Operations knows about their new location.)
Matt, I don't want every train to work B, just the Turn and the Way Freight.? Other through trains are given a route A-C (or some such) that skips B.
-Gary
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This is where the wheels fall off the wagon for me. If properly setup the industry should never over load hence the alternate track designed to give the industry more track right. So how does the program know the cars on alt track have to go to building to load or unload. A road train would never work the industry only a local or switch job would. To my way of thought it would require 4 trains to bring a car in spot it pull it and take the car out. Or am I grossly missing something.
Matt G
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I'm interested in hearing what's possible. As found, it the way freight had
access to the stubs, it would see a destination for the cars, and if the
stubs were full, leave them on the siding. What I think is happening is the
program sees that using the siding for off spot of the stubs is ok. But the
program doesn't see the siding as a destination that then leads to the
stubs. The program is only thinking of putting cars on the siding as
overflow from the stubs.
I'm thinking the program might need to think of the siding as two different
tracks (competing for the same space) where one is the overflow, the other
is a yard that the turn is allowed to pull and place cars into the stubs. So
the work of the turn would know both: the overflow and the yard. What I'm
not sure is what setup has to be done so it knows this.
-Ken Cameron, Member JMRI Dev Team
www.jmri.org
www.fingerlakeslivesteamers.org
www.cnymod.com
www.syracusemodelrr.org
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I'm thinking prototypically ?cars need to be placed or constructivly placed so that the RR can charge the customer for the car hire rates. most of the time the RR would not make train crews spot multiple spots due to union rules unless the car is very hot. Train crews don't want to do switch but will however it is going to cost the rr in extra pay.
Matt G
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That why one hears about the cars going back and forth by a customers track and not being spotted
Matt G
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The yard track needs to be an interchange. The way freight would drop off cars for the local. Only the local is allowed to pull cars from the interchange. A second interchange track is needed for the local to set out cars from the Spurs and picked up by the way freight. Only the way freight is allowed to pull cars from the second interchange. Note both interchange tracks could have the "same" name and the track lengths shared with each other.
Dan
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One more note. If only the way freight and local have access to the interchange, you only need one interchange track, not two as I described.?
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Gary,
The same track can have multiple purposes and definitions as long as the trains utilizing that track do not try to do so at the same time.? The software doesn't know or care if there are two physical tracks or a single track with multiple designations.? For your purpose, I would designate that siding as a Classification/Interchange track where only your A-B-C local is allowed to set out and only your A-B-A turn is allowed to pick up.? Then make sure that your options (I forget the exact terminology) allow for routing via multiple trains.? Also, the A-B-A turn must be able to handle local moves - another option you must set.? Then your local A-B-C can set out cars on the siding for the 7 spurs and the program will handle the logic (via the multiple trains and local moves options) to have A-B-A move the cars from the siding (designated as a Classification/Interchange track) to the spurs in the same town via local moves.? I am not sure that i got all of the details correct but I use this same strategy to sometimes use a siding as a classification/interchange track? to "turn" a local train.? My local 420 turns on a reverse loop (also used as a staging track for my MKT freight)? and terminates on the siding designated as a C/I track.? The the return trains, 421, builds from that same track and heads back the way it came.? On a C/I track, loads are not changed so this allows a local to work facing points in both directions.? You could do this with a single route but I don't believe you can change the train number with a single route.? Doing as I have above allows 420 to turn and become 421 for the return trip.
Dave...
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Thank you gentlemen!? This makes a lot more sense now to think of the siding as an interchange track.?
I have one more question below (in case you want to skip the details of how I set it up), but here is what I ended up doing, in case it is helpful for anyone else
* The towns are in the order A, B, C, north to south.? B has 7 spurs served by the Turn and a siding served by the Turn and some Way Freights (WF).
* The Turn runs A-B-A and handles traffic between A and B as well as switching at B.
* There is a NB WF C-B-A that is allowed to spot cars at B's siding destined for B.
* There is a SB WF A-B-C that is allowed to pull cars from B's siding destined for C (and beyond).
* I designate all the spurs to be served by only the Turn, A-B-A, and designate the siding to be an alternate track for off spots.? This is called Siding-(ALT).
* I designate the same siding to be Siding-(IN) for inbound cars and allow C-B-A to set out and the Turn to pull.? The only allowed destination is B, and load/empties are suitably restricted.
* I designate the same siding to be Siding-(OUT) for outbound cars and allow the Turn to spot cars and A-B-C to pull from it.? The only destination is C, and loads/empties are suitably restricted.
* I pool Siding-(ALT), Siding-(IN) and Siding-(OUT).
This seems to work quite nicely.? I just need to run it a few times to tune the loading, but that will be fun!? I know this may not be truly prototypical, but it adds a lot of play value for the road crews because it creates reasonably meaningful online work for them.? And that is the main goal.
Slightly off-topic question: what is the best practice for building a dependent set of trains like this for a session?? I want to run these in the order C-B-A, A-B-A, and A-B-C.? But to build A-B-A, I think I need to build and move C-B-A first.? If I do that before the start of a session, the cars database does not reflect the physical state of the layout at the session start.? Is this best practice, or is it advisable to build later trains in real time during a session?
Thanks again,
Gary
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I would be curious to know if everything continues to run after 8 or 10 work the area
Matt G
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sorry after 8 or 10 trains work the area
Matt G
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Gary,
Concerning your last question, folks will argue both sides of that coin.? Both have pros and cons.? If you are worried for some reason that your car database will not match the layout, print it sorted by location before you begin building trains for your session or save a backup copy.
I used to build, print and terminate 24 hours worth of trains for each session of the previous version of the Castle Rock and Pacific with many dependencies included.? Knowing how the schedule worked, I would build, print and terminate trains in a logical order allowing plenty of time between dependent trains.? If you have close connections, you may want to go the real time route just in case.? Sometimes, in spite of your efforts, a connection will be missed.? I just tell my crews to annotate their switch list and move on. Stuff happens, it is part of the fun of operations.
If you are building switch lists for yards, don't forget to update those lists appropriately as you go along.
Dave...
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Ok, there is one little twist I didn't appreciate when I wrote the previous post: if the spurs and interchange siding are in the same Location, then Ops will not request moves between the two for the Turn unless I do something prescriptive like set a Schedule or a Final Destination for cars in the siding.? I'd like to avoid being too prescriptive, so I decided to make the siding its own location (I'll call it Bs here), for interchange purposes.? Now my way freights run Routes C-Bs-A and A-Bs-C, while the Turn runs a Route A-Bs-B-Bs-A, so the spurs in B are like a branch line.
Now I run C-Bs-A first and spot cars on Bs-(IN) en route, then I run the Turn which pulls cars from Bs-(IN), works the spurs, and spots cars in Bs-(OUT), then I run A-Bs-C which pulls cars from Bs-(OUT) and takes them to C.? The train builds work like a charm, but I am sure I'll need to tweak the move counts to achieve a good steady state solution.? Looking forward to that. :)
One follow-up question about session builds and such.? Is there a way to restore *only* the cars database from a backup?? When I'm developing schemes, I want to start with a certain car configuration, then, after moving some built trains in simulator mode, I'll tweak a variety of things like location and route details.? Afterwards, I'd like to be able to save everything and start over with the new routes, etc. but with the cars in their original place.? Is there an easy way to do this?
Great program.? Thanks again.
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Gary H.
Thanks for the update I have run into problems trying to do this same thing. I've figured work arounds still not quite what I'm wanting it to do. I just watch to see if someone comes up with a better way.
Keep at it
Thanks?
Matt Greenwood
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Matt and company
I've used the interchange designation for a length of track here for quite some time. It works flawlessly. When a spur is filled, JMRI will place a car on the alternate track with a destination of the filled spur. The car moves at the next session to its destination. So I'm wondering what is it that you are not seeing with this feature? Gary, the same question. What does your build report tell you about the car and why it couldn't move? Get into the habit of looking for the car number from the bottom up. The last paragraph will show and in that paragraph it will tell you why the car didn't move. This has to be a missed setting.
later
Dave
Trempealeau WI
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Dave,
The feature is working as intended which is good. Sometimes people come up with something I haven't tried which is fantastic. I think (??????) that what I am looking for is a global feature. Some kind of an internal clock that will take the oldest car on a track and move it first and not start over at A1 every time. This feature would take quite a process to integrate into the program and would have to be able to turn off if someone doesn't want it. I see a lot of my cars not move because the search never gets to them. Most of the time I have figured work around to get what I want because why change for one person and I get that.
Good program
Thanks
Matt G?
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Dave, I don't have the exact wording from the build report available, but it was something to the effect of: the car can't be moved to a destination in the same location.? I think I could get around this with a Final Destination tag or some such, but I didn't want to be too prescriptive in my setup.
Note that my configuration has been a moving target over the life of this thread.? What I didn't appreciate in the beginning was that I wanted my siding to act as both an interchange track and as an overflow track for off-spots.? My first reading of the documentation led me to think that designating the siding as an alternate track for the spurs would serve both functions, but it didn't.? (BTW, the siding is designated as a C/I track.)? I next divided the siding into three logical pieces: -(ALT), -(IN), -(OUT), all in the same location, and I restricted the Destination for cars on -(IN) to be in the current Location.? But when I tried to build the Turn, it would not route cars from -(IN) to the spurs because they were in the same Location (according to the build report).? As soon as I placed -(IN) and -(OUT) in a separate interchange location, it all worked as planned, so I'm happy with the solution.
Is it intentional that the program would not route cars from -(IN) to a spur if they were within the same Location and that Location was the only Destination?
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Ken Cameron
David Cochrun