01-05-2011, 06:46 AM
Wow! Where to begin!!
This is where my use of a car code to differentiate the types of comes comes in to play and why using the outdated AAR Mech Desg won't work right. If you simply used the default ShipIt AAR types and designated all your box cars as XM, then yes, I can see where ShipIt might run through all your home road cars (ATG) first and on down the line alphabetically if all the potential destinations received the XM type of car. I'd really have to test this out to make sure, but right now, I'd say your theory is probably correct.
A train consist is a list of all the cars in your train and is almost always listed from the first to last car (although I've seen it done in reverse in some instances). If the train consist included cars to be set off in route, these cars would usually be placed at the head end of the train and in the order they were to be set off. These days, if you were departing your initial terminal with a local freight, then the cars would be blocked in the order by the towns that you were going to work along the way and the consist provided to you would be listed in that order.
A switch list, is what is says it is; a list of cars that are to be switched out at a particular location. This can be a yard, where cars are to be sorted and blocked for further movement and it can be a list of what cars are to be placed/pulled at various industries at that location.
The way that switch lists (and consists too for that matter) are made up, is that some poor soul (the agent or yard clerk) must walk every track and list all the cars in that track. Cars on each track are listed from the same end. From this initial "yard or track check", the agent/clerk can make up the required switch lists for the crew(s) and they will not only know what cars are in what track, they will know which end of the track they are on and the cars position in the track.
A switch list given to a crew for industry work, would be listed in order of the outbound train, assuming it had been previously blocked out or may be listed randomly if the cars haven't been pre-blocked. Just remember one thing, on arrival at the industry, the customer may want cars spotted in a particular order that wouldn't be reflected on the switch list.
1. Industry with 5 car spots we'll call Smith Foods.
Town is called Smith
Industries at Smith are Spot 1, Spot 2, Spot 3, Spot 4, Spot 5 - each with a capacity of 1 car.
Now say that Spot 1 accepts only one type of product in one type of car - I'll use vegetable oil in tank cars for this example.
First we enter the Product: Veg Oil and select: T201 as the car type for that product.
Next we create a Shipper for that Product/Car combination which in my case will be from staging which is located in City/A-Yard.
Finally, we create a Consignee for that Product/Car which will be Spot 1 in Smith. And there you have it.
Of course, if other car spots can receive multiple products in multiple car types, then you must create a Product/Car Type and Shipper for each one then create multiple instances of the same Consignee, but for each product.
NOTE: Unless you have multiple shippers of this product/car type, you only need one instance of a shipper for each product/car type, but you can have numerous Consignees that might receive that product/car combination. Clear as mud?
2. Industry with 2 car spots that receive the same shipment we'll call Purina Feeds
Town is called Purina
Industry is called Mill with a capacity of 2 cars.
Enter Product: Feed and select: C101 as the car type for the product.
Create Shipper for that product/car type then Consignee which is Mill in Purina
Pretty simple in this case.
The final and most important part of this setup is to create a schedule for your train that reflects the order you want to switch the various industries. I set up my schedule for the train to depart CITY/A-YARD at 7:30AM then Arrive/Depart from each industry (in this case Town) in the order I want to switch them. The arrival/departure times really aren't that important other than they must be in the correct time order, i.e.; Arrive 8:00AM/Depart 8:30AM, Arrive 8:30AM Depart 9:00AM, etc. Finally add CITY/A-YARD again - showing the arrival time later than the last Departure time from the last industry and check the box Return Trip. Works like a charm!
Once I had this all set up and began generating switch list sessions - the results were pretty good. The switch lists that are generated show the work to be done at each industry separately and in the correct order. Car movements seem to vary quite well although I'm still playing with the frequency of shipments to fine tune things. Train lengths varied a fair amount too. A few times, I'd have no inbound cars at all, but several outbound or several inbound and nothing outbound. But, on average I'd have an equal number inbound and outbound. Further frequency adjustments should alter this more. There are some product/car types that I want cycled almost every session and that works out pretty well, but doesn't work 100% of the time due to my limited train length. ShipIt has a function to give some products a higher priority then others, so that may be the answer to that problem.
Gary S Wrote:I did download the trial version of ShipIt 6 and will play with it over the next few weeks.I have the newest version (7.01), but I don't think that there are any significant differences between these versions as far as the program setup and operation goes, so anything I talk about in this experimental stuff should work okay for you.
Gary S Wrote:Good to hear that the train length can be adjusted for each session. (...) I wonder if setting various frequencies and then having enough trans and long enough trains to exceed what is needed for the industries would result in variations between pickups and setouts. Seems that it would.I've been experimenting a lot during the night with adjusting the load/unload times and shipment frequencies and it does make a big difference! Still will have to play around with the settings for various shipments, but it seems to be making a lot of difference in what happens when you generate a switch list. More on that later...
Gary S Wrote:Hmmm.... let's use boxcars as an example: Say we have an available boxcar roster of 20 ATG (my shortline) cars, 10 ATSF cars, 5 BN cars, 4 EGE cars, 1 FEC car, 4 LN cars and 10 SP cars - ShipIt would run through all my shortline cars, then through the ATSF cars, then the BN cars etc? If my train length was set to 10 cars, then all of the boxcars on the first train in the first ops session would be ATG? I don't like that at all!Now this one is really hard to answer and may require some more information to get a better idea of what might happen. But first, are all your box cars the same type? Are they 40ft, 50ft, single door, double door, plug door, combination door? And would every shipper/consignee on your layout use the same type of box car? As I've mention several times before, some cars are not suitable for certain commodities, and other commodities might be suitable for several different types of cars. As a simple example, say you are shipping lumber in box cars. If your layout is set in the modern era (late 1960's on) you'd want to use double door cars for such shipments, although single wide door type cars would be acceptable.
This is where my use of a car code to differentiate the types of comes comes in to play and why using the outdated AAR Mech Desg won't work right. If you simply used the default ShipIt AAR types and designated all your box cars as XM, then yes, I can see where ShipIt might run through all your home road cars (ATG) first and on down the line alphabetically if all the potential destinations received the XM type of car. I'd really have to test this out to make sure, but right now, I'd say your theory is probably correct.
Gary S Wrote:If my conjecture is true, one way to combat that would be to place a random lower case letter and then a space in front of every one of the boxcar roadnames. But that wold be rather crappy on the switchlists, having the random letter there.ShipIt will not allow you to enter lowercase letters in the reporting marks field, but did test it and it will permit you to have spaces before the reporting marks. I was able to input the same car marks and number that way. But it will also allow you to enter the same car marks and number more than once (not good - the program should flag an error like that).
Gary S Wrote:Haven't ever used a switchlist, but how are they typically odered in the real world? I mean, is the first car on the list the first car in the train? Would the pickups be arranged in the order that they will be enountered out on the rails? I just don't know anything about how to use a switchlist.This one requires several explanations. As there are train consists and switch lists.
A train consist is a list of all the cars in your train and is almost always listed from the first to last car (although I've seen it done in reverse in some instances). If the train consist included cars to be set off in route, these cars would usually be placed at the head end of the train and in the order they were to be set off. These days, if you were departing your initial terminal with a local freight, then the cars would be blocked in the order by the towns that you were going to work along the way and the consist provided to you would be listed in that order.
A switch list, is what is says it is; a list of cars that are to be switched out at a particular location. This can be a yard, where cars are to be sorted and blocked for further movement and it can be a list of what cars are to be placed/pulled at various industries at that location.
The way that switch lists (and consists too for that matter) are made up, is that some poor soul (the agent or yard clerk) must walk every track and list all the cars in that track. Cars on each track are listed from the same end. From this initial "yard or track check", the agent/clerk can make up the required switch lists for the crew(s) and they will not only know what cars are in what track, they will know which end of the track they are on and the cars position in the track.
Gary S Wrote:If a class 1 is dropping off cars to interchange with my little shortline, (like the LAJ for example) then they would be in a random order at the interchange, right? And my shortline would then try to block the cars to make the setouts as easy as possible? And having the switchlist in order by industry would help with that, right?Exactly! The agent/clerk would either receive a list of cars from the connecting road in order from one end of the cut to the other, or he/she will have physically checked the track to get a list of the cars and their order. In this case, the switch list provided wouldn't be listed by industry or destination order, but your crew would switch the cars into the order they are needed. So if ShipIt listed your interchange or yard cars in random order, this would be correct.
A switch list given to a crew for industry work, would be listed in order of the outbound train, assuming it had been previously blocked out or may be listed randomly if the cars haven't been pre-blocked. Just remember one thing, on arrival at the industry, the customer may want cars spotted in a particular order that wouldn't be reflected on the switch list.
Gary S Wrote:Using individual towns sounds interesting. Even though my layout is one town, each of the industrial parks would need to be set as a town I suspect.Okay, now we're to the latest experiment part of this book er, posting. This is exactly what I've done during the night - I set up the program so that each industry is treated like it was a separate town and in all but two cases, treated each car spot as an individual industry in that town. The two odd ones just have one spot holding more than one car that is treated as an industry. Examples:
1. Industry with 5 car spots we'll call Smith Foods.
Town is called Smith
Industries at Smith are Spot 1, Spot 2, Spot 3, Spot 4, Spot 5 - each with a capacity of 1 car.
Now say that Spot 1 accepts only one type of product in one type of car - I'll use vegetable oil in tank cars for this example.
First we enter the Product: Veg Oil and select: T201 as the car type for that product.
Next we create a Shipper for that Product/Car combination which in my case will be from staging which is located in City/A-Yard.
Finally, we create a Consignee for that Product/Car which will be Spot 1 in Smith. And there you have it.
Of course, if other car spots can receive multiple products in multiple car types, then you must create a Product/Car Type and Shipper for each one then create multiple instances of the same Consignee, but for each product.
NOTE: Unless you have multiple shippers of this product/car type, you only need one instance of a shipper for each product/car type, but you can have numerous Consignees that might receive that product/car combination. Clear as mud?
2. Industry with 2 car spots that receive the same shipment we'll call Purina Feeds
Town is called Purina
Industry is called Mill with a capacity of 2 cars.
Enter Product: Feed and select: C101 as the car type for the product.
Create Shipper for that product/car type then Consignee which is Mill in Purina
Pretty simple in this case.
The final and most important part of this setup is to create a schedule for your train that reflects the order you want to switch the various industries. I set up my schedule for the train to depart CITY/A-YARD at 7:30AM then Arrive/Depart from each industry (in this case Town) in the order I want to switch them. The arrival/departure times really aren't that important other than they must be in the correct time order, i.e.; Arrive 8:00AM/Depart 8:30AM, Arrive 8:30AM Depart 9:00AM, etc. Finally add CITY/A-YARD again - showing the arrival time later than the last Departure time from the last industry and check the box Return Trip. Works like a charm!
Once I had this all set up and began generating switch list sessions - the results were pretty good. The switch lists that are generated show the work to be done at each industry separately and in the correct order. Car movements seem to vary quite well although I'm still playing with the frequency of shipments to fine tune things. Train lengths varied a fair amount too. A few times, I'd have no inbound cars at all, but several outbound or several inbound and nothing outbound. But, on average I'd have an equal number inbound and outbound. Further frequency adjustments should alter this more. There are some product/car types that I want cycled almost every session and that works out pretty well, but doesn't work 100% of the time due to my limited train length. ShipIt has a function to give some products a higher priority then others, so that may be the answer to that problem.
Ed
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"