Using The ShipIt! Computer Program On An ISL

[FCIN]

How about this:

That's an interesting concept there Gary. Might have to give that a shot and see how it works. I keep feeling like there is a way to make it work as I would expect, but just haven't found it yet. As it is right now, I've gone back to having the feed mill setup with 2 car spots. With my limited train length, it seems to work okay about half the time. Works out good if I have 2 cars at the mill - 1 gets pulled and another gets spotted.

I'll keep playing with ShipIt and see what I can do with it, but I think there are just too many prototype situations that it can't duplicate so once the ISL is officially in operation, I may just do my own thing. I probably expect too much from this program having working in the industry. Over all I think it's pretty darn good for most model railroad situations, just takes some fine tuning as you set it up.

As I mentioned in my last posting, in many cases just picking out an inbound car for each industry then placing and pulling a car at each industry results in a nice 45 minute to 1 hour operating session without having any need for a switch list. Some times I'll just bring 1 or 2 cars on to the spur and pull 3 or 4 or vice versus. Can throw in other random situations if the mood strikes, such as holding a car to be spotted the next session.

I'd never given any thought to more than just operating the layout by myself, but a friend dropped by this evening and we operated layout with him being engineer and me the conductor and we had a ball. He's been planing something on the order of a 4x16 foot round and round HO layout, but now is interested in doing something similar to what I'm doing, not to mention going to DCC. We have an ISL convert!!!