01-05-2011, 03:08 AM
My thoughts in this thread are based on what little research I have done on operations, and on my intuition. I'm glad that you are interested in the subject and can provide an insider's view into making the ShipIt program work well. There are certainly things that are being discussed that are going over my head, but the way to solve that is to keep thinking about all this. I did download the trial version of ShipIt 6 and will play with it over the next few weeks.
Good to hear that the train length can be adjusted for each session. Now, it seems that with the industry frequency all set the same, and with a train too short to meet the industry demands, there would always be a maximum number of setouts and pickups on each train as the program is doing its best to keep up with industry needs. 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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
However, now look at the page(s) where the work is to be done on the spur, the cars are blocked by industry as they should be:[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]The bold notations on this example were added by me, but you see that this looks more or less like a prototype switch list, however, I think it would be a bit more prototypical to have the cars to be spotted listed before the cars to be pulled. Better yet, I'd have the work for each industry listed separately. But to get ShipIt to do that, it looks like in my case, I'd have to make each industry its own town!!! ANOTHER idea for an experimental setup![/quote]
So instead of operating from the switchlist, would you work from the list above?
Again, the trick of using a lower case letter (or how about a number, 01, 02, etc) and a space in front of the industry names would "trick" the program into listing them in the right order. Again we deal with having the letter on the switchlist. And with my layout having interchanges on both ends, one of the lists would be backwards.
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.
More reasons for me to set the industrial parks as towns.
Keep thinking and posting!
FCIN Wrote:However, ShipIt does give you the option to adjust the train length for your train(s) prior to generating a session, so that could be an option you might want to use from time to time. Where I have my train length set to 5 cars - I could set it to 2 cars and generate a list based on that. The result would be 2 cars inbound and 2 outbound for that session. Only problem with doing that is, say you only wanted to pull a car or two from your industries and not spot anything - no way to adjust that as far as I can see.
Good to hear that the train length can be adjusted for each session. Now, it seems that with the industry frequency all set the same, and with a train too short to meet the industry demands, there would always be a maximum number of setouts and pickups on each train as the program is doing its best to keep up with industry needs. 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.
FCIN Wrote:Here's an example of the listing for the inbound train where I was playing around with the longer train length value: First, looking at the Road and Number fields you can see what I mean about the alphanumeric order. You don't notice it so much just glancing at the list, but if you look closely, you can see the pattern: A, B, C, L, M, P, T, W. Both of my CNA cars with the same commodity/destination and all 3 of my BN box cars (2 with the same commodity/destination) made it on to this train. Not un-prototypical by any means, but as you, I'd like it to be a bit more random.
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!
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.
FCIN Wrote:If you look at the Destination field, you can see that the cars are not arranged in blocks by industry, but rather listed in random order. The cars should be blocked in order by industry! You wouldn't leave the yard with your cars in a random fashion like that. If I actually lined up the inbound train per this list, it would be a mess to work the industries!
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.
FCIN Wrote:Of course if you actually had the yard to work before leaving your initial terminal, then you could use this printout to switch your cars and block them in to the proper order. Probably a good situation for a lot of layouts.
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?
However, now look at the page(s) where the work is to be done on the spur, the cars are blocked by industry as they should be:[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]The bold notations on this example were added by me, but you see that this looks more or less like a prototype switch list, however, I think it would be a bit more prototypical to have the cars to be spotted listed before the cars to be pulled. Better yet, I'd have the work for each industry listed separately. But to get ShipIt to do that, it looks like in my case, I'd have to make each industry its own town!!! ANOTHER idea for an experimental setup![/quote]
So instead of operating from the switchlist, would you work from the list above?
FCIN Wrote:You'll also notice that ShipIt is listing industries in alphabetical order and the blocking does not match how I'd have the train blocked. Guess you need to pick names/abbreviations for your industries that would result in proper blocking of the cars or in my case, possibly treat each industry as its own town!
Again, the trick of using a lower case letter (or how about a number, 01, 02, etc) and a space in front of the industry names would "trick" the program into listing them in the right order. Again we deal with having the letter on the switchlist. And with my layout having interchanges on both ends, one of the lists would be backwards.
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.
FCIN Wrote:I know that in most cases, it wouldn't matter so much how the cars were blocked on many types of layouts or train situations, just not what I'd want for my layout. If I were running a local freight through 3 towns with only one or two industries to be worked in each town, then ShipIt would work well in that case. For example, if you had one car to spot and one car to pull at Town A, then ShipIt would show each town separately and only the cars to be worked for that town.
More reasons for me to set the industrial parks as towns.
FCIN Wrote:Well back to more experimenting. Not getting any modeling or layout work done right now, but this is interesting. It's quite obvious that ShipIt must be set up and fine tuned for each individual layout and operating theme. But there does seem to be ways to get it to work the way you want for the most part. Just have to play with it and think outside of the box.
Keep thinking and posting!