Using The ShipIt! Computer Program On An ISL

[FCIN]

Ed, I wanted to revive this thread for a bit. On your layout, for the staging, is it basically set up as an industry that receives all the goods that come from shippers on your layout, and produces all the goods that the layout consignees request?

Gary;
More or less set up that way. It's a yard with a car capacity well above the total cars I currently have. All cars in the database are setup with that yard being their "Home Yard". The "Shipper" for all commodities to "Consignees" on the industrial spur is the yard. I don't think that ShipIt cares if I call my staging a yard, a industry or a siding, as long as I have a shipping point from somewhere.

I don't have any customers on my industrial spur that ship, only receive, but if I did, the "Consignee" for their shipments would also be the yard. With the operational concept I have, that would be prototypical, as everything going to the spur would come from the yard and everything coming off the spur would go back to the yard for further movement.

It's a very simple set up and works pretty well for my layout operations. I haven't messed around with the ShipIt program for several days now, and although it's pretty handy for creating a quick operating session, there are still some things that I can't find a way to get working right.

Biggest problem right now, is the concept of overflow cars to certain customers. I have one customer that currently only unloads one car in a 24 hr period, but the track can hold 3 cars. If I set the car capacity for that shipper as 3, then ShipIt will try and keep 2 or 3 cars at that customer most of the time, with the result that if there are 3 cars on that track tonight and I generate a switch list, it may pull all 3 cars from the track, rather than spot the next one in line to unload.

Have also tried giving that customers track its own name with a 2 car capacity and showing that track as the "Storage Yard" point for shipments to that customer. Then setting the customers track capacity as 1 car. What happens then, is that ShipIt will send a car from the yard to the "Storage Track" because there is a car spotted at the customer. But on that same switch list it will have the car that is on spot to be pulled. It won't spot the "Storage Yard" car until the next session, which of course is not what you'd do. Can't find any way to get that to work in a prototypical manner. Apparently, ShipIt doesn't check to see if the car on spot is empty and ready to pull, before it looks for cars to send from the yard to the customer!

I have been using the program to generate sessions for operating my layout, mainly to test the program and as a quick way to create an operating session. But I don't know at this point if I'll actually use it once the layout gets to a permanent status. Just seems to be too many prototype situations that I can't make work right with the program.

That last paragraph brings up a topic for another thread elsewhere, but I've already fallen in to the trap of being able to operate trains, so nothing else is getting done!!! Every time I come down here thinking that I'm going to do this or that on the layout, I end up just spending a couple of hours operating the layout! Track plan seems to be final and it's a good one with plenty of operation, but I'll never get it permanently built at this rate!