01-01-2011, 08:46 AM
This subject orginally came up in the Topic: AAR Car Types http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3680, where tetters was using the ShipIt computer program for his layout. I don't know if anyone else on here has tried to use ShipIt on an ISL, but here's a run down on my experiences with it and how I've set it up.
Although I had tried to use ShipIt some in the past, with less than satisfactory results, I thought I'd give it try again to see if I could get it to work with an Industrial Switching Layout and reasonably duplicate the type of activity you'd have on such an operation.
The first and MOST IMPORTANT part of the initial program set up, was to create a simplified UMLER type car code to use instead of the AAR Mech Desig. Trying to use only the AAR codes will not work right on modern era layouts. There are just too many car type variations. I know that working as a brakeman/conductor, it really doesn't matter that WRWK 5055 is a B314, but it is more than a little helpful to know that the car you're looking for in a long cut is a box car and not a flat car or covered hopper. ShipIt requires that some sort of car type code be used and the AAR Car Type field seems to accept most anything, so might as well use something that resembles what the prototype uses on waybills and computer generated switch lists in many cases.
If all your cars were of the same general types with little or no variation, then the AAR Mech Desig might work fine. But on a modern era layout, it won't. For instance here we have WRWK 5055, an XM box car. Okay, fine. I input the car SCAC and number and select AAR code XM. BUT, is it 40ft/50ft/60ft - Single sliding door/Plug Door/Double Door (plug or sliding)/Combination Door - Hi-cube - etc.? A box car isn't just a box car. ShipIt has a field for Car Style, but that doesn't do a thing when it generates a switch list. Of course you have several AAR designations for box cars, such as XF, XMI, XML, XL, XLI, XP, but the same issues apply.
If you're really into prototype operations, you need a way to differentiate the types of cars and their numerous configurations. I mentioned in the other thread that you can end up with the wrong car types spotted at industries if for example, all your covered hoppers are simply AAR type LO. Perhaps you don't care if a covered hopper suitable only for loading plastic pellets is spotted at your grain elevator? Being a former railroader, I do care.
I maintain a database of all my cars that along with other information shows the AAR Mech Desg and the correct UMLER code, obtained from the Official Railway Equipment Register, but for ShipIt I made up codes that are as generalized as possible. By the way, the ORER is a good way to discover that the new car you purchased has the wrong car number for that car type!
My equipment code types are:
B - Box Cars
C - Covered Hopper Cars
F - Flat Cars
R - Refrigerator Cars/Insulated Box Cars
T - Tank Cars
For simplicity, I currently have all box cars as car type code B - rather than A for equipped cars and B for unequipped, this may need to be changed for some situations, but for now this seems to work okay for my industries and lessens some of the complexity of setting up ShipIt.
For box/refrigerator cars, the first number denotes the basic car length and the next two numbers are used to define door type or other factors you may need.
B501 - 50ft box car single sliding door
B502 - 50ft box car single plug door
B503 - 50ft box car double sliding door
B504 - 50ft box car double plug door
B505 - 50ft box car combination plug/sliding doors
Similar codes can be added as required for 40ft, 60ft, 86ft, hi-cube cars, etc.
All the covered hoppers that I will be using are of the same general class and capacity, so they use code:
C101 - Covered Hopper Gravity Discharge
Flat Cars
F101 - 60ft Bulkhead
Refrigerator Cars/Insulated Box Cars
R501 - Insulated Box Car (RBL)
R502 - Mechanical Refrigerator (RPL)
Tank Cars
T101 - 16,000-18,000 gal
T102 - 25,000-27,000 gal
When setting up ShipIt, I only needed two towns - one which I call CITY and that contains only A-YARD (actually staging/off line car storage) and the other called SPUR that has all the industries. I chose the name A-Yard so that if I print out the condensed switch list form, cars coming from the yard will list first. ShipIt lists industries, tracks, yards, etc. in alphabetical order at each station/town.
The shipping point for all cars destined to the industrial spur is A-YARD. No need to create a shipper that is supposed to be in some far off city, state. That just adds unnecessary complexity to setting up the program for an ISL.
Since the industries on my ISL all have two or more car spots, the next thing that I had to do, was set up the program so that each car spot was treated like a separate industry. Required if certain type cars must be placed at certain spots. Otherwise, you can end up with wrong car types at specific spots. If Spot 2 is only for tank car unloading, you wouldn't want to spot a box car for unloading there!
Industry Setup Example: BCI (Beverage Corporation International) receives tank cars of HFCS and has two car spots. So I set up my spots for that consignee as industries BCI 1 and BCI 2.
Now is when the fun begins! For each of my HFCS tank cars (Code T101), I will have to make a shipper/consignee pair for each of those spots (7 cars X 2 car spots = 14 shipper/consignee pairs!). In this particular instance, I could have just made BCI an industry that spots two cars and it would work well enough, but I want the switch list to show that a particular car is to be placed/pulled at a certain spot.
You can see where this is going when you have an industry that has as many as 6 car spots and each spot can receive several different type cars and commodities or, certain spots are only for certain commodities/car types. So for each commodity, you must create a shipper/consignee pair for each car type that can realistically transport that commodity. IT'S VERY TIME CONSUMING!
I started out simple using only the 16 cars that were currently on the layout. I have most of the shipper/consignee/commodity/car pairs set up except for a logistics warehouse that has 6 car spots and who knows how many commodity/car type combinations. For now, I just set it up for one commodity and 3 suitable box car types.
Here is how ShipIt is working so far:
1. To begin - I selected Start Fresh (New Car Positions) to initialize the program and ShipIt placed 5 cars on spot at the industries on SPUR and the remaining 11 cars in the A-YARD.
2. Selecting Generate Session yielded the following results:
Session 1:
No cars inbound from A-YARD
5 cars outbound from SPUR
Session 2:
3 inbound cars from A-YARD
No outbound cars from SPUR
Continued generation of test operating sessions (20 total) kept yielding the same pattern. Nothing Inbound/3 Outbound then 3 Inbound/Nothing Outbound. But the industries switched did vary, at least as much as they could with the available car types and commodities.
I don't consider this a fair test of the program at this point, as the program is working with only the few car types that I have entered - 2 tank cars - 1 flat - 3 covered hoppers - 10 box cars of various types. If I add more cars to the program, it should change operating patterns considerably. At least I hope it would.
I should note that I have inbound/outbound train lengths limited to 5 cars maximum - the capacity of my staging track. I'm not sure what effect, if any, that has on the program operation, but is a limit that I have imposed to keep staging to a reasonable amount. Only the addition of many more cars will show if that limit effects the program in a negative way.
I would also need to experiment with the amount of time that cars are on spot for various industries and the frequency of car orders. As currently set up, I use the default of 24 hours for every commodity and some cars should take longer to unload and the frequency of shipments should be adjusted for some commodities too. As on the prototype, just because you have 5 industries, doesn't mean that each of them would receive cars every operating session, nor would each industry be switched every session.
My past experience using ShipIt, I found that some cars never seemed to come on line from storage for certain commodities, while others would constantly come on/off line. I'm guessing that the car database doesn't queue the cars in a first out/last in manner after a car has completed a shipping cycle. If AA 2050 is in position 1 in the database and WRWK 5055 is in position 100 - maybe that never changes. If both cars were the correct type for the shipment and available at the same time, WRWK 5055 might never get selected in a situation like I'm using.
With my current car fleet of 100 cars, do I want to spend the hours and hours required to create shipper/consignee/commodity/car type pairs, not to mention the time that may be required to get the program to function in a prototypical manner?
ShipIt appears to require a LOT of fine tuning - which translates to a lot of time sitting at the computer inputting data and trying to make it work right. Some other method, such as the good old Car Card/Waybill system and switch lists made up from those may be the best route to take. Even just making up a switch list based on the mood I'm in at the time may work better than ShipIt for an ISL.
I know that some of you will no doubt consider all this as taking things to the extreme, and some probably wouldn't even care if the correct car types where used for shipments, but it's what I found necessary to do to get this program to roughly duplicate prototype switch lists for an industrial switching job. As time permits, I will continue to experiment with ShipIt, but I've already spent more hours than I want to know getting to this point! Not sure that it's worth all this effort.
Although I had tried to use ShipIt some in the past, with less than satisfactory results, I thought I'd give it try again to see if I could get it to work with an Industrial Switching Layout and reasonably duplicate the type of activity you'd have on such an operation.
The first and MOST IMPORTANT part of the initial program set up, was to create a simplified UMLER type car code to use instead of the AAR Mech Desig. Trying to use only the AAR codes will not work right on modern era layouts. There are just too many car type variations. I know that working as a brakeman/conductor, it really doesn't matter that WRWK 5055 is a B314, but it is more than a little helpful to know that the car you're looking for in a long cut is a box car and not a flat car or covered hopper. ShipIt requires that some sort of car type code be used and the AAR Car Type field seems to accept most anything, so might as well use something that resembles what the prototype uses on waybills and computer generated switch lists in many cases.
If all your cars were of the same general types with little or no variation, then the AAR Mech Desig might work fine. But on a modern era layout, it won't. For instance here we have WRWK 5055, an XM box car. Okay, fine. I input the car SCAC and number and select AAR code XM. BUT, is it 40ft/50ft/60ft - Single sliding door/Plug Door/Double Door (plug or sliding)/Combination Door - Hi-cube - etc.? A box car isn't just a box car. ShipIt has a field for Car Style, but that doesn't do a thing when it generates a switch list. Of course you have several AAR designations for box cars, such as XF, XMI, XML, XL, XLI, XP, but the same issues apply.
If you're really into prototype operations, you need a way to differentiate the types of cars and their numerous configurations. I mentioned in the other thread that you can end up with the wrong car types spotted at industries if for example, all your covered hoppers are simply AAR type LO. Perhaps you don't care if a covered hopper suitable only for loading plastic pellets is spotted at your grain elevator? Being a former railroader, I do care.
I maintain a database of all my cars that along with other information shows the AAR Mech Desg and the correct UMLER code, obtained from the Official Railway Equipment Register, but for ShipIt I made up codes that are as generalized as possible. By the way, the ORER is a good way to discover that the new car you purchased has the wrong car number for that car type!
My equipment code types are:
B - Box Cars
C - Covered Hopper Cars
F - Flat Cars
R - Refrigerator Cars/Insulated Box Cars
T - Tank Cars
For simplicity, I currently have all box cars as car type code B - rather than A for equipped cars and B for unequipped, this may need to be changed for some situations, but for now this seems to work okay for my industries and lessens some of the complexity of setting up ShipIt.
For box/refrigerator cars, the first number denotes the basic car length and the next two numbers are used to define door type or other factors you may need.
B501 - 50ft box car single sliding door
B502 - 50ft box car single plug door
B503 - 50ft box car double sliding door
B504 - 50ft box car double plug door
B505 - 50ft box car combination plug/sliding doors
Similar codes can be added as required for 40ft, 60ft, 86ft, hi-cube cars, etc.
All the covered hoppers that I will be using are of the same general class and capacity, so they use code:
C101 - Covered Hopper Gravity Discharge
Flat Cars
F101 - 60ft Bulkhead
Refrigerator Cars/Insulated Box Cars
R501 - Insulated Box Car (RBL)
R502 - Mechanical Refrigerator (RPL)
Tank Cars
T101 - 16,000-18,000 gal
T102 - 25,000-27,000 gal
When setting up ShipIt, I only needed two towns - one which I call CITY and that contains only A-YARD (actually staging/off line car storage) and the other called SPUR that has all the industries. I chose the name A-Yard so that if I print out the condensed switch list form, cars coming from the yard will list first. ShipIt lists industries, tracks, yards, etc. in alphabetical order at each station/town.
The shipping point for all cars destined to the industrial spur is A-YARD. No need to create a shipper that is supposed to be in some far off city, state. That just adds unnecessary complexity to setting up the program for an ISL.
Since the industries on my ISL all have two or more car spots, the next thing that I had to do, was set up the program so that each car spot was treated like a separate industry. Required if certain type cars must be placed at certain spots. Otherwise, you can end up with wrong car types at specific spots. If Spot 2 is only for tank car unloading, you wouldn't want to spot a box car for unloading there!
Industry Setup Example: BCI (Beverage Corporation International) receives tank cars of HFCS and has two car spots. So I set up my spots for that consignee as industries BCI 1 and BCI 2.
Now is when the fun begins! For each of my HFCS tank cars (Code T101), I will have to make a shipper/consignee pair for each of those spots (7 cars X 2 car spots = 14 shipper/consignee pairs!). In this particular instance, I could have just made BCI an industry that spots two cars and it would work well enough, but I want the switch list to show that a particular car is to be placed/pulled at a certain spot.
You can see where this is going when you have an industry that has as many as 6 car spots and each spot can receive several different type cars and commodities or, certain spots are only for certain commodities/car types. So for each commodity, you must create a shipper/consignee pair for each car type that can realistically transport that commodity. IT'S VERY TIME CONSUMING!
I started out simple using only the 16 cars that were currently on the layout. I have most of the shipper/consignee/commodity/car pairs set up except for a logistics warehouse that has 6 car spots and who knows how many commodity/car type combinations. For now, I just set it up for one commodity and 3 suitable box car types.
Here is how ShipIt is working so far:
1. To begin - I selected Start Fresh (New Car Positions) to initialize the program and ShipIt placed 5 cars on spot at the industries on SPUR and the remaining 11 cars in the A-YARD.
2. Selecting Generate Session yielded the following results:
Session 1:
No cars inbound from A-YARD
5 cars outbound from SPUR
Session 2:
3 inbound cars from A-YARD
No outbound cars from SPUR
Continued generation of test operating sessions (20 total) kept yielding the same pattern. Nothing Inbound/3 Outbound then 3 Inbound/Nothing Outbound. But the industries switched did vary, at least as much as they could with the available car types and commodities.
I don't consider this a fair test of the program at this point, as the program is working with only the few car types that I have entered - 2 tank cars - 1 flat - 3 covered hoppers - 10 box cars of various types. If I add more cars to the program, it should change operating patterns considerably. At least I hope it would.
I should note that I have inbound/outbound train lengths limited to 5 cars maximum - the capacity of my staging track. I'm not sure what effect, if any, that has on the program operation, but is a limit that I have imposed to keep staging to a reasonable amount. Only the addition of many more cars will show if that limit effects the program in a negative way.
I would also need to experiment with the amount of time that cars are on spot for various industries and the frequency of car orders. As currently set up, I use the default of 24 hours for every commodity and some cars should take longer to unload and the frequency of shipments should be adjusted for some commodities too. As on the prototype, just because you have 5 industries, doesn't mean that each of them would receive cars every operating session, nor would each industry be switched every session.
My past experience using ShipIt, I found that some cars never seemed to come on line from storage for certain commodities, while others would constantly come on/off line. I'm guessing that the car database doesn't queue the cars in a first out/last in manner after a car has completed a shipping cycle. If AA 2050 is in position 1 in the database and WRWK 5055 is in position 100 - maybe that never changes. If both cars were the correct type for the shipment and available at the same time, WRWK 5055 might never get selected in a situation like I'm using.
With my current car fleet of 100 cars, do I want to spend the hours and hours required to create shipper/consignee/commodity/car type pairs, not to mention the time that may be required to get the program to function in a prototypical manner?
ShipIt appears to require a LOT of fine tuning - which translates to a lot of time sitting at the computer inputting data and trying to make it work right. Some other method, such as the good old Car Card/Waybill system and switch lists made up from those may be the best route to take. Even just making up a switch list based on the mood I'm in at the time may work better than ShipIt for an ISL.
I know that some of you will no doubt consider all this as taking things to the extreme, and some probably wouldn't even care if the correct car types where used for shipments, but it's what I found necessary to do to get this program to roughly duplicate prototype switch lists for an industrial switching job. As time permits, I will continue to experiment with ShipIt, but I've already spent more hours than I want to know getting to this point! Not sure that it's worth all this effort.
Ed
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"