Using The ShipIt! Computer Program On An ISL

[FCIN]

FCIN,
Your post is incredibly helpful.

Well I hope that my experiences are helping some. My set up of ShipIt is probably about as simple as it gets, except for the concept of making individual car spots separate industries. It is a pain in the patoot to enter all the necessary data and I'm a long way from finishing that, but have got it to the point that every industry gets switched and all the cars are moving.

(...) I'd like to be able to move cars off of my car float, possibly store some in the yard for a local freight to deliver to a town off layout (staging cassette) plus have some freight in the yard as well as off the float delivered to the local industries in town. Of course, some industries will produce products that can either be shipped back to the car float, or to off layout staging.

By what I've read in your post is that I should set up the car float (West) as one Town, the Layout itself as another Town with its individual industries and then the staging cassette (East) as a third Town. Is that the general idea?

First off, if you haven't already done so, get on the ShipIt user Yahoo Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shipit/. Should be a lot of folks on there that can help you solve problems. I'm on it, but must confess that I'm hard headed and try to work things out on my own!

I've never attempted to set up ShipIt for anything like what you want to do so right now I'm just throwing out ideas and seeing if they stick to anything. But here is an idea that I have for setting up ShipIt for your layout.

Here are the Towns and features of each as I'd set them up:
Town A - Float Yard
Town B - Yard - Industries - Interchange
Town C - Yard

Also, I'd only use one Division for the whole thing. As I recall, having towns located on different divisions adds a lot of complexity to setting up ShipIt and getting it to work correctly. I think that one of the example set ups does work that way if you want to see how it's done, but I think one division is just fine.

Town A
This is your offline staging/car storage - actually it's an arrangement exactly like what I have. Town A contains only Float Yard that has a large car capacity just to be on the safe side. All your off line shippers are actually Float Yard. Again, this is like what I've done. For example you need a shipment of feed going to a mill in Town B. Shipper is Float Yard - Consignee is the mill. You would also want to have some commodities shipped from Town A to Town C - which would create through movements. In order to get some cars to be held in Town B Yard, you'll need to remember to make Town B Yard the Storage Yard location for some or all of your shippers. I think that should work.

Town B
Town B is your main layout with your yard and industries. Any industries in Town B that ship off line would use Town A Float Yard or Town C Yard as their destination and again show Town B Yard as the Storage Yard when you set up the shipment.

The interchange track of course goes to Town C Yard.

Town C
Town C is set up like Town A - in other words - your cassette to move some cars off line and to another imaginary staging point. Again, you would use the Town C Yard as a shipping/destination point for cars and you could have shipments from Town C to Town A for through movements.

In order to get the interchange to work correctly, you may have to set up a "fake" train movement for Town C so that you move cars on and off the interchange track. I'm not 100% sure on that, but I'm thinking that has to be done. You may have to get advice from someone else about how to make the interchange work correctly. I always had problems getting interchanges to work right, but I probably just didn't set it up correctly.

Now here's where my idea gets interesting. We're going to create a train that is actually going to be your car float. You'll need a locomotive that will represent your car float.

Next we create a schedule for the car float where it goes from Town A to Town B and back again. You can schedule as many of these car float moves as you need for an operating session.

I'm assuming that for Town B, you just have a switch crew or crews that work the car float, yard, industries and interchange track. So you'd need to set up schedules for that crew or crews. That should be simple enough and should work itself out.

I'd also be interested to know how you set your train schedule. Being a civilian as opposed to a railroader in real life I am confused as to how to tell ship it to use my "train"?

Well, we'll use my example of the car float for setting up a schedule. First you set up the train. Give it a number and we'll name it Car Float. Train Type would probably be Freight as would all your train types (I'm guessing you don't run passenger service). Train Class isn't needed but you must set the train length to the capacity of your car float! Then pick a direction for the train. On the Session Generation page - be sure to click Session Generation ALL. Once you've set up the train (our car float) on the Browse Trains window select that train and click View Schedule. Insert and put in the Departure Time you want and then make the Town A - Town A. Click OK then Insert again, put in the Arrival Time and Departure Time (these times can be many hours apart) - Make the Town - Town B. Click Okay then click Insert once more. Put in your Arrival Time - make the Town - Town A and click on Return Trip. Then Click OK. That should do it.

You'll probably only need to make a single entry for your Town B crew. Just enter a Departure Time and Town B and that should be enough. You can of course create more trains and scheduled times for Town B if you like. I've done that with my set up.

Hope this makes sense to you. I'm actually tempted to use one of the examples in ShipIt and try this out for myself!

UPDATE !!!
tetters;

I've actually been playing with my idea and it needs a lot of refinement I'm sorry to say. It look's like the car float operation would have to be treated as some sort of interchange or inter-divisional move to get it to work right. As it is right now, when I scheduled the car float to go from Town A to Town B, it delivered the cars to their destinations - not what I want all all. But I think the concept may still be workable - just need to revise the way it works. I'll have to think about this some more.