01-21-2012, 03:01 PM
jwb Wrote:This still seems like a lot of work.
I just downloaded a ready made spreadsheet and played with entering various values in the fields.
I have also played with several other switchlist generators before. The work lies in entering your industries, your cars etc. And that is pretty much the same no matter what program you use. I downloaded minirail for a quick test drive - it also seems based on the idea that you have to enter your rolling stock in addition to your industries before you can generate switch lists.
The simple little excel spreadsheet I downloaded bypasses the entering of rolling stock and keeping track of which car is spotted where.
It just tells you what spots to pull, and what type of car to spot in various spots. You then can add in pencil (if you so choose) on the printout which specific cars to spot and pull. The only thing you need to enter to generate a list is to show which spots are currently occupied (by putting an x in the column occupied).
Not trying to keep track of car reporting marks and numbers within the generator program save you from the most annoying feature of most switch list generator programs - what happens when the recorded state in the program gets out of synch with the actual state on the layout.
But I guess I should call it a traffic generator rather than a switchlist generator. It doesn't really produce a full switch list - it produces a set of tasks for you - pull the car in this spot, leave the car in that spot, spot a boxcar here, spot a tank car there.
Anyways - I though it was a neat little idea that can be implemented with a minimum of fuss. Not much of an investment to just list your spots (as opposed to entering dozens or hundreds of cars, and then have to struggle with synchronizing the state of the program and the state of the layout) :-)
Smile,
Stein