I urge you to take a look at Dave Husman’s program. At least for some ideas - it’s all pretty well done.
There’s even MORE free stuff now from Microsoft. Visual Basic .NET 2005 Express, Visual C#.NET 2005 Express, Visual Web Developer.NET 2005 Express, and SQL Server 2005 Express (basically the new MSDE< but it has some management tools now) are all free for the downloading. About the only thing you can’t do with these versions is source code control for multiple developers. Otherwise these are pretty full-featured development platforms and completely free.
FT: I would say that almost all of your recommendations are currently already implimented! Makes me feel like I am actually doing something right if someone else backs me up like that. Thanks!
rrinker: DL’ed it yesterday along with many other freeware inventory apps. Checkin them all out and picking the features I like the best from all of them.
Nice to know that some of my ideas are good ones, anyway.
If you get close on this and would like a beta-tester, let me know and I think I can find one. [swg] Seriously, I’d love to take a look at this and give you my 2 cents worth. I do have some real life experience in db programming. Let me know how I can help.
I’ll throw in a mention for the inventory system I’ve written. I offer it as shareware at the website below. You might like it… or it might give you some ideas for yours! Enjoy.
I use Access for inventory and merge the data into Word to print car cards and file cards. It has been working great for about 10 years and has 700 some entries. I enter 27 types of information to cover both locomotives and rolling stock.
I use car cards with freight orders in their pockets cliped in a package with a train order because I haven’t found an operator who wants to do the typing to generate train orders with cars listed and switch lists. Each time a train enters or leaves a yard, somebody would have to keyboard a list of cars so the computer knows what went where. With 5 yards someone would have to spend the entire evening keyboarding.
I am looking forward to a reader which can scan car sides and directly let the computer know what cars went where.
I use ProTrak for computer generated traffic routing. It is a very detailed program and you must really take your time in setting it up. However, it will generate traffic for your railroad just like the prototype. Part of the data entered, of course, is your rolling stock. This information can be further detailed with date of purchase, part number, etc. if you want that level of detail to your equipment.
One of the things that you have to do is forget about 90% of the traffic routing information that has been printed in the various magazine articles over the years. ProTrak is based upon prototype operations and applies all the appropriate car service rules to your railroad and era that you select. We have all read and heard that on our model railroads, on-line industries needing an empty car would receive a home road car. That is not how the prototype works and it is not how the car service rules were written. ProTrak handles these situations just like the prototype.
One of the biggest benefits, in my opinion, is that it generates switchlists and not car cards. It is a real time program, so it can handle any changes that happen during an operating session. There are no car cards to deal with. Just a switchlist that can be marked up by the crew and tossed in the trash after the train has terminated. You can even set up RIP tracks, clean out tracks and weigh scales and the program will route cars to these.
See www.protrack.cc for more information on the program; there may even be a demo that you can download. There is also a Yahoo group that is very helpful.
Peter is a modeler and operations oriented as well. He uses his software and is constantly upgrading and improving it. He is also very responsive to questions anyone has. There is a Yahoo discussion group devoted to this software.
I have my entire model inventory in MiTrains. I have never had a problem with the software and recommend it highly. You can even attach pictures to each record so you have visual as well as text inventory information.
I have used the waybills program a little but I am still working out the basic scheme of operations. The Operations SIG has an extensive list of industries that receive and/or ship via rail. That list is available for use with Waybills. The list gives you both a source and a destination for products used or made at any industry on your layout.
The two programs will produce car cards and waybills that are essentially the same as the old McFall system.
Many years ago I developed a simple XL spreadsheet for the sole purpose of keeping track of my fleet and its status with regard to state of repair, work to be done, etc. After learning about XL macros through work, I developed a simple car forwarding/tracking system that uses various sheets within a workbook. Cars are moved around from sheet to sheet as they move from staging to industry and back again using an automated cut and paste feature in the macro and some fairly simple logic.
This system does NOT try to reflect every nuance of real world operations, but it does provide a means for cycling traffic on and off the layout by keeping track of cars in staging yards and at industrial sidings. The original inventory sheet was enhanced to include a list of all possible industrial spots at which each car could be placed. Each spot is given a unique numeric identifier that corresponds to a text string that is used on the printable switch lists.
The program starts by reviewing the list of cars currently spotted at each of the industrial spots and decides, based on the “release delay” value assigned to each spot whether or not the car is to be released for pick up. This is a simple mechanism to ensure that not all cars are released the very next operating session. The cars to be picked up are assigned to trains destined back to staging based on either their “when empty return to” direction, a specific train number, or, in the case of free runners like Railboxes, a random selection of the outbound trains described in the Operating Plan (more on that later).
A master switch list is used to show all of the indistries and the cars to be picked up and set off (and by which train). Since it is organized by zones and spins, each local switcher can use the same sheet, just focussing on their work.
Trains are “arrived” in to the system based on the Operating Plan. The Operating Plan identifies the arriving train number (from staging) for each train that p
I have been following this topic. I have been a collector for years. 2007 is for operation. I would like to be able to have two features. 1] the STAY @ an industry s/b random w/ the range programmable [a car can be held for from 2 - 5 “days” or 1 to ? “days” [a nice feature would be to be able to give weight to the randomness - say, some “days” would have a 50% chance and others other percentages of time to be held]] and 2] the ERA s/b changeable allowing for “time” to progress [I have rolling stock from the 2000s and models of The Rocket - and a bunch of stuff in-between] so that rolling stock and locos are intro’d at appropriate dates and removed as time progresses [I’ve arbitrarily chosen the life of rolling stock to be 30 years]. I would even go so far as to include the MONTH as well as the YEAR “BUILT”. Then one could start operation at [say] May 1944 and the computer would choose only rolling stock from May 1914 to May 1944. The next session could be DATED March 1949. All equipment from May 1914 to March 1919 would be worked back to a yard and “scrapped” while newer equipment from May 1944 to March 1949 would be available to be included in a train [randomly as chosen by the computer].
I would suggest checking out http://www.railop.com/ with a visit to RailOp@yahoogroups.com for support if you are serious about a computer based inventory system, and more importantly, a ‘state of the art’ computer based switchlist program to “operate your trains”. The program is supurb, but in order to be such, it can and must be customized by you for your specific railroad layout. That’s where the support group comes in, but first read the ‘help’ files. You’ll be entering a whole new world of railroading.
A few friends of mine and I are working on a Freight Car Forwarding System. We plan to make it open source.
The inventory part is simple; it’s the switchlists that start to get complex.
We want trains that enter staging be able to be the trains that will just pull out from staging the next session. (staging for the layout we are using has return loops) When a train enters a yard, we want to have a special switchlist for the yard master that tells him which train the car will be put on next (and which track that will be.)
We want to have some cars assigned a sequence of moves. Much like a four sided waybill, but with as many moves as we want. The rest of the cars will move at random based on the car type and the amount of trains moving that session.
BTW I agree with Claymore about Access. Properly programed there is very little you can’t do with it. Far too many people give up because they tried to just look at the help files to learn the system. That is like trying to learn C++ by looking at the help files that come with the compiler.
You need to buy a book.
Judging Access 2003 based on Access V1, would be like judging Model railroading today based on the toys Lionel Produced in 1935.
Guys and gals, thanks for all the linkage/advice/feature requests. I have been following this thread, but with it being the holiday season and all, not much time to post. Keep em comin as I am still coding up a storm!
For the last few years I have been working on an MS Access system designed to automatically generate waybills or switchlists. The challenge and goal for me has been as follows:
Use the opsig database of industries - the only source I can find that even comes close to listing real shipment and receipt activity
Use the STCC code for the commodities listed in the opsig database so what is shipped can be matched with reasonable accuracy to what is received
Match each commodity code to the types of cars that can be used to carry that commodity
Generate traffic that:
Originates and terminates off layout (bridge traffic) but reasonably flows through the layout (unrealistic to have a load going from Florida to California via Duluth)
Originates off layout but terminates on the layout, or the opposite.
Originates and terminates on layout1. The traffic would be generated randomly but with weighting as established in some manner
The era would be taken into consideration
I have created enough clean data in the first three steps to start working on the next two - beyond those I am not sure where I would go next. Inventory of all rolling stock would be necessary, as well as a representation of the layout and the off layout world. I would be very interested in seeing other work in this area, I have downloaded the Dave Husman system, which is very good work - he inspired me to take it to the next step with automatically generated traffic. I would be happy to post my database if and when I have time to complete it, but that could be years from now with family demands, etc.
With a huge amount of rolling stock, I’d like a program like this. A caveat or two, if I may. Access is not available in the 2007 Office suites until you get to the levels of Office Professional, Ultimate, Professional Plus, and Enterprise. For all other levels of an Office suite you’d have to buy it separately. You’ll also need to be running XP Service Pack 2. This is on Microsoft’s site. And a bummer for us Apple Mac users - Access isn’t available for the Mac in either bundled form or elsewise.
Just FYI, you can get the access runtime from microsoft free also. It allows you to use MSAccess applications but not create or edit them. As for Mac users… yeah, well, the VBA implimentation on the Mac side of the house is just horrid. One of my jobs at work involves moving .mbd’s and .xls’s from the PC enviornment to the Mac and let me tell ya… what a pain. Microsoft seriously short changed the Mac users.
For the reasons you have mentioned and a few others (mainly that my code has moved its way into nearly 100% class objects) I have moved from VBA/access to VB6/VB2005. Most of my time has been spent grappling with a file format that is versitle and cross platform. My solution was to use a watered down XML format. I feel I have the file format at about 90% where I want/will need it to finish coding.
Here is a basic look at what I expect my app to look like(click to enlarge):
My software has affectionately become known as R.O.S.A (Railroad Operations/Simulation Assistant)
