I purchased this software about a year and a half ago but am just now getting around to doing operations. I have configured the various databases, divisions, towns, industries, etc.
I have encountered a frustrating problem that I cannot work out despite having gone through the manual. When I run the Shipper/Consignee diagnostics, it gives me the message Train not Found for cars routed to my hidden staging yards. I have tried numerous configuations, making the whole layout one division as well as making the staging yards seperate divisions with interchanges and car routing defined. All my trains are defined as General Freight and I have double checked the schedules to make sure I have trains running from the town with my main yard to the staging towns. Nothing I’ve tried has eliminated this message. I tried accessing Albion Support but that website is even more cumbersome to use then the manual.
I was hoping someone who is experienced with Albion Ship-it might have some suggestions for working out this problem. I’ve double and triple checked my database entries and can’t find what I might be overlooking.
One of our club members has been pulling his hair out trying to figure out Ship-It – the manual seems to have not been updated the last time changes were made to the software, and the publisher has been of little help.
I bought ‘Ship It’ a number of years ago - Very complex set up, and trying to balance the traffic was a real issue. Also, it seemed to want to work every industry each time. I finally went back to the old reliable CC&WB system. I dumped the whole package at a local train flea market for a fraction of the initial cost.
I still use CC&WB, but am looking at the JMRI Operations(free) for the future.
I did the demo of Ship-it years ago. I had it working except for the “balancing” issue. A third part vendor was selling another program to balance the traffic and that was all I needed to walk away.
Try to search for a Yahoo Group for Ship-it, that group had a lot of info.
Well at least it makes me feel a little better knowing I’m not the only one who finds this program difficult to work with. At one point, I had gotten a clean diagnostics report but I ran into the balancing problem. I got an abundance of cars getting routed to a staging yard and getting stranded there. In trying to reconfigure to work that problem out, I ran into the inexplicable Train not Found problem.
I like the concept of the program and if I could get it running properly, it would be just what I am looking for. Running an operating session with computer generated switch lists would be ideal for me. This program looks like it might work well for a small, simple layout, but I have a large layout with three towns to be switched, dozens of industries, two simulated interchanges and staging yards at each end, both representing several towns and branches.
It may well be that the tried and true CC&WB method is where I will end up but knowing myself, I have doubts about how well it would work for me. I’m a lone wolf and somewhat disorganized. I can just imagine myself misplacing stacks of cards, getting cards in the wrong trains, etc. and ending up getting even more frustrating.
I’m thinking of going to a more freelanced approach. By that I would run a schedule of trains from my staging yards onto the modeled portion of the layout. For through trains I would run them into my main yard, arbitrarily cutoff however many cars I wanted to switch and then decide which industries to send them to. Then the through train would pick up a cut of cars and continue to the opposite staging yard. Trains terminating in my main yard would be broken up with some cars again being arbitrarily sent to the local industries and the rest being assigned to other trains. That would allow me to do some switching without a lot of paperwork or card handling. I’d like to do some operations but I don’t want it to seem like work.
Following up. Here’s what I have discovered (I think). It appears that once routing attributes are added to the consignee records, even if they are later blanked out, the Ship-it system keeps these routing attributes in its memory bank and tries to execute them. I discovered this when I changed the shippers and consignees to a single division with a single train picking them up. When I ran diagnostics, I discovered it was still trying to route the cars through the interchange even though the routing had been removed from the consignee record. I deleted all my shipper and cosignee records (a real PITA) and readded just a few to test it out. The diagnoistics came out clean. I’m going to continue to add just a few at a time to see if I keep getting a clean diagnositic. If that works, I’ll work on the balancing problem.
I’ve just about given up on this program. Using just a few shippers and consignees to test out the routing capability, I am unable to find a way to route a load from a shipper in my main town to a consignee in my staging yard. Trying first to do it as simply as possible and then trying every trick imaginable, the best I’ve been able to do is route the load from the shipper to the interchange yard where it just sits, despite having a train well defined traveling from the town where the interchange yard is located to the staging yard. The routing has been clearly defined in the consignee record.
In addition, there are several glaring bugs in the program. When trying to run routing diagnostics for a specific car, rather than give you the diagnostics for the selected car, it gives you diagnostics for a randomly selected car on the roster. Speaking as a former mainframe programmer, this product was obviously not adequately tested before being sold. In short, it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. It’s a good concept poorly executed.
A previous poster indicated he unloaded his at a flea market at a fraction of its cost. Since I downloaded the software, I don’t even have that option. What I have is a very expensive rolling stock and locomotive inventory program because that is about the only thing in this software that works.
I had forgoten about the database issue’s with that program. It was extreamly frustrating to find out that deleting anything, even mistakes gave the database heartburn. It was a mess.
That said have you looked into the operations program built into JMRI ? Just last week I stet up my railroad to give it a try. It seems to work well and can be simple or complicated depending on how you set it up.
For instance you can set up the railroad with simple siding that accepts certain types of cars and completlty ignore the contents of said cars.
On the other hand you can delve deeper and require specific car loads, etc.
I choose to keep it simple, 100 foot siding, accepts boxcars and gondolas… End of story, no consinee, shipper, bla bla bla… I can add that stuff later.
Since the program is open source and has evolved over time be carfull with online tutorial video’s and blogs… some of the info is out of date.
Just downloaded it today. I was a little overwhelmed when I saw it was far more than just a switchlist generator and had a little trouble finding what I was looking for at first but I’m managing to work my way around it. Haven’t had a chance to start entering any data. I’m going to start small with this one and just enter a few towns, industries, trains, etc. at first until I get comfortable with it and see the results I’m looking for. That was probably my biggest mistake with Ship-it. I entered my whole layout into the database and then tried to work through its idiosyncracies and it was a mess. I might have discovered how cumbersome it was early on and not wasted as much time with it.
You should be able to view the Industry Status report (Print menu). This report will show each industry and all cars located at each industry. The last column should be the next and last destination. You should use this report to schedule trains according to the destinations on this report. You can not make cars move in shipit. The program decides which cars move and this information will always be available on the industry status report after each session. If you use it to schedule trains, your overall car movements will take place. Hope this helps.
As I said to other user, the Industry Status report (print menu) is the most important report in Ship it. You should review this report which lists each industry on your layout. It should show each car and what it’s status is. The last column on this report is the next/last destination. If this destination column is filled in by the computer for any car, no other car movement will be allowed. In order to create car movement, you must use this field to schedule a train to visit the town/industry where the car is currently located and that train must travel to the town/industry that is located on the next/final destination column. I am not sure what the “train not found” message is all about, except the system may be telling you that based on the industry status report, you do have cars at shippers that the system wants to ship to cosignees, however, you have not scheduled a train to visit the town where the car are and to the town where the consignee is located. You can not simply create shipper and consignee records, you must monitor your industry status report for each town/industry after each session generation. It is the next/last destination field that determines how your trains should be scheduled. Hope this helps.