I have about 100 coal cars and 6 coal mines on my layout. Is there a program that would let me enter all the coal car reporting numbers and have the program randomly pick cars to spot at the different coal mines?
thanks
Jim
Absolutely! Check out the open source JMRI program for that and much much more.
However, you can tailor it to to as simple or as complex an operation as you desire. There is a bit of a learning curve, but the software is the best bargain on the entire internet hobby world…aboslutely free (though donations could be made) and a full support group at Yahoo.
Thousands of model railroaders would not use anything else, including me.
I run 142 locomotives and 326 cars around 8 locations and 20 plus yards…plus real staging yard and virtual staging yard which represents all the rolling stock stored in drawers waiting to be called up randomly (really by useage statistics). Beyond that, a user can create yards which request loads for loading and pickup so that the program works very intricately to create realism…though often is complex so that many users simply run the railroad as you have suggested, in a simple call up by random, or useage number…with the the ability to add an incredible number of train building constraints/requirements…from road request, to rolling stock age, type, present load and on and on.
You will be able learn from users far more expert than I at the JMRI users group.
I’m not the most computer literate person around, this looks pretty complex. Anything simpler out there?
jim
Mark 2 Pencil and sheet(s) of paper.
Anything on a computer (or heck, even the paper version) will be “complex” by the simple fact that you’re asking for something that is in itself complex…
since you’re spotting empties, i don’t think it matters which particular empty car is spotted at a mine. But once loaded, the destinations of the filled cars would matter. This could easily be done using cards.
again i think this is different for other cars where it is not obvious which are empty and which are not. An empty boxcar would need to be spotted just as much as a loaded boxcar.
So basically there is no “simple” program that would allow me to enter a certain number of car reporting marks and a certain number of industries (coal mines) and have the program/computer just randomly select cars and send a certain number to each individual industry? I use cards for other industries but because there are so many coal cars the card system is somewhat cumbersome. An automated switchlist for the coal cars would be much easier for me. At this point all I really want is to have a bunch of cars in the yard and have a list telling me which cars go which mine. I can make the list up manually using a spread sheet but it’s a hassle. My layout is pretty simple and I was hoping to add a little interest by having to switch the cars into blocks destimed for each mine. I didn’t realize that this relatively simple task was going to be so complex.
Sounds kind of like a “make work” project to me. Coal was almost always loaded in system cars and before the low sulphur western coal became popular, coal didn’t often travel very far.
Back in the late 60’s I worked on the Big Four Cairo division and 95% of our traffic was coal. We served about 4 or 5 mines out of Harrisburg Il and humped around 450 loaded cars each day. Inbound trains of empties were never switched out. We just grabbed however many we needed that were first out and took them to the mine.
If a foreign empty got mixed in, it went to the mine anyway. The thinking was, if it was supposed to go home, it should have been sent there when it was made empty. Now we are paying the per diem charges, we may as well make some money off it.
Charlie
Ok ,not to belabour this, but JMRI does as much or as little as a person wants.
It is true that you need to use a computer to do it. But what you are asking is just what I do basically.
First you would in stall the program, then enter the cars into the data base. Not hard.
Then you would create locations (which would be your 8 mines) and enter the length of the spurs on each. You can also designate only certain car types permitted, or leave as a default.
Then you create a train, on the the train page. You do not even have to choose a locomotive.
You create a route (which can be as simple as entering the starting point or yard on which the cars sit, and then the single spur to which you want them delivered). It will ask you how many cars you want delivered or picked up. The length of the spurs will govern overall length or train weight. This route is designated for the train.
You press the buttong to preview the train and the program will run through your entire roster selecting what you wished, including a random by useage selection. It will then offer a switch list for printing. The switch list can have just the one mine or the number of cars you want delivered to all 8 mines in order.
Like most things with JMRI you will get it down pat after a few train builds.
I am 65…I can do it even though I forget what I ate for breakfast.
You could probably easilly build an application using MS Access or Excel. As somebody pointed out for empty distribution, you could just as easily do it by car count.
Ahhhh, the complexity creeps in.
You don’t want a program to just assign empties to mines, you also want a program that can sort them by some criteria and produce a coherent switch list. The reason the program is so “complex” (and JMRI is a lower middle of the road on complexity) is that most people really want a few more features than the “simple” original concept. You probably will at some point want to know whether your cars are twins, quads or triples or whether they are rotary gons or bottom dumps. Then you might want to know what color they are so you can spot them more easily. Then wouldn’t it be cool if you could tie in the demand for loads to drive how many empties you spot. By then you end up with the complexity of JMRI.
Blocks, there’s another data
I’m trying to make a little work. Just thought it would be interesting to take a “pool” of empty cars and have something (other than me doing it manually) tell me which cars to take to which mines. All the outbound loads will wind up at the same place (off layout staging yard).
Jim
See, that’s part of your problem. This isn’t a complicated program, basically a random number generator sitting a database file. It’s the kind of thing I did when I learned to program 30 years ago. Most software companies think this is the kind of small project that people do for themselves, and wouldn’t bother, except (as with JMRI) as a feature of a much more complex program (this took one of their programmers half an hour to push out).
You could do it in Visual Basic and / or Excel, if you wanted to roll upnyour sleeves and learn a bit of programming.
jeep35
As other have wrote
The mine doesn’t care whose cars they get and from where.
Once the cars are filled - they are sent as a block.
This was true even in the Steam days. The cars came out of the large mines to a Marshling Yard and then blocked for individual customers but the blocks might have only been 2 or 3 cars.
In the 75 to 85 time period that my layout depicts the cars (in real life) were usually loaded in 25 to 50 car blocks and then the Coal Blocks would be built into 100 car trains - they went South (from Western PA) to Nofolk VA as my Sister would see the LEF&C Hopper Blocks running through Williamsburg VA as she had to wait at the road crossings for them to pass!
So the coal could be run long distances!
So it depends on the Era you are depicting on your layout.
BOB H - Clarion, PA
To be completely honest and not to “rub” anybody the wrong way I’m just looking for the “easy way out” on this project. I’m not really interested in learning programming or joining Yahoo discussion groups to figure out how to use software. I’m willing to devote a certain amount of time and energy to accomplish a task, but frankly something like this has to be really simple and fun or else I tend to devote that time and energy to something else. I’m not much into operation anyway and was hoping that this could give me something to do. I did download the program that was suggested and entered the necessary data all I’m looking for now is a button that says “Go” 'lland the program does the rest. Can’t seem to find that button! I do thank everyone for their help. I’ll fool aroundwith this idea a bit longer and see if I can accomplish anything.
Jim
Jim – let’s be honest here – MRR is a niche market, so you’re not necessarily gonna get an “off-the-shelf” product for what you want to do.
Same way that you won’t get an off-the-shelf product to “throw those turnouts over there, from over here, and light up the control board”.
Right now, you have all the pieces you need to do what you want (JMRI, program it yourself, do it on paper, or other solution) – kinda like having a box full of LEDS and wires and switches and resistors and whatever else you need to throw those turnouts.
Now it’s up to you to “wire all the things together” for your train randomizer.
JMRI might be a bit overkill for you right now (kinda like putting together a diode matrix for controlling 3 independant turnouts) … but then again, if you use DCC, you might find that it has other features you like / can use (assuming you get an interface card for your DCC system).
Writing your own would be a bit involved, and (as with many aspects of MRR) would probably necessitate getting a bulk of information from the internet (or, buying a couple of books).
And then, there’s always the low-tech option of “put a list into excel … print it out … and then pick cars out of a hat until you have as many trains built as you need”.
I might (MIGHT!!) be able to help you out with something PC-based if you want a program to just do it all for you … send me a PM or email and we can chat.
If I may suggest, you may be working the wrong problem. As Charle9 said:
The mine manager just needs an empty car of suitable type (eg. 50 ton, 70 ton or 100 ton etc.), he doesn’t care what railroad owns the car or what car number.
However, once the car is loaded, then it needs to be “blocked” (or classified) to go to a specific destination. So if you want to model how a real railroad operates, the problem a model railroad ‘superintendent’ has is to figure out how to assign “destinations” to loaded cars so they can be ‘blocked’ accordingly. On many model railroads, most of the “destinations” are ‘virtual’ off line destinations (a staging yard for example). If you only have a yard at one end of your model railroad, start with a yard full of emptys, distribute them to the mines, take the loads to the yard and sort them into various destination blocks and the operating session ends. Between sessions remove the ‘loads’ from the cars in the yard, put loads in the cars at the mines.
Now the assignment of loaded cars is relatively simple. For example: the red mine ships 4 cars per day to city1 and 2 cars per day to city2, and the blue mine ships 2 cars per day to city2, etc. What process you use to record and track these ‘car number-destination’ pairs can be simple or complex: write it out on a sheet of paper, use car cards, use destination “tacks” (chips or colored post-it notes), use a spread sheet or use a computer program.
Grinnell
Well guys, thanks for the help and imput. You’ve actually answered my original question. " Is there a simple program that will randomally sort cars for me", and the short answer is no. So I can either drop the idea and move on to something else or I can invest time in trying to figure out how to make it work. For the record, I’m not particularly concerned how prototype railroads assign cars to mines, as several people have explained how it is done in the real world. I simply wanted to make my little corner of the MRR world a bit more interesting for myself. Again I wish to thank all those who responded with ideas and suggestions, it has given me something to think about.
Jim
Andy Sperandeo had an article not long ago discussing car routing. you may be interested in some of recent articles on car routing
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Ah, Jim. No no no. I am sorry I must butt in again. I am a former secondary school instructor and can’t let misapprehensions get in the way of your success! As part of my job I often had to write long form instructions for using computers in school library and lab. What you are seeing on the JMRI page is the unfortunate fact that an incredible number of steps need to be written for the simplest procedures. And the fact that JMRI does so much, you also need to see when to ignore parts of what you are reading. [C’mon forum, is no one else a JMRI fan? I can’t believe that writing one’s own excel program would be the way…that is really reinventing the wheel!]
If I could sit beside you and a computer at your layout, we could have JMRI doing what you want in 15 minutes or less.
Don’t give up. Read through the JMRI pages on the Operations module and keep in mind that you do not have to worry about 90% of what you read…but you will have to discover the basics. And yes, there are places where help is very easily had.
These are some of the only pages you will have to work with. Your system will be especially easy if you do not wish to enter locomotives for your trains. The whole random allocation will still proceed as you wish, and switch lists generated.
ONE OF MY LOCATIONS
DETAILS OF THE SPUR AT THAT LOCATION
THIS IS THE
Totally agree with you on this.
@jeep35 – unfortunately for right now, the page is down, so I can’t grab a copy of JMRI to play with.
However, the “hard part” for this is probably nothing more than the “add details for 100 cars” bit – once you have that part done, it should give you the “create trains now!” button, and away you go! I mean, it’s not like you have to mess around with learning all the decoder programming stuff (unless you want to!).
Suggest that you take a step back and look at JMRI like your DCC system (or rather the decoders). Sure it has all these cool features (BEMF control, simulated momentum, consisting, turnout control, transponding / CTC signalling, programmable routes, and probably a hundred other things) … but let’s be honest here, you only REALLY need to know “connect this terminal on the command station to red, that one to white … set it to programming mode … program this loco to address 1234 … switch back to “run” … call it up, and then await the highball”. You don’t need to mess with the speed tables, or BEMF, or consisting, or any of that before a loco will run …
Yup, I’m a JMRI fan. Been using it for 10+ years now, and wouldn’t be without it.
I’ve mostly used it for “layout command and control stuff” like DCC decoder programming, dispatcher panels, wireless throttles (with Engine Driver), etc, and I’ve recently began to set up Ops for my layout as well.
But before I go any further, I have to state that JMRI Ops is a completely separate part of JMRI, and you don’t need to use DCC or any other control system to use any/all of Ops. You really don’t even need to have a layout!
Having said that, I agree with Cisco that setting up the OP’s mine ops could be done in short order. Maybe not in 15 minutes or less, but certainly not more than a couple hours. Probably entering the 100 individual cars would be the longest single task. And if you already have them in a spreadsheet or CSV file, JMRI’s ability to import that list would speed up even that!
Ops is extremely flexible and powerful, but at the same time it’s easy to set up a simple scheme to get started. That’s what I did - I set up a few locations, added a few cars, built a couple routes, and scheduled a couple trains. Then I ran them “on paper” to make sure they did what I wanted them to, and played around with some of the settings.
And as far as the JMRI Yahoo! group, it’s great! The folks who actually write the code hang out there, so if you have a question or problem you can get a authoritive answer or fix. I can personally attest to that. There was a part of Ops that didn’t work the way I would have expected, so I posted the question on the Yahoo! group. That lead to a very constructive off-list email exchange with the guy who writes the Ops code. He agreed the beh