What software are you using to operate your model railroad? Or do you? I know of Ship-It by Albion Software.
I have the car card system which is manual though I have not set it up yet. It would seem a program would be useful to keep an inventory and to print switch lists.
Is Ship-It Scheduler any good?
Is Ship-It Car Cards any good?
How about Railbase?
Are there others sources?
Thanks
I use Excel. [:)] I actually created a spreadsheet that, when printed, has 2" x 2" waybills. I use a paper cutter to cut them out.
First, I created a “master” form that had every pick-up for every industry listed and every set-out for every industry listed. I also included the most common car type in the class code. Then I have a “blank” form that I save as the current date, then copy (Ctrl-C) and paste (Ctrl-V) from the “master” form into the “blank” form. I’ve taken to printing the “From” field in different colors depending on the location to make sorting them easier. For example, all the yellow ones are from Boston, all the green ones are from Providence, etc.
It usually only takes me around 45 minutes to create, print, cut and sort the waybills, and I usually make around 100 per session (I have around 250-300 cars on my layout).
I’ve tried Ship-It! for my club’s use. I never could get it to work. I’ve also heard that it’s a giant pain to actually get it to work right, and that it really doesn’t like layouts with over 100 cars. Therefore, I have make switchlists by hand with Excel.
I would love a computer car forwarding system that wouldn’t be too complex to use but still actually work. So far, I haven’t found one.
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
For a couple of my clients, Ship It has been a disaster, even with the Scheduler. They are much happier now that I helped them switch to traditional car cards and waybills.
I use Shenware’s Waybills to manage and print waybills (no connection except as a customer), but writing them by hand works very well, too.
Byron
Model RR Blog
I worked on using BASIC a traffic generator, but I found the language has restrictions on sizes that I just couldnt get it to manage everything for the size of the club layout I was working it for. It came down to what was prototype for the general time period modeled, and computers just were not in use for railroads at that time (50’sish-60’sish) at that time they used waybill lists probably mostly hand written, or minimal computer help and carried in the caboose.
My software worked pretty well however but needed work, it could deal with interchanging between railroads, but since the club had to move it kinda upended development without a layout to test on.
My guess to try to work it is using some kind of database programming, but I have to dig and learn the programming for it. I have proggies to learn and try it tho, no probs there.
It would be really nice tho to be able to have a software that manages your industries, create a trafficing pattern and make waybills for car cards.
Part of the other problem with computer management is the on-railroad quirkiness because operators couldn’t get used to the paper work and cars get spotted wrong or they don’t turn cards and so on so the operations manager runs around and sets the cards up for the next move, or cars move without switchlist authorization and your hunting down the cars for the train,turns into a nightmare.
You really want to stick to a car card system, should a car get bad ordered and replaced just switch the cards around or adapt, whatever.
For now to make a traffic pattern sit down with your notebook papers, and write down your industries, what materials they use/make and exports or imports what not (coal mines only export, a furniture store only imports, a furniture factory would import base cut lumber, boxcars of parts like screws/nails or premade parts from a metal factory (see how interesting this all intertwines making all kinds of traffic) ) and line up the various industries whether onla
I use Railop and heartily recommend it.
It was easy and fun to set up, the documentation is very good and there is even a Yahoo group devoted to it, where many folks share information about the program.
Best of all, the programmer is very active at supporting the product and the software seems very bug-free to me-- at least the latest version, which is what I have.
I looked at using a card system originally. There was the very good article in MR concerning how to set one up. And after I started buying the sleeves and other supplies, I really started thinking about the whole thing. I not only needed several hundred cards when all was said & done but I needed the storage trays all along the fascia, thus cluttering that up even more and jutting a few more inches into my aisle space.
Then thinking about having to handle fist-fulls of cards constantly and the fact that the real roads just use printed sheets of paper-- I mean jeez-louise this is 2009! I started investigating the software alternatives. I felt most of the programs were incredibly cumbersome or looked like they had little or no support. Then I researched what people said in forums and read about the issues of some programs being “buggy”. Heck one software package that I investigated hadn’t looked like it, or the website it was sold on, had been updated in several years-- and that bothered me. Another was located outside the US and you couldn’t even order the software over the net, you had to send a check-- I rolled my eyes at that one.
I purchased the basic version of Railop and have been very pleased with its performance.
I’ve made my car cards and waybills with Excel. Here’s my How To. And the Excel files to download.
Wolfgang
A computer system that tracks inventory requires you to a) tell the computer where you want to move the cars, b) tell the computer where the cars are, c) move the cars where the computer tells you to, d) tell the computer when the cars have moved, e) tell the computer anytime you didn’t move the cars the way it wanted.
One other thing to consider is while the prototype uses lists, does the software generate a list that is like the prototype? The prototype uses many different types of “lists” , that are formatted differently, while software programs generally generate one format of list that has to do the work of all the types of prototype lists.
The biggest difference from the prototype is in how the lists work in yards. On the prototype, the list shows the cars in a track in the order they stand and you switch them to where they go. On some list systems the list shows you what cars go on a train and then you have to go find them in the yard. Some list systems can give you a list or an inbound train showing the cars’ outbound connection that can be used as a switchlist, others do not.
The other thing that you have to be able to accept is that the computer is going to select the destinations for the cars and in many cases assign them to the train. So the success is based on how well you can define that for the computer. You also have to accept the logic the computer uses to assign the destinations to the cars. You have to follow the software’s rules.
The benefit of car cards is the flexibility. You can adjust the “rules” to suit your operation. Most car card operations are similar but they often have little quirks built into them to account for the owner’s specific situation.
Dave, you make some good points about many of the software programs being extremely “rigid” in how they handle switch lists and how cumbersome their “auto-build” features could be. And there is a learning curve when it comes to figuring out the “logic” the software uses to select which cars are used to build a train. In Railop there is some flexibility in how switch lists are created and displayed/printed. And I found myself relying on the manual-build portion of the program to create trains until I had more of a comfort level when it came to using the auto-build settings-- Or I just let auto-build create the train and then I use manual-build to “tweak” the consist.
On the Yahoo Group “Car Cards” or something like that, Dave Husmann has a nice Access Database set up for free download. I have it here at home and am just learning how to use it (don’t have much free time). Anyway, it is simple to add all of the data (car info) etc into it. There are menus for setitng up towns, stations, industries etc. Worth the free download.
Dan
I’ll second the vote for RailOp. I use it and Iove it.
Call me a contrarian. I use wetware to operate, using a car card and waybill system that’s a somewhat more detailed descendant of Doug Smith’s system first published in 1960.
The car cards are made, manually, from standard 3 x 5 cards in several colors (denoting house cars, open-tops, coal carriers and company service - including locomotives, passenger stock and full brake vans) when the cars go into service, and remain with their cars forever after - I have some dating from the 1960s.
Waybills are (usually) two-sided, routing an empty for loading, then routing the load to its destination. Either loading point or destination is usually somewhere in ‘the rest of Japan,’ aka hidden staging. Most of those waybills were created in the early 70s, long before I had a layout suitable for the operations I now strive for.
When a loaded car becomes empty, the wetware cuts in. I take the next day’s requirement for empties off the front of the 30 day supply of waybills, add in whatever couldn’t be handled ‘today’ and allocate them to suitable cars. If there’s an empty in down staging that is supposed to be loaded in up staging, that car will pass from one to the other, probably with no switching enroute, before returning as a load. If there’s an unassigned empty in down staging suitable for a load originating in down staging, it suddenly becomes a load, to be switched out at Tomikawa and forwarded from there to its destination. Any ‘leftover’ waybills are stuck in a slot marked Awaiting Assignment.
If there are too many ‘leftovers,’ or the ‘leftover’ pattern indicates an imbalance between available and required cars, it’s time to adjust the rolling stock fleet to compensate. That’s why I keep trains in cassettes and have a casette dock in down staging.
In my little world, the humans make the decisions for the computers, no
Sounds like a lot of work. I did a google search using the phrase: model railroad operating software
There were a number of links for not only operating software plus other types of software and other products. I did download the demo of Railop. I also was able to download a free program though the author makes a point of saying it will not do everything.
You wrote:
“Heck one software package that I investigated hadn’t looked like it, or the website it was sold on, had been updated in several years-- and that bothered me.”
I think I know the one you mean. Copyright date on the site and the product are the early 2000s.
It doesn’t matter what you pay for something, you have to feel you will get your monies worth and the product is going to work as advertised. Purchasing from someone in another state site unseen should not be a gamble.
This is from someone who writes and sells software on the Internet to make a living. I have had potential customers call me just to see if someone would answer the phone.
Thanks for you input…
You are abs olutely correct. In a nut shell you have defined what a program to move railcars must do, in any scale,even in one foot scale.
To develop an application to route freight like the prototype would require the developer to design a program equal to the applications being used by Norfolk Southern, CSX or any of the real carriers. My profession is programming and my hobby is model trains, HO scale.
But just because I like something does not make me give me the knowledge to design, develop and test a model railroad operations program. There are to many variables: era being a big one. The needs of a 1930 RR is much different than a 1960 RR or a 1990. One program would have to have dozens, if not hundreds of variables to define the users RR needs.
I was thinking about developing am operating program, or partnering with an existing company or maybe purchasing an existing company. But the little research I have done in the last few days has shown me that I do not want to add that much to my current developement schedule.
I do not think I need a scheduling program for my little railroad, the car cards will do the job. What I will do is write a database to keep an inventory, wish list, and print labels with the cars photograph to use on the car cards, Just to keep everything neat.
I thank everyone for their comments. If you would like to suggest what data needs to be included in an inventory database let me know, If you are interested in getti