Have you heard anything about "Shipit" by Albion software

[RexHea]

I want to get my layout setup for structured operations and have been looking for a software for setting up switchlists. I am looking at Shipit by Albion as being what I need. I have some op friends looking the website over, but was wondering if you have used or know anything about this.

[jbaakko]

If you find out, I'd like to know myself.

[RexHea]

Well, not much response so far. One thing that I have learned is there seems to be a lot of pro/cons with "Shipit". Mostly cons based on the complexity of setting up the program for your layout. A search at trains.com and Yahoo about Shipit resulted in many negative posts about it.

I am now looking at "Railop" and seeing if it shows promise. Anyone used it?

[RexHea]

I got together today with Carey and we checked out the demo for RailOp thoroughly. Carey has many years in MR operations and as an MR Dispatcher so his opinion was greatly appreciated. He really liked it's complete and versatile content and ease in entering data. With my limited knowledge, I liked it as well and found it easy to understand and to move around in the program. Of course the real test will surface after i get the program installed and in operation, but it is promising enough that I ordered it. http://www.railop.com/

[jbaakko]

Sounds good Rex.

[grande man]

Rex, RailOp sounds great. I'm wondering how it would work for us. Two immediate questions I have are:

1/ Since we run trains between staging yards, how can we prevent overloading an individual yard (three yards, 4 tracks each) at some point during the ops session? In hand writing ops sessions, this has to be carefully accounted for to get the maximum traffic density on the mainline during the session.

2/ Can the program control train length? Our RR is small. Each staging yard track is only 6 feet long. :( That equates to roughly two locos, seven cars, and a caboose. Of course, when trains are "on scene" they can pick up cars for longer trains as long as they drop some off before going back into staging.

[RexHea]

Hi Eric! Just to put the emphasis more on my progress/results with RailOp, I will start another thread today that is more directed to it. Please look for it and your questions/answers under this same area of topics. Thanks.