lmackattack
old school
Our club held its first operations session using JMRI operations. It went so smooth I thought I should share how great this system is when set up in just its basic form.
Our Past operations sessions I just made up moves and switch lists in Microsoft Excell. I handed a sheet to each operator and away they went. At the end of the night cars ended in the correct location and all was good. The down fall of this was that before every session it took me a full day + worth of planning. and making notes of car data etc... With JMRI we do all the hard work of first and let the computer keep track from there.
Myself and another club member did all the JMRI data entry for basic freight car info , locations, industry names , track lengths ,etc...
That took about. 2 days work for the 200 club cars,13 locations and 35 industries.
Once all this info was added into the computer were basically done. We let The computer keep track of everything from there.
My fellow club member added in about 10 jobs for the 10 different operators that participated. We hand them their job and they head out to do what ever the computer makes up. When a operator finishes his job he comes back to us and on the computer we click "terminate". The computer then releases those cars and puts them back up for use for when ever the computer decides to call on them again..if a operator wants to do another job we simply have the computer create a new job with new cars.
We did about 20 jobs last week and ran thru about all the cars out on the layout. each operator did 2 different jobs moving different cars. It was very simple,smooth and easy to understand.Even operators with limited understading of how a railroad works were able to under stand the job details.
The best part (for me) is at the end of the session we print off a car location list. this shows where the cars should have ended up at the end of the session.
Being a club that has club cars out on the layout for use we know these cars will get moved around the 2 or 3 weeks between sessions. With this sheet of paper we can now set up for our next session in about an hour. we simply have to locate the cars and put them where the computer says it should be and that will only take about an hour with 2 people.
It really was a easy set up , I suggest you look into this if you dont want to mess with the way bill or car card systems.
Trent
Our Past operations sessions I just made up moves and switch lists in Microsoft Excell. I handed a sheet to each operator and away they went. At the end of the night cars ended in the correct location and all was good. The down fall of this was that before every session it took me a full day + worth of planning. and making notes of car data etc... With JMRI we do all the hard work of first and let the computer keep track from there.
Myself and another club member did all the JMRI data entry for basic freight car info , locations, industry names , track lengths ,etc...
That took about. 2 days work for the 200 club cars,13 locations and 35 industries.
Once all this info was added into the computer were basically done. We let The computer keep track of everything from there.
My fellow club member added in about 10 jobs for the 10 different operators that participated. We hand them their job and they head out to do what ever the computer makes up. When a operator finishes his job he comes back to us and on the computer we click "terminate". The computer then releases those cars and puts them back up for use for when ever the computer decides to call on them again..if a operator wants to do another job we simply have the computer create a new job with new cars.
We did about 20 jobs last week and ran thru about all the cars out on the layout. each operator did 2 different jobs moving different cars. It was very simple,smooth and easy to understand.Even operators with limited understading of how a railroad works were able to under stand the job details.
The best part (for me) is at the end of the session we print off a car location list. this shows where the cars should have ended up at the end of the session.
Being a club that has club cars out on the layout for use we know these cars will get moved around the 2 or 3 weeks between sessions. With this sheet of paper we can now set up for our next session in about an hour. we simply have to locate the cars and put them where the computer says it should be and that will only take about an hour with 2 people.
It really was a easy set up , I suggest you look into this if you dont want to mess with the way bill or car card systems.
Trent
