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Dale's Depot

Daley Train Log
Page 112

Wednesday November 10, 2010 Lethbridge, Alberta

9:30 am

The first step this morning is to make a note of the sequence of steps I have been following when initializing my use of Deluxe Balancer with Ship It!.

• Open Parallels.
  
  
• Open Windows xp.
  
  
• Start -> My Computer -> Local Disk (c:) -> shipit folder -> Ship It!.
  
  
  • Update database.
    
    
  • Close Ship It!.
    
    
  • Open viewer (aka Deluxe Toolbox 2.0b).
    
    
  • Balancing menu.
    
    
    • Set durations to 1.
    • Select "clear NS, NC".
    • Select "Set NS, NC values".
    • Don't check "save Balancer reports in Main Ship It folder".
    • Press "Uncheck Limit All Siding Lengths".
      
      
  • Select "Export and Balance".
    • Type n and 0.
      
      
  • Close Deluxe Toolbox 2.0b.
    
    
  • Open primary folder.
    
    
  • Open Balancer output files folder.
    
    
  • Repeat all steps until report is empty.

9:30 am

I also need to make better notes of why I make various settings.

At the moment I am aware of two major problems.

1. Many of my Industries have an imbalance between "Current Amounts + Empties" and "Amounts + Empties". The rationale for this does not appear to be important but the Balancer program requires that these two numbers be the same or it stops running.
   
   
2. Some of my trains do not appear to be "found". I am not sure what is going on with this but I need to correct this.

First, lets look at the "Amounts + Empties" problem.

This is relatively easy to fix. One can adjust either the Industries or the Shippers/Consignees windows

The problem of a train not being found seems to have been caused by checking a box that said Do Not Generate Moves

12:30 PM

I think I now have a working system again. All trains appear to be moving and the two unit trains are holding together. The information as to whether the cars are empty or loaded on the passenger and unit trains seems suspect but I can ignore this so long as the cars all remain on the train.

Now to print out the starting positions and the switching lists.

3:00 PM

I have placed all of the cars on the layout for a new Session 1 set of activities. When I finished doing this I noticed that two cars (CN 507639 boxcar and CN 665489 flat car) were not listed even though a check of the Ship It! database showed both cars as being "active". Possibly the flat car was omitted as it was not identified with any products, but that doesn't explain why the boxcar was omitted. Weird.