Thursday November 20, 2008 Lethbridge, Alberta
5:20 am
It is early morning. The coffee is almost ready. I am going to have another try at understanding the basic parameters for a successful Ship It! operation.
I am going to take this very slowly and try to document each step.
I begin by starting a fresh session. This appears to work.
- The date is July 15, 1950 and the report is for Session 0. Hopper cars MM 0002 and MM 0003 are at Mercoal Mines and MM 0001 is at the Jasper Coaling Tower.
Excellent.
- I then looked at the Locomotive/Caboose Locations.
- Train 500 with loco CN 6700 leaves the Coaldale Yard at 12:00 am
- Train 501 with loco CN 6700 leaves the Jasper Yard at 12:00 am
- Train 501 with loco CN 6700 arrives in the Coaldale Yard at 2:00 PM
- Train 500 with loco CN 6700 arrives in the Jasper Yard at 6:00 PM
Not good. This makes no sense. The same loco is running two trains in different locations at the same time. That suggests that there is a problem with my initial settings for the schedule.
- Train 500 is a Local, general freight, max cars 10, Eastbound. It will convert to Train 501 in staging at the Jasper Yard. Session generation is on the even cycles.
- Train 501 is a Local, general freight, max cars 10, Westbound. It will convert to Train 500 in staging at the Jasper Coaling Tower. Session generation is on the odd cycles.
There is a problem with this setup. Train 501 should convert to Train 500 in the Coaldale Yard. I have changed this.
Rather than try to figure out my initial schedules for the two trains, I am going to simply create a new schedule.
Train 500 will arrive in Coaldale at 6 am, Prairie Dog at 9 am, Black Diamond at 10 am, and Jasper at 2 PM. Train 501 will arrive in Jasper at 2 PM, Black Diamond at 5 PM, Prairie Dog at 9 PM and Coaldale at 10 PM.
Let's try this. Start a fresh session. This appears to work, again.
- The date is July 15, 1950 and the report is for Session 0. Hopper cars MM 0002 and MM 0003 are at Mercoal Mines and MM 0001 is at the Jasper Coaling Tower. Good.
- I have looked at the Locomotive/Caboose location report and it seems okay.
Session 1 reports
- The date is July 16, 1950. All three hopper cars are now in the Coaldale Yard. I am a little surprised by this. I would have thought that Train 500 would pick up some coal at Black Diamond and deliver it to Jasper, and that Train 501 would pick up the empty at the Jasper Coaling Tower and drop it off at Mercoal Mines. Let's see what happens when I run a second session.
Session 2 reports
- The date is July 17, 1950. One hopper is in the Coaldale Yard and the other two are in the Jasper Yard. Looking at the Train Length report it seems that Train 500 took the two loaded cars from Coaldale to Jasper and Train 501 returned with one empty hopper car.
- I am beginning to realize that there is a skill to reading these reports. Let's just try a couple of more sessions and get a sense for the movements.
Session 3 failed to execute! No consignee/shipper matches were found.The Orphan Industry report is empty suggesting that the problem is with the schedule. At the moment I am confused. I am not sure what the problem is.
I have tried changing the session parameter to "All" for both trains. This seemed to result in Train 500 picking up 2 loaded hopper cars from Mercoal Mines and dropping them off at the Jasper Coaling Tower. Train 501 picked up 1 empty hopper car from the Jasper Coaling Tower but didn't seem to know what to do with it.
I feel that the operation is much better than when I began. Cars are now moving, and they are being loaded and unloaded, but there is still something fundamentally wrong.
All 3 hopper cars end up in the Coaldale yard empty after 2 or 3 sessions. Why do the empties not then go to Mercoal Mines to be loaded again? I seem to be so close. What am I missing?
4:00 PM
I will continue to experiment. I want to add one more consignee for the coal, this one in the town of Prairie Dog.
I now have an industry called Dusty Coal and Cartage that is a consignee for coal from Mercoal Mines. It requires a car load every 3 days.
Now to start a fresh session. This appears to work, again.
- The date is August 17, 1950 and the report is for Session 0. All three Hopper cars - MM 0001, MM 0002 and MM 0003 are at Mercoal Mines. Good.
Session 1 reports
- The date is August 18, 1950. Hopper car MM 0001 is now at Dusty Coal and Cartage in Prairie Dog. Cars MM 0002 and MM 0003 are now in the Coaldale Yard. Okay.
Session 2 reports
- The date is August 19, 1950. Hopper car MM 0001 is now at Mercoal Mines. Cars MM 0002 and MM 0003 have remained in the Coaldale Yard.
Session 3 reports
- It worked. That is a start. The date is August 20, 1950. All three hopper cars are now in the Coaldale Yard. Why are MM 0002 and MM 0003 stuck in this yard?
Session 4 reports
- Nope. This session failed as there was no match between shipper and consignee.
Nonetheless, this is encouraging. The program seems to be working, and I think I am setting up the parameters properly. But there is some problem related to "stuck cars" that I need to explore.
- The Empty Request report for session 5 indicates that Mercoal Mines wants 3 empties. The Load Request report for session 5 indicates the the Jasper Coaling Tower wants 2 loads of coal and Dusty Coal and Cartage wants 1 load of coal. This seems okay.
- Locomotive CN 6700 is in the Coaldale Yard at the end of session 4. Good.
Session 5 reports
- Nope. This session failed as there was no match between shipper and consignee. Hmmm.
I am trying to match chapter 15 Tips, Suggestions, Diagnostics of the Ship It! manual with my present situation:
- 1. ... use a single train type for everything. Yes. I only have general freight as a type. But I did notice that Through freight was also listed as a potential type even though both of my trains were specified as general freight. I have deleted through freight as a type. Now to see if it makes any difference. Nope.
- Set all of your industries pickup/setout direction fields to “any” when starting out. Yes.
- I just noticed a parameter in the File -> Options menu called "Force Usage of Empties at Industry". I will try this, even though the empties are not at Mercoal Mines. Nope. It didn't help.
- Do you have cars of the correct AAR type (those associated with your industries) available? Yes.
- Are you using a single division? Yes.
- Your trains origination point should be the first stop on the schedule. Yes.
- Arrival times must be filled out for every stop on the schedule. Yes.
- The “Do Not Convert” option in the Consignee Update window should not be used for every industry (use sparingly). I don't use this option for either consignee.
- When starting out, keep all of your duration and frequency times at or under 24 hours. Yes. Mine are either 1 or 2. My frequency for Dusty Coal and Cartage was set at 72 hours. I have changed this to 24. Now to try this. No change.
- Check your train capacity. If any trains are set to capacity of one, they will only be able to move one car. Both trains are set to 10.
- A car must be able to get from its shipper to its consignee on one train, unless you have divisions/interchanges correctly
set up, or you are using “do not convert” (see warning in line 6). It is very important to understand this. Your trains should visit all towns. If a shipment cannot get from the shipper to the receiver on one train, it will not be delivered.
- Turn on Last Pass (Random Generation). This setting is found in the Options Window, Tab 5.
- Option 2 of Files -> Options: Send Empties Home From Staging. This was not selected. I have just turned it on. Now to try this. No change.
- Option 3 of Files -> Options: Enable stuck car processing. I have just selected this. Now to try this. Nope.
Yes! I tried changing the Default Staging Yard for both trains to the Coaldale Yard. Now it works!!
I will watch this for awhile before adding a few more cars and industries. But I now feel I have this program understood a basic level.
It is amazing what one small change to one parameter can make. But the effort involved over the last week has been time well spent. I now understand the program much better than I would if it had worked well the first time.
