Friends,

I've recently done a very large number of paper sessions and have concluded that ProTrak Ver. 348 is a good and solid version to continue on with.  

A while ago I started a forum thread "Load / Empty ratio gone Wacko" and that started me on a search for a good and solid version of ProTrak. Thanks to Bob Butler's comment on July 29 wrt checking my car order data when I use different versions of ProTrak, my quandary of whether it was a version of ProTrak or some inadvertent click on a radio button somewhere in one of my ProTrak data folders that was causing the Load Empty ratio to go wacko was solved. Fortunately it was not a problem with any of my many ProTrak data folders; but rather which version of ProTrak I was currently working with.  My layout uses 38 car orders for my (Presently) Monday only operations. However when I started looking at car orders following Bob's comment I found that using the same ProTrak data folder my car orders varied between 1 and 68 depending on what ProTrak version I was executing at the time. 

So the heads up here is that IF you start using an OLDER version of ProTrak than you are currently using please immediately check to insure that all your car orders are as you know they should be.  I actually (following Bob's comment) made an Excel file with my Way Bill and car order data in it as when I started testing with Ver. 348 and my current ProTrak data folder I indeed had to rebuild my car order data. 

I've been sorta shadowing Bob B wrt what version of ProTrak we are currently using/testing although our criteria for a good or bad version are indeed different. I'm fully convinced that there are problems with Version 350 and upward. It appears as though there was never a Ver. 349 that was released.

In summary with Version 348 

   1. I can print work orders for trains going from RVS-Yd to staging - could not do that with Ver. 352 or 351

   2. My load/empty ratios do not go any lower than about 63/37

   3. A problem using Ver 352 that came to light when I printed out the paperwork for my present on-layout operating sessions wherein a Work Order showed 7 cars in the outgoing consist however the corresponding Switch list only listed 5 cars in the outgoing consist with the missing two cars shown as pickups at Front Street even though the cars were presently in RVS-Yd did not occur when I used Ver 348.

Hope this helps

Joe Brann

Orlando, FL