Jim Moir said
>some of my CSD's are not working properly.  Every session I need 10 empty XM's to go to BK1s staging to protect paper loading.  They sometimes get waybilled, sometimes not.  Even when they do, they do not come back out next session with OV loads (see above).

As you know, the CSD require a car-length, kind and roadname.   What do you have entered for the CSD?

Are the "target" cars restricted in any way?

~~~

I am using this function here.   Same idea - to get XM moved to staging for loading at the Maine papermills off in staging.  At the moment I see cars moving on CSD to both Maine staging tracks.   Not as many as would like - but the load/empty ratio is 77/23 and I know I need more plain boxcars. 

                 Jim  

My car kind is XM, and the subject boxcars are all XM, with a few hi-cubes being STCC-restricted to PAPER GROUND WD (but these do sometimes move via CSD and load OV waybills).  Due to uncertainty on car length, I have 2 CSD's, one for 10x 40' XMs and the other for 10x 50' XMs.  In this last session just concluded, 10 empties were sent up to Bucksport and now I see that they have loaded, but again the behaviour is inconsistent, so I am not sure what other settings to change.  The preferred ownership of both CSDs is NECR/BM/MEC (with BM and MEC both being set as *NECR home roads).  These home road XM's are all universally rostered as 53', so is it the 50' CSD that's getting them moving?  I seem to recall something about ExLen minus 4 feet which would be 49'...Also, since BM and MEC are *NECR roads, shouldn't an order for 10 "NECR" homeroad cars select from any *NECR road without me also specifying BM and MEC as being eligible?

JAJ

Jim Moir said
Checked the code to be sure.

Presently, the CSD car-ordering, sending cars to staging on a CSD, runs after everything else:  after the on-line customer car distribution and after the offline OV traffic car distribution.

The idea being one of "using up" leftover cars.  On pondering this I can see that you seem to be putting a higher priority on loading cars on CSD.   I could make it an option so that CSD runs before the OV-car-distribution?

Second, before the eclipse, the CSD car-ordering did not know about "system reporting marks".   You would have had to explicitly enter a system reporting marks as one to be ordered to a CSD.   After the eclipse, the CSD car-ordering now knows about system reporting marks.  Thanks for the heads-up.

Also, before 1pm, cars with "return to" siding numbers were excluded; now cars with return to siding numbers that are the same as the target CSD waybill origin siding are accepted.   Commodity is not checked.

Please let me know if optionally prioritizing cars to CSD makes sense to you.

              Jim  

So I'm clear, is this how the program works currently?  Imagine we start with no CSD's at all...

- before Session #1, I set up a CSD pushing 10 XM's to BK1s for intended OV loading

- Session 1 happens, and at the conclusion during the final processing, the program sees lots of idle empty system XM's in the Yd and bills them to BK1s via the new CSD

- Session 2, those 10 XMs actually move empty to BK1s via CSD.  At the conclusion/processing of Session 2, program seems 10 empties available to load at BK1s, and it has OV waybills/car orders for paper, so it assigns them WBs to move newsprint to market.  

- Session 3, those 10 XMs move loaded in OV traffic across the railroad...

- Session 4, they come back empty to Yd.  Repeat ad nauseum.

For me personally, I don't (yet) have any online customers loading home road XMs so whether the CSD runs before or after OV assignments, I'm not sure it matters (for me) since there's no higher-priority use of all of my home road XMs stored in my Yd.  Anyway if the CSD doesn't work and empties don't get pushed to BK1s, there won't be any OV assignments done anyway on account of lack of empties in that staging.  

The system marks bit will be a welcome improvement for sure, so thank you for that!  In that vein, something similar....waybills allow the user the following: "Shipper is on Railroad [    ]....[]Must be...[]Preferred".  If a shipper is on my home road and I choose "Must be" to load only home road cars, these same "system cars" are not listed in the "Test for possible cars".  Is that intentional or could system cars also be considered equivalent to home road marked cars for this functionality?

Lastly, in playing around with these waybills in writing the above, I am prompted with the following, I am not sure if this is relevant or not to the issue at hand...."This waybill has not been assigned to this routing.  Assign to >BK1s<?". These waybills have been set up for months so I am not sure if this message indicates any issues with my data.  

JAJ

Jim Moir said
>I am not sure if this is relevant or not to the issue at hand...."This waybill has not been assigned to this routing.  Assign to >BK1s
That message suggests that your waybills have not been assigned to car-orders.   You need car-orders for the waybills to become effective.   Do you have overhead car-orders?

For overhead traffic, go to "Traffic/Overhead traffic staging to staging".  This opens a list of staging tracks, with the number of car-orders show for each.   To assign waybills to car-orders, select the staging track, then select from the "Possible waybills" listed in the righthand pane.   

                Jim  

Yes, all 7 waybills that I've created originating from BK1s also have a corresponding OV car-order, and they always have...hence my surprise to see that message when I was fiddling with them this morning.  Could the waybill/car order linkage been broken somehow?

JAJ

Jim Moir said
>so whether the CSD runs before or after OV assignments, I'm not sure it matters (for me)

Yes it will.   It you have OV car-orders they could soak up all the available cars (or a lot of them).

If you want to have, every session, 10 loaded cars leaving BK staging, then you will absolutely want the CSD to run before the "load at staging" function.    That way you will reliably have 10 empty cars sent to BK staging for later loading.

~~~

You have caused me to think on this point a little deeper.   I want 25 to 35 loaded cars leaving the Maine papermills (from two staging tracks) at every session; so I absolutely need to send 20 to 30 empty (C&NE, CN and CP) cars to eastern staging to be loaded at the next Daily Summary.  In addition to the MEC/BAR cars being returned empty to home region staging.

It might even be necessary to run the CSD before the on-line customer car distribution, to make sure (MEC, BAR, CN and CP) cars are not soaked up by on-line customers' car-orders first.

                        Jim  

I think it's cool we model essentially the same operation, albeit different era, reporting marks, ownership picture, etc.  

With that, forgive my persistence as I continue...but in my case, my whole railroad and BK1s (Bucksport Staging) is NECR/BM/MEC home road system...and with no cars otherwise going to BK1s by default (because it's a home road staging, and I've set up no terminating XM traffic to BK1s yet), all the OV car-orders in the world ex BK1s won't make anything move out of there due to lack of empties ever ending up at BK1s in the first place.  Isn't it kind of like a chicken and the egg?  In other words I have 50 home road XM's sitting in Waterville Yd awaiting loads but as I've understood all along, the only way to force them to home staging regions for OV loading is via CSD. So I guess that's where I was coming from, if the CSD works then the empties that end up at BK1s will have no choice but to be tagged with those OV waybills as desired (one session later)....regardless of order of operation (they're not getting sucked up in OV traffic anyway).

Anyway I appreciate your continued help in this.

JAJ