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8:37 am
April 26, 2015
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When I began to printout the paperwork for my Op Session 5 yesterday I noticed that the opening screen in operations showed that I had a 52/48 ratio of loads to empties. This is unusually low for my RR as I normally see something up in the 70% for loads. I just started up Operations for session 6 and that same ration is now 36/64. When I did the OP Session 4 paperwork printout that ratio was 73/27 Also one of the last pages of my OP Session 5 printout showed that I had 30 car orders not filled, mostly all because of No empties being available.
I installed Ver 355 after I did the OP Session 4 printouts, and then installed Ver 360 shortly after Jim passed away. I made several changes under 360, and then ran into the problem I reported here several weeks ago namely the inability to "Show Ordered WB-s". I went back to my save post Session 4 ProTrak folder and redid all the changes again under ver 360. Than last week I reverted back to 355 to do the OP Session 5 printout. I do have a pretty good log of what changes I've done to my ProTrak folder.
Has anybody else seen this or have any idea what I should do?
Joe
8:36 am
April 26, 2015
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I spent several hours yesterday running paper sessions based on my saved ProTrak folder following the paperwork printout for my real Op Session 4 trying to find out why my Load / Empties ratio has gone wacko. I run these paper session under Ver 355, and basically did NOT make any of the data changes I did before I ran Op session 5 paperwork. I learned / found nothing to help me in the three paper sessions I ran. I still get a tremendous number of cars whose Contents are "Empty Rule 1", "mty", or "mty return". It sorta seems to me that something might be wrong in the Car Ordering Process. I'm considering copying two car order files (CarOrder.005, and CarOrderBase.Lst) from an older ProTrak folder to see if that might change things. Has anybody ever copied over their Car Order files and if so are the above two the correct files to copy? I was just relooking at several of my old / saved ProTrak folders and noticed that several of the folders had multiple CarOrader.00x files in them. Does anybody know what is the significance of the .00x extension on these files?
Has anybody seen any trouble like I'm having with Ver 355.
Joe
11:40 am
April 28, 2015
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3
Joe,
I have had problems with car orders; in attempting to create car orders for those customers (which had car orders previously) I would get the message that no BOLs existed (even though BOLs do exist); I am running 359; I am on the hook for at least one and probably 2 ops sessions before the end of April. I am at a loss with the program and see its days numbered here.
Since there will be no successor to ProTrak, and no support with Jim's untimely death, I don't need to add to my frustration when a hobby is supposed to be fun.
I am truly saddened that ProTrak will go away but there does not appear to be any alternative.
Best wishes.
Jim Brewer
On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 9:36 AM, ProTrak.org wrote:
>
6:00 pm
April 26, 2015
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Jim & Joe
Weird things happened for me with 360. Lost and messed up data. I didn't try to use any of the 350's so don't know what might be happening there. 343 is stable and is working fine for me and that is what I will be using from here on out.
Fred
6:38 pm
December 20, 2014
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5
Thanks Fred. I'll stick with it for now. Mike C On Mar 5, 2018, at 6:00 PM, "ProTrak.org" <section7@protrak.org> wrote:
9:46 am
April 26, 2015
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Jim,
Sorry to hear of your problems with your OP Sessions coming up. Are you aware that Mike C has posted under Store / User Updates back versions of ProTrak namely 351, 352, 354, and 355. So if you want to go backwards here is something that might help. IF / when you find a resolution please keep us advised here.
Joe
1:15 pm
May 11, 2015
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Hi All,
Sorry that you are all still having problems. We are in the middle of a session on the Nashville and with Bob's suggestion, we have gone back to 318 for the last few sessions to be run on the Nashville. 318 appears to be stable although Bob did have to reload the car orders but he says that he is getting pretty good at it on this railroad!!
I hope you can all make Protrak work for you in the long run but for those that are considering looking at other options, I will be happy to show you what we are doing on the Nashville with Car Cards/Waybills if it would be helpful. We have had friends from the Operations Road Show group help us design the new system for the Nashville and I am very happy with it so far. It is quite a bit different from the 4 sided waybills that you may be used to if you have had any experience with them.
Really looking forward to seeing everyone in a couple of month.
Best, Andy
Best, Andy Keeney
Look out for #1 but don't step in #2!!
6:04 am
April 26, 2015
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Working with Andy's program info, looking for a version with little to no problems. We see trains with no cars in staging to train names change in the line up. (ie XMAD for a traing going to or from staging)
I should have kept better records of the problems we were having on a version.
I was seeing the same as Joe on 355, very little OV traffic.
318 works well but little options.
Using 352 the last couple days and looking stable. Run 3 sessions with it and no cars missing, trains not changing names.
I will run 3 more sessions today.
Joe asked about restoring car orders. I'm using a desktop computer for testing, laptop computer with working version and use as a reference for the car orders. Andy's list of car orders takes 2 to 3 hours. Our club RR and home RR takes an hour.
Hope this helps, I hope to use ProTrak for many years.
Bob
10:44 am
May 11, 2015
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9
Very good, thanks, Bob. I really appreciate you working with the Nashville data. You've saved the day many times!! 🙂 Best, AndyÂ
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Wed, Mar 7, 2018 at 7:04, ProTrak.org wrote:
Best, Andy Keeney
Look out for #1 but don't step in #2!!
9:59 am
April 26, 2015
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Friends,
I am still struggling with my Loads / Empties ratios going way downhill to such levels as 25/75. Recently I used the same ProTrak data folder and found that with ver. 357 my L/E went downhill but not so with Ver 352. So at that time I mentally concluded that there must be something in the ProTrak software that is causing this situation. Then last week I used the same ProTrak data folder and Ver 348 and sure enuf my L/E ratios went way downhill. With Ver 348 causing me troubles I am rethinking that it might be a ProTrak software bug. I just cannot fathom somebody not noticing this situation while Jim was still with us.
SO I am now back to thinking that I clicked on some radio button or put a check mark in a wrong box in my own ProTrak data folder and that this is what is causing my downhill L/E ratios. So I need HELP please - if somebody knows of something in ones ProTrak data folder that might control loading please let me know so that I can correct it and hopefully get L/E ratios back with the 95/05 - 72/28 range with all versions of ProTrak (except possibly 352.) The 95/05 - 72/28 ratio range is what I saw for years when I ran my 550+ paper sessions before on-layout operations began in 2016.
thanks
Joe
5:14 pm
April 26, 2015
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Joe,
Check your Car Orders.
When I go from one version to another it's the first thing I check.
Bob Butler
7:37 pm
April 26, 2015
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Bob
SUPER suggestion. I just pulled up a series of ProTrak versions with different ProTrak folders and YES indeed my car orders are really bad. One file/version combo had only One car order for all my industries. Another combo of ProTrak version and ProTrak data folder showed 32 car orders for one small industry but when I opened up that specific industry no car orders were listed.
So Yes I think you have pointed me to the possible crux of my L/E ratio problems.
When you look at car orders when you use different versions of ProTrak and find a set of car orders you don't recognize what do you do? Do you had a golden car order file that you copy over into your present / current ProTrak data folder, or what?
Much appreicated,
Joe
7:55 pm
April 26, 2015
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I reenter the orders, for my layout from memory, Andy's I started an Excel file to help remember.
Bob
9:44 pm
April 28, 2015
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14
I agree with Bob; also, when running on different days of the week, I would get very few loads on Thursday. Never could figure it out.
Jim Brewer
On Sun, Jul 29, 2018 at 6:14 PM, ProTrak.org wrote:
>
8:18 am
April 26, 2015
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Bob,
You must have a good memory!
Are still using / testing Ver. 355? As I try to settle in on a ProTrak version, other than 352, to work with after getting my car orders back in line I'd like just on general purposes to use as recent a version of ProTrak as possible. My notes indicate that Ver 355 does print Workorders for RVS-Yd to staging trains which is something Ver 352 does not do.
thanks again, I'm really anxious to get to work on resurrecting my car orders later on this afternoon/evening.
Joe
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