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>I notice that my one local job, which only should work 3 online customers, is getting saddled with many many extra loaded cars that are in fact looking to get to staging track Selkirk SE15s.
First, I would look at the line-up. To make sure there is no "short-cut" routing which uses the local service train.
(Another adjustment is to adjust the relative call-times, of the local and the target road train to have the road train "called" before the local.)
There is a setting in ProTrak to have a local carry only its local cars. At "edit train", for the local, go to the "Traffic" datafield and from the dropdown select "Local service only".
Jim
The following users say thank you to Jim Moir for this useful post:
jjoyce18:15 am
April 27, 2015
Jim Moir said
>I notice that my one local job, which only should work 3 online customers, is getting saddled with many many extra loaded cars that are in fact looking to get to staging track Selkirk SE15s.First, I would look at the line-up. To make sure there is no "short-cut" routing which uses the local service train.
(Another adjustment is to adjust the relative call-times, of the local and the target road train to have the road train "called" before the local.)
There is a setting in ProTrak to have a local carry only its local cars. At "edit train", for the local, go to the "Traffic" datafield and from the dropdown select "Local service only".
Jim
Thanks Jim. There is no short-cut routing since the local in question originates at Wat-Yd, next stop Det02y reporting/turning point at the location of the 3 online customers, and back to Wat-Yd, end. No other jobs stop to work Det02y reporting point either so the cars are not "moving ahead" to destination in any way. Also, the local in question is already marked "Local Service Only".
I'll try to play with the call times but I'm also trying to maintain prototypical fidelity, right down to call times of the actual jobs in 1993 🙂
JAJ
10:31 am
April 27, 2015
Jim Moir said
In that case the cars have been mis-assigned (somehow).What happens when you remove all cars from the local-train (Exceptions/Show cars in trains)? Do the cars "come back"?
Jim
I can double-click an offending car and it is removed from the WA-2 local. However when I then query a sample offending car it still shows the Det02y reporting/turn point (of the local) in its routing, followed by the SE15s staging final destination in field #3 (Selkirk, connection to Conrail, correct). I then Yardmaster --> Route all Cars and it doesn't reappear in the local. But I noticed when I completed another road freight, from SE15s TO my Yd yard, a bunch of those inbound cars were then thrown into the local. These are empties pinging back out of SE15s staging without waybills (OK, too many empties, not enough BOLs)...but they should just make it as far as the Yd and be directed back to their home staging region (SE15s) via Yd-SE15s road job. There are also duplicated cars showing in the car list for the local...but these disappear if I look at the train list more than once.
Because I'm still only running paper/virtual sessions, is there a way to blow away all individual car locations/routings, have all cars go back to home Yd empty, and start everything over from zero? It seems like something's awry and through cars are getting that Det02y reporting point into their routing...
JAJ
10:36 am
April 27, 2015
Jim Moir said
In that case the cars have been mis-assigned (somehow).What happens when you remove all cars from the local-train (Exceptions/Show cars in trains)? Do the cars "come back"?
Jim
And in the next session, I deleted ALL cars from the WA-2 local, ran Yardmaster->Route Cars and some offending cars did "come back" along with the cars that should have been on the local (with at least one duplicated twice).
JAJ
>is there a way to blow away all individual car locations/routings, have all cars go back to home Yd empty, and start everything over from zero?
On the "List of Cars" window, there is a bright red button "Empty all boxcars".
The window is visible only if there are no trains moving. i.e. beginning of session/day.
Jim
9:38 am
April 27, 2015
Jim Moir said
>is there a way to blow away all individual car locations/routings, have all cars go back to home Yd empty, and start everything over from zero?On the "List of Cars" window, there is a bright red button "Empty all boxcars".
The window is visible only if there are no trains moving. i.e. beginning of session/day.
Jim
I found it outside of Operations Mode, namely "Empty all cars".
As I ran additional paper sessions to get traffic back to normal levels, it appears as though only empties and loads bound for Selkirk/Conrail (SE15s) are getting the DET02y reporting point put into their routing/next destination, and hence ending up on the WA-2 local that serves DET-02 (zone) and turns at DET02y. In other words, the legitimate cars in the WA-2 local have a DET-02 next location upon leaving Wat-Yd, while the erroneous ones show DET02y. If I delete the erroneous cars out of the local, they do NOT route onto the through freight Wat-Yd to SE15s, they sit in the Yd til the end of session and are listed as "undeliverable" to SE15s due to "No ConXns".
I'm thinking of adding a new DET03y, remarking the local to turn there, and blowing away the DET02y location...?
JAJ
>the legitimate cars in the WA-2 local have a DET-02 next location upon leaving Wat-Yd, while the erroneous ones show DET02y
Red flag!
I would suggest that you carefully check the spelling of DET02y - e.g. no leading space(s). Second, that it got entered into the trains reporting points data properly.
Jim
2:03 pm
April 27, 2015
Jim Moir said
>the legitimate cars in the WA-2 local have a DET-02 next location upon leaving Wat-Yd, while the erroneous ones show DET02yRed flag!
I would suggest that you carefully check the spelling of DET02y - e.g. no leading space(s). Second, that it got entered into the trains reporting points data properly.
Jim
Check and check, and I even took my own advice and made a DET03y and blew away DET02y. Same behaviors persist, loads and even empties trying to get to Conrail at Selkirk staging SE15s persistently get DET03y reporting point in their routing and don't make it onto the NESE road job (Waterville Yd to SE15s).
JAJ
11:05 pm
April 27, 2015
jjoyce1 said
Check and check, and I even took my own advice and made a DET03y and blew away DET02y. Same behaviors persist, loads and even empties trying to get to Conrail at Selkirk staging SE15s persistently get DET03y reporting point in their routing and don't make it onto the NESE road job (Waterville Yd to SE15s).
JAJ
Just to close the loop on this, I had more time today to do many virtual sessions, and I think I have good news to report.
I first tinkered with the train lineup, deleting and adding back some of the trains having mis-routings, and the issue got worse, so I went ahead and blew away the TrainLib.RTO and TrainExtendedLib.RTO files, and started from scratch with a brand new lineup (only 9 jobs, not too big a deal). The through cars were no longer put on locals (good news) but still would not get onto the NESE (Waterville to SE15s) job...even though I marked it as 5,000ft, 10,000 tons, etc...NESE kept coming in at 13 cars session after session, with only a few through cars needing to move that way actually getting into the train each time, and a growing logjam of up to 50 cars left behind at the Yd, routed to SE15s but not getting onto NESE. I finally manually added a bunch (42 total cars) and moved it to staging. I then checked the staging yard setup and noted a length in there of 761' with 0' available remaining....when I blew the max up to 5000' (temporarily) the available went to something like 2500' so this tells me the 761' was constraining NESE train length despite the symbol itself being essentially unlimited in length.
This unleashed a tidal wave of Selkirks, so it appears that I may have had a corrupt train lineup (though cars ending up in a local) and an unnecessary staging track length constraint (761') that held this symbol to 13 cars consistently and caused system congestion.
Onwards and upwards!
JAJ
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