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1:52 pm
April 26, 2015
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A year or so ago I had my storage track functioning. i.e. cars were sent to the storage tack and then returned to my main yard in a later session. But somewhere in the various ProTrak Data folders I've used / played with in deciding what Version of ProTrak I was going to make as my standard I seem to have lost whatever it was that caused some cars to be sent to my storage track. Does anybody recall what are the criteria that ProTrak uses to decide when to send a car to a storage track? I am standardizing on Ver. 348 and I presume that the storage track capability was active in that version.
thanks
Joe in Orlando
9:12 pm
April 26, 2015
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Hi Joe
Isn't the storage track/yard feature in the area where you set up your yards?. I haven't looked at that for a while so I assume it is still there. I have two tracks in my main yard as storage tracks for all the other yards on my railroad and the unused emptys get routed there. Hope that helps.
Fred Kaser
8:36 am
April 26, 2015
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Fred,
Thanks for your reply. Yes the storage track is set up under Traffic / Yards and Interchanges and that is where I set up an "02y" yard down in my staging track area. Is your storage track a Yd or Y yard? Do you have any idea what criteria wrt Spot/ Dest / Next Loc ProTrak uses to decide to send a car to the designates storage track?
Joe
11:43 am
April 26, 2015
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Good Morning Joe
The yard I use for storage is a Yd yard and I have two tracks in that yard designated for storage. I am not sure what the routing procedure is but any car without a waybill gets routed to that yard. Sometimes if it takes more than one session to get the cars to storage, they will get picked off and be sent somewhere to be loaded. This has been my experience with the storage tracks. I only have two occasional way bills for my lonesome hopper car. It spends a lot of time on the storage track.
Fred
12:12 am
April 26, 2015
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Joe,
I also have a storage track and see similar ops to what others see.
Just wanted to mention the obvious that has not been noted here,
you need a train that runs between the yard and the storage track.
As my storage track is remote from the yard (actually in my staging)
I run a train from storage as my 1st train of a session and a train back to
storage as my last. In general operations seem to be good but a couple of
cars spend a lot of time in storage. Seems like Protrak will use any other
available car before pulling from storage ( which makes sense).
Best,
John
10:22 am
April 26, 2015
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John,
Thanks for your input. My storage track in also down with my staging tracks and has a reporting point of EN-02y. Is your storage track a "y" or "Yd" yard. My train for car transfers to storage is EN-XFR with reporting points = RVS-Yd / EN-02y -/RVS-Yd. Presently I have a T car with no BOL assigned, and SPOT, Next Loc and Dest all = RVS-Yd, yet I cannot get it to be picked up by the EN-XFR train. I run Ver 348. I do not recall what version I was running when I saw the transfer train work properly. What version do you operate with?
Joe
2:28 am
April 26, 2015
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Joe,
I have 348 running, however I have run no sessions in quite some time. I did run a fair number a while back and while I can't recall which versions were out over that time I know things worked with several. I never seemed to have any issue getting cars into storage. I did have some that seemed to stay there when I thought they could have been used for a WB. All of my active cars have at least 1 possible WB.
Our setups are almost identical storage for my GYD-Yd (Yd Yard) is JJC05y (y yard) and is in a different station. I use 2 trains to service the storage JAGY runs at 0530 to bring cars from storage to GYD-Yd and then GYJA takes cars back at 1800. I recall a session or 2 where no cars were moved at least 1 way but usually 2-4 would move (I have ~100 active cars).
I'll try to run a paper session or 2 in the next couple of days and let you know if things still look normal under 348
John
5:05 pm
April 26, 2015
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Joe,
I got a chance to run several paper sessions using v348. ProTrak sent nearly 20 cars to my storage yard.
Unfortunately none ever came back out. As A result I got looking and discovered going back to 348 from 355 or 360 had deleted almost all of my car orders. I do not have a old enough saved RR on this computer to get back to pre 348. I did copy a RR I had been working on under 355 which showed all car-orders using 355 and all disappeared when I opened a copy using 348. Obviously this proves you can't go backward in the version you use. It also shows I have been out of the train room too long.
As a last check using 348, I forced a waybill assignment to a car in storage (using car edit) and then went to operations and ProTrak had put the car in the storage to yard train (JAGY) as it should. So I looks like the storage yard function will work correctly once I fix my car orders.
Hope this helps,
John
10:56 am
April 26, 2015
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John,
Thanks for your efforts.
Several of us this past spring found the same problem of loosing all the car orders when we use an older version of ProTrak. Jim Brewer first mentioned somewhere that Jim M had told him to never use an older version of ProTrak than the one you are currently using whatever that version number might be. I forget where I got that information from Jim Brewer; but I now have it in my ProTrak note in bold red print. The current ProTrak data folder that I am operating with was one I rebuilt this summer from a ProTrak Data folder from back in 2017 and was the first one that I executed under Ver. 348. I spent at good month or so slowly installing incrementally the changes I made to that ProTrak Data Folder using the detailed notes I have written over the years of all the changes I make to my PRoTrak Data Folders, and then doing a fixed number of paper sessions between each block of changes that I made. I'm rather confident that I have a good ProTrak data folder now. It's just that I cannot get cars sent to my storage track.
Joe
10:06 pm
April 26, 2015
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Joe,
Thanks for the feedback. I was able to find a file set that was pre348 so I should be okay. I still need to check for changes but they should be minor.
As for your issue maybe try a separate train to storage at the end of the day/session. That is how my lineup is. Also are you running sessions (I am) or are you running continuous?
Best,
John
7:56 am
April 26, 2015
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John,
I run in session mode and have my train to storage set to run at the start of each session.
Joe
11:26 pm
April 26, 2015
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Joe,
Sounds like the only difference is that you use a turn and I use 2 separate one direction trains.
My trains are JAGY with reporting points JJC05y (start) and ending at GYD-yd running at 0531 and GYJA (GYD-yd to JJC05y) running at 1800 with the loco tieing up at JJC05y overnight (till next session).
One last thought - did you check the length of EN-02y.
I have attached an image of my setup for JJC05y (perhaps you are missing the customer storage setting?)
Best,
John
8:00 am
April 26, 2015
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John,
Thanks for the screen image. The only difference is that I checked "No re-blocking allowed". Can't imagine that that would make a difference. My EN-02y track is 400 feet long.
I'm running an OP session after lunch today and in getting ready for it I noticed that I had 6 cars whose SPOT is RVS-Yd and whose Next Loc is also RVS-Yd. These cars all have WB-s in them so they are not candidates for being sent to the storage track by ProTrak, so I sent them to storage with an Extra. At the end of the session I will bring them back so that my layout is in sync with ProTrak. The Destn. for these 6 cars is presently totally full, so I suspect that it will be several sessions in the future before these cars leave RVS-Yd.
Joe
6:43 pm
April 26, 2015
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Joe,
Yes, only cars that have no WB assigned can be sent to storage. This includes WB assigned for pending load.
Also the car has to be a home road car for the yard at least (if not the entire RR).
John
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