WOW, I entered my reply this morning but I don't see it on the forum now (late afternoon). Hope I can recall all the information I wrote about this morning.

I tried using Ver 343 per Fred's success in getting rid of X-quality cars; but I was not anywhere near as successful.  When I started I had 15-18 X or Y-quality cars.  I then ran M, T, W, Th, and Fri paper sessions and at the end of Friday's session the number of X -quality cars was in the 30-s. Does anybody recall what is the trigger for a car going from A-quality to X-quality?  Does it depend on the contents of the car when it was last unloaded?  The "contents" of almost all of my X-quality cars is Mty, Empty for load, or Empty clean. 

I also have a growing number of "extra" cars on one of my through trains going from my on-line yard down to staging.

What I'm concerned about is that in going from Monday-only operations, which I've been doing probably since 2007, to multi-day operations did I forget to click on some radio button or something. I'm presently running "Daily" since my first excursion into Multi-day operations namely running some trains M/W/F and other trains T/T/S uncovered problems with ProTrak.  When I go into Operations I do see each day of the week sequence thru properly in the Opening window in Operations, so I'm comfortable that I'm operating 7 days a week.  My train lineup is the same every day since that is what I saw others do when I reviewed their ProTrak folders.  When I ordered cars for Tuesday thru Sunday I reused a lot of my Monday WB-s; but I did use many that I created but not used when I was doing Monday-only operations. Don't know if this is a factor in my X-quality car problem or not.

I worked thru the Q&A appendix of the PTBM and I think I found that if there is no Cleaning Track in use than X-quality cars are loaded the same a A-quality cars.  As an experiment lasts night I told ProTrak that I did not have any "Cleaning track" in hopes of seeing my vast supply of X-quality cars get loaded. I used the Load/Empties ratios from the opening screen in Operations as my gauge as to whether X-quality cars were getting loaded or not. I ran about 5 or 6 paper sessions. My L/E ratios varied from 47/53 to 27/72 so I kinda deduced that the X-quality cars were not getting loaded.r

I'm about at wits end to know what to do, so I am in need of guidance/help. I kinda think that the continuously growing number of X-quality  cars started when I moved off of Monday-only operations.  

thanks

Joe

Fred,

In your Dec 24-th posting you mentioned the option in Ver 348 to mark a WB so that the associated car is cleaned at the customer site.  The background color on that option is a very light blue, not the normal royal blue as on other options.  I just got rid of all X and Y quality cars and was proceeding to mark my "Ordered" WB with the clean at customer site option.  BUT it seems as though nothing happens. When I bring up the WB a 2-nd time the check mark for the option is erased.  Is anybody else famliar with using this option?  Or does anybody know what Jim used the very light blue background color to represent?

thanks

Joe

Fred,

In Jim's release note for Ver. 347 and 348 he mentions the WB option as well as the option under Operations/Exceptions to manually clean a car.  I've looked around but have not found any option enabling radio button or check mark box that might be the activation mechanism for the option at the bottom of the WB screen.  IF anybody has used the WB option to clean a car at a customers SPOT please let us know what you did.  I tried the option last night with Ver 352 but got the same result as with Ver. 348 namely that the check mark in the option box does not stay checked.

Joe