Hi Cowboy?

i have a similar setup, with a live yard, train connections etc on the east side of the St. Clair River between Ontario and Michigan and a virtual yard on the West side, which includes associated virtual general industries, such as “Michigan Manufacturers”, “trains to the West Coast”, and “Michigan Produce Dealers”.  I do not have any staging tracks there. The car float does not move from the layout and I remove the cars by hand between sessions.  (It takes me about 6 op sessions to run a complete day).  I have virtual switchers that serve the car float, class yard and local industries on the west side. I do this on the computer between sessions.

i do not use staging tracks because what comes in always goes out in exact reverse order the next day.  Using virtual industries, I can control the length of time a car is off layout by varying the WBs delivery times from 1 to 3 days.  You can imagine that cars destined to the industry, “trains to the west coast”, take a long time before returning to the layout.

PT prints loading/unloading by track and order on both sides, although I must admit that I don’t take the time to unload in the exact order specified by PT when doing it by hand on the virtual side, but I do set up the loading on the virtual side so the cars are on the correct track and in order.  This is so the real unloading by a real switcher on the east side is done correctly.  Each trip starts out from the virtual side (set up between sessions), unloads on the east side, reloads and sails virtually to the west side where I sort it out between sessions.  A great job that the fellows really like.

by doing this, I vary the car float loads so the cars and the loading are different on each sailing. 

Questions?

john Mitchell