The trip to Ottawa, Canada for the American Invasion is complete. The visit from the Canadians to Carlyle is complete. And I am left with a far greater understanding of how RailOp Dispatching software is suppose to work. Though I introduced it to the IPP&WRR 3 years ago, it took much mentoring from Doug Matheson and other IPP&WRR members for me to get it operating smoothly on the KVRwy. Yesterday was a beautiful early Fall day with temps in the 80’s and a sweet breeze with low humidity. I was able to take the massaged schedule, we used for the Canadian Invasion, and run the first two trains of that day’s schedule. Since the switching list shows what cars need to be picked up from one location and delivered to another location and I don’t want to go to the trouble of putting all the cars out in the actual destinations, I have been able to set equipment up to be located at the nearest storage area to the destination.
All total, I have a schedule of 15 trains for a day’s run. Now, by myself, it may take me a month of free time to run that day’s schedule, but I now have an orderly ability to run each train, break for work or whatever and get it to completion. Of course, once I get it assembled in the basement portion of the railroad, it can sit ready to proceed outside when I have a large enough window of time. The train runs outside, performs its switching manuevers at the 3 storage locations and gets back to the basement window. Once inside, it can be left for a couple of days before I can complete the rest of the switching manuevers of that train. Because all is on a simple one sheet manifest, a simple check mark can let you pick up where you left off.
A side benefit is it allows me to really see what the operators are tolerating on my railroad when they come to run at the Operating Sessions. It is very hard to be a host, make sure everyone is having a good time and understand what a person was talking about with the trouble he was having with a turnout. Doing it yourself with a 10 car train, just like what is run during an Ops Session, allows you to see and fix the problem.
For me, I had a very successful day of running my railroad. RailOps worked great and with some help and critquing from my friends, both foreign and domestic, I have a working dispatching system that works with my life, my railroad and the time I can devote to enjoying the KVRwy.