Now that it’s dark when I get home from work, I’m thinking of trying to make TrainOps work for me. I’m pretty sure my problems are more related to how I’ve configured the trains and railroad then bugs. Most trains say they have nothing to do, even though there are cars ‘out on the layout’.
I have no problem running theoretical trains and keeping track of locations, etc outside of TrainOps. Anyone game for doing a full analysis of my situation?
I have Bob examining my DB for the same thing; “No Cars Found”. He’s found a couple of bugs, and a couple of times I’ve had the program crash on me, but he seems to have fixed that.
All my cars are in 2 locations but the trains aren’t finding them.
Here’s Bob’s response:
"Hey Ken
I’m working on crashes now (and seems to be working, since you dont
crash anymore), then next up will be a better ‘no cars found’, to
explain exactly WHY you arent finding cars. That should be ready in a
week or so.
Mine:
Thanx, Bob…
They all seem to be on these 2 sidings for some
reason(Delores and Hesperus)…whether that helps you out any.
I also changed all the cars from “foreign road” to home
road…didn’t seem to help any.
Bob’s:
Yea, interesting. There’s some bug in here somewhere that doesnt grab
cars, it thinks they’re not available, or waiting for pickup by another
train, or something… Definitely odd. Bruce sees it too, sometimes,
but not as much as you do. "
I’ve tried all kinds of different configurations, different “off-layout” times, different percentages, which I’ve seemed to have fixed as it’s not showing a high siding usage anymore, different routeings, shortening or lengthening the time in the siding to load/offload.
I thought by adding the 3 new sidings it would help with the car sorting or shuffling, but then it was only moving one car around.
Thanks Ken -
So perhaps I should give Bob a little time, or maybe an ultimatum: We won’t come up to Littleton to rebuild your RR in the spring unless you get TrainOps working 
Jon Radder said:
Thanks Ken -So perhaps I should give Bob a little time, or maybe an ultimatum: We won’t come up to Littleton to rebuild your RR in the spring unless you get TrainOps working
Hey Ken, is the latest one from a few days ago still working for you?
There’s hope
Bob McCown said:It appears to be. I've only run it about 4 or 5 times and the only problem I see so far is it's lack of delivering and picking up cars at the Interchange. That could be due to not having enough time to "shuffle" the cars around. Also at the mine and mill sidings the track length will hold 4 cars, but it delivers at least 6 cars there to each location. From what I've been able to see, what it's doing is just moving cars back and forth between those 2 sidings.
Hey Ken, is the latest one from a few days ago still working for you?
I will be experimenting with it in the coming months, though. But, so far, so good!
If I get some nice weather this week, I’ll put it to a “reality” test…
Yea, I know the interchange code isn’t working right, but Ive been more concerned with moving cars around than getting the interchange stuff working. That should be up next.
OK - I ran a couple of stimulated trains on the latest release and changed the date a couple of times. I only have it set up where 5 cars are home-road cars so it doesn’t have much to do, but it does seem to be working.
One odd thing - If and Industry exists on a siding, the cars never seem to stay at the industry. Most trains will have you make an unnecessary move from the industries siding to the industry. And it will keep doing that same non-move over and over with each new train.
As noted by Bob - Exchange isn’t doing anything, so I have 5 more cars that were set up as foreign road that just sit on the siding. So for now, I’m going to change these cars to home-road and run some more trains to see if I can get more than a single car to move per train.
In reality, my car inventory is all wrong. Much of what I had set up in TrainOps ended up getting transferred permanently to the WV&KRR.
I really have to go back and review what my ythoughts were on insutries and car needs when I initially set up TrainOps over a year ago.
One other thing - The cars that were foreign road (I just changed them to home road) are currently located Off Layout. Will they come back, or is that a function of the interchange ?
If they won’t come back, is there a way to change their location so I can get them into the mix for experimenting? I know I could delete them, then add them again, but I was hoping there might be a way I could do some under the covers db manipulation
EDIT To Update: Apparently they won’t come back in the current version of the code. The result is that the program is working now, but with only a few cars to work with it doesn’t do much other than move 1 car per train. Kind of like the local short line lately!
I also see a little glitch where it doesn’t see cars located at the industry, but ratre on the siding that the industry lives on. For example, Nook Trans-Load is located oin a siding at Nook. Nearly every train wants me to move the sme car(s) from Nook Siding to Nook Trans-Load.
I have been looking at my trains and industries. Without interchange, I don’t really have a valid plan for some car types (no place for Loads to originate). So I might re-think the set-yup to eliminate the need for interchange, for now.