| I write business database software for small to
medium companies, and by far this was the most taxing, most
complicated program I have written yet. You will all have
years of enjoyment with this program. It will add one more
layer of realism to your own creation!
You enter in the towns, yards, industries, routes and trains that
exist on your layout. Then you can create shipments to move
goods around. Once the shipments are all in you simply pick a
train to run and the program will tell you which cars to move where
on an easy to read switch list. You can also print out a
waybill (similar to your card system).
You can also ship to off the layout or have shipments come from
off the layout, including shipments to other's layouts running this
software!. The program will even support shipments to
industries on branch lines, spotting the cars at the appropriate
interchange yard! You can also create unit trains.
Once you have decided on a date to simulate, shipments can be run
with the following frequencies:
| Scheduled |
You can make shipments happen daily, weekly,
monthly and even seasonally |
| Unscheduled |
Making a shipment random and the program will
pick when to run the shipment |
| One Time |
Make a one time shipment of goods that will
never happen again. |
Create cascading shipments with ease. Imagine a shipment
from a cattle ramp, which ships to a slaughter house in another
town, on a different route. From there, this slaughter house
ships meats to a packing plant off your layout, but also ships raw
leather to a tannery way up on a branch line. That tannery
gets chemicals from another factory and in turn ships leather goods
to the textile plant in another town. And so on as deep as you
wish. The program has a simple way of showing you that flow of
goods from industry to industry to industry.
The program also logs the movement of every car. You will
see where each car has been, the load it was carrying and when it
moved. You can also track the movement of your locomotives.
The program also tracks any maintenance you decide to enter for
all rolling stock and locomotives.
The program comes with a complete demo using the Canadian Pacific
Railways Bruce Subdivision from the mid 1950's. With three
branch lines, one small harbour and many industries in many towns,
you will get to see a wide array of shipments and how they work.
To ease in the first time use of the program there a full
featured help file with lots of examples and graphics explaining how
to use the program efficiently. There is also a Step by Step
start up option, walks you through the data entry process, asking
pertinent questions to get shipments moving around your layout.
This program is perfect for the small layout, and the big club
layouts too. Size is no limit!
Three modes of operation:
Simple Dispatch
Management.
No switch lists, just waybills, does not track car
numbers, restricted features, freeware
Relative Dispatch
Management
Switch lists, full features available,
does not track car numbers
Absolute Dispatch
Management
full features, tracks all car
movements by car number
Click
Here to see list of Features |