Manually Assign Shipments to Cars

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Imagine that you have made the right choice and bought this program. You have cars scattered on the layout due to the car card system you've previously used, and a lot of them. The program suggests resetting the layout in order to start the process, but with 500+ cars, that will not be practical, nor even desirable.

To get around this, the program allows one to assign shipments to cars where they currently sit. In essence, you are seeding the program with the current location and actions of your rolling stock.

The draw back is that you will have to go around the entire layout and jot down the location of each car, and what that car is doing. Then you must manually find each car in the Administration form, change the car's location to where it is, and then assign the shipment to it. That will take some time, and luckily, it should be a one shot affair.

All the following actions are done from the Administration form.

If you wish to proceed on this course, there are a number of scenarios a car can assume. Use the chart below for each car as to what you need to do in this program to reflect what the car is doing.

Scenario	Situation	Action Needed
1	Car at yard empty	Change current location to that yard
2	Car at yard loaded	Change current location to that yard, must assign shipment to that car
3	Car empty at industry	Change current location to that industry, but have different Pick Up Dates so that not all cars get picked up on same day
4	Car loaded at industry	Change current location to that industry, must assign shipment to that car
5	Car at yard empty, but want to send it to industry to be filled	Change current location to that yard, must assign shipment to that car, then must change the load to "(Empty Transfer)"
6	Car is elsewhere with load	Change location to the town the car is in and indicate where the car is located, assign shipment to that car.

There are a number of rules that must be followed. The first rule is that a car cannot be assigned to a train manually. Thus make sure all trains you currently have running from your old system are completed. Second, if you have been playing with the program to see how it works, you should reset the system before manually assigning cars. If not, your database may not be in sync with your layout.

Scenario #1
A car can be in a yard empty, nothing assigned. If the car is not in the default yard, simply change its current location to that yard, and press the update button. Nothing more needs to be done.

Scenario #2
A car is in a yard, but is supposed to be participating in a shipment, on its way to be delivered to some industry on the layout. Follow these steps to get these cars in sync with the program:

v Select or do a search for the car

v Change the current location of the car to the yard it is in

v Hit the Assign Shipment button

v From the displayed list select the shipment this car is doing

v Update the car

Scenario #3
A car may be located at an industry and has already been emptied. Thus, it is waiting to be picked up, Follow these steps:

v Select or do a search for the car

v Change the current location of the car to the industry and siding it is in

v Make sure no shipment is assigned, if there is one, cancel it

v Change the Pick Up Date if necessary

v Update the car

If you leave the Pick Up Date alone, the car will be picked up by the next train. If you have many of these, the train is going to pick them all up. So you may want to change the Pick Up Date by a day or two in the future to scatter all these empty pickups across several sessions.

Scenario #4
A car is located at an industry loaded, thus it needs to have a shipment assigned to it. The steps to take are as follows:

v Select or do a search for the car

v Change the current location of the car to the industry and siding it is in

v Hit the Assign Shipment button

v From the list of shipments, select one from the industry the car is at, they are highlighted for easy finding

v Change the Pick Up Date if necessary

v Update the car

Let us walk through a specific situation with the demo database. I have a stock car, CP 276333, that is located at the cattle pen in Alton. The program thinks it is in Lambton due to the reset. I want to assign a shipment to this car.

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As above, I select the car and change the location, pressing the Update button to save those changes. Next, I need to assign the shipment. Above the Car Arrived date at the right you will see the Assign Shipment button. Pressing that gives you this screen:

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This will display all the shipments this type of car can do on the entire layout. The list is split with the primary commodity first, then any secondary commodities after. Note that there are four colours for the text depending upon certain situations. The first situation is if the car is at the origin for the shipment, which it is. Thus this is the shipment likely to be selected (there could be more than one).

The other possibility is that the car is at the destination, in which case you will most likely not assign that shipment because the car will not move, and it fact may never move even if you set the next pickup date to today. The reason is, the car, when you assign a shipment, gets filled. Since the there was no train to put the car there to be emptied, the car in effect never does get emptied. Hence there it will stay until you empty it manually.

Off layout is if the shipment is set to go to other than the your own layout, but someone else's.

The Has Subsequent Shipments means that this is the first in a series of cascade shipments (subsequent shipments are not displayed in this list as they are dependant upon the parent shipment executing first.)

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Note that once assigned the car gets the shipment ID (622), is loaded with beef cattle and has its destination set. Also note that the Assign Shipment button now says Cancel Shipment.

Scenario #5
Another possible scenario for a car is that it is sitting in a yard and on its way to an industry to be filled. These are referred to in the program as an Empty Transfer. That is, the car is empty, but it has been assigned to fulfill a shipment once it gets to the origin industry. You can set those up too, but require a bit of planning.

Follow these steps to create empty transfers

v Select or do a search for the car

v Change the current location of the car to the yard it is in

v Hit the Assign Shipment button

v From the displayed list select the shipment this car is doing

v Press the "Is Empty Transfer" button

v Change the Pick Up Date if necessary

v Update the car

Let's select the next car in the list as an example. CP 276443 is in Lambton yard, where the program thinks it is supposed to be. However, I want it to go to the cattle pen in Alton so it can be loaded. Select the car and the shipment as before.

$images\ebx_-1955872221.gif$ Notice that the car is at the shipment destination for the cattle transfer. The place we want to send the car is the cattle ramp in Alton (3rd from the bottom). Note that it is just one of the shipments, not singled out as before. That is because the car is at Lambton, not Alton. Select that for the shipment the car is to ultimately do and assign it.

You will see when you return to the Administration form that it is loaded and destined to the cattle transfer in Orangeville. But that is not correct. It needs to be an empty transfer and the "destination" is the cattle ramp at Alton.

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To the right of Currently Contains you will see a button that says Is Empty Transfer. Pressing that button will set this shipment properly.

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Now the car will make its way to Alton where it will be filled.

A note of caution, do not manually make a car an empty transfer simply by typing in what you see above as there is more going on in the backgound to implement this. The button must be used.

Scenario #6
The car is loaded, to be sent to an industry, but the industry is full. The previous crew spotted the car somewhere else in the mean time until a spot in the siding is cleared. To set this up follow these steps

v Select or do a search for the car

v Change the current location of the car to a town under the ELSEWHERE group in the drop list

v On the next form, type in the location where the car sits, select the industry it was supposed to be at, then Apply

v Next assign a shipment to this car

v Change the Pick Up Date if necessary

v Update the car

Here is a graphic of the selection of the town the car is at, note that it is under the ELSEWHERE group header

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This will trigger the following form to display.

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Type in the location where the car is spotted at the top and select where it should be (and hence picked up by the next train). Next assign the shipment this car is participating in and update the information.

And that is about it. Do that for all 500+ cars and you are ready to run trains! Time to do this may be a concern. Prior to having my own fiddle yard up and running, before each operating session, I would walk around the layout and write down the locations of every car, even physically changing locations. That would take about an hour. Going through all those cars in the program and setting up all the locations and shipments would take an additional two hours. Then done.

Compare that to going around the layout and resetting car cards for all the same cars, and you will find that even doing that will take almost as long. However, if your layout is completed, then this set up process needs to be done once and only once.