This program allows you to make shipments to other layouts, provided they are also using this program. There is no limit to the number of "linked" layouts with this program. You can interchange in two ways, physically or virtually. Physically means that when the program indicates that a car is to be shipped to a layout, you must physically move that car. The program will keep track of foreign cars on everyone's layout. Virtual means that you do not physically move the cars to the other layout, instead just the shipment gets sent and the program will search for cars that fit the shipment on their layout to fulfill that shipment with the other person's own cars. This would be a very useful method if you intend to exchange shipments with people you communicate with over the internet. Simply e-mail the file to them. The other nice part of virtual links to other layouts is none of the layouts have to be the same scale! Thus different scale layouts can ship to and from each other using virtual interchange.
In order to interchange with other layouts you must have a specified interchange track. Any track will do, one in a yard is quite sufficient, but certainly having a specific interchange track in a town (for example Inglewood) would be most logical, but not necessary. You can make as many interchange locations as you wish. Cars come and go through these interchanges. You can have more than one interchange if you like and specifying which layouts go through which interchange.
The program will produce one file for all layouts you interchange which you can create at any time. That is, you can take that one file, on a floppy disk, and take it from layout to layout. Each program at other's layouts will extract from that file the records intended for that layout.
Just as with the shipments within your own layout, you create outbound shipments only to other's layouts. You do not create shipments from other layouts to your own. That is the job of the other guy.
There are two conditions where you are restricted from importing another's layout into yours. 1) Your own layout. That is, you cannot accidentally import your own layout back into yours again. 2) a layout running this program that is running in Simple Dispatch Management (as they do not have access to the Interchanging features anyway).
On the main screen at the right bottom menu items you will see Interchange. All the functionality you need to manage the interchanging with other layouts is done through that one form. The next pages explain how to create an interchange file, the first step, and how to read incoming interchange files.
Managing Interchanged Layouts
Importing Layout Specifications
Exporting Your Layout Specification
Creating Shipments to Other Layouts
One note of caution. Unless you e-mail the file, using floppy disks for file transportation brings with it the possibility of failure of the disk. Floppies are notorious for failing, or being unreadable by the destination computer. You have been warned.