You are not obliged to use this feature, but it could add more realism to your layout. This part of the program will allow you to schedule the trains you run, but there are some assumptions needed to make this happen. The first is the time it takes to get from one town to another. The second assumption is the time it takes to shunt cars into industries in any given town. Many layouts run on an accelerated timetable. Because the distance between layout towns is considerably shorter than on the actual prototype itself, layout operators have resorted to this practice. However, once inside a town, the shunting of rolling stock amongst the industries is close to, if not longer than, what the actual railroads need.
To create or edit a schedule, select one of the routes from the list at the top of the page. All of the trains for the selected route will be displayed in a matrix below the list. The towns on the route will be down the left side of the matrix and the trains will be displayed at the top of the matrix.
To generate a realistic schedule for your layout, you will need to provide the database with some information. Each town on a route will need a milepost for each route. The demo layout used the actual mileposts for the towns on the prototype, so you may want to consider the same approach. You will need to enter the time it takes to shunt cars in the industries in the towns. For example, smaller towns may need only 15 minutes to shunt cars, where as larger trains in bigger towns may take an hour. You can indicate shunt time on a per town basis. You will also need to enter the time it takes to run a train between each town. You can enter all of this information in the "Schedule" area.
Clicking on any white cell will allow you to edit the data in that cell. You will see data entry areas with each cell clicked. For example, clicking on a town name you will see
Enter the mile post, passing siding information and length of time each of the three train types need in order to do the job in that town.
Clicking on the top cell of a train and you will get
Enter the starting time the train leaves the first station, then the average speed the train will travel. If you want the program to calculate run times with the speed you have entered, make sure you have selected ‘Use speed to calculate run times between towns’. You will want to do this at least the first time you create a schedule for a train. You will see when the save button is pressed that the times will all fill in for that train for every town. You will no doubt want to adjust those times. There are two places you can do this, a cell that intersects a train and town, or a cell that is between towns. Clicking on a cell of the later you get
Only one thing can be changed and that's the travel time. Once saved all subsequent times are adjusted accordingly.
Clicking on a town/train cell you get
The only value you can change is the departure time. Again, saving adjusts all subsequent numbers.
Once this data is input, the program will generate a schedule for your trains.
You can refine the schedule any way you want. When you are confident that the schedule is workable, you can print it and then place it into a booklet for your crews. You can also export the schedule directly into Excel. You can export the schedule as above, or export the raw data out of the matrix into Excel.
One of the problems with making any schedule is the meeting of trains moving on a route in opposite directions. This program will look for those potential "corn-field-meets" by placing a red background on the time between the two towns where the trains would meet. If you are running double main lines, this will not be a concern. If you are not, you are going to need to adjust the times so that trains meet in a town. Those trains that meet in towns will have a green background.
There are a number of spreadsheet graphical depictions of trains running their routes. These are very cumbersome to use, and not easy to read. The main problem is that such a graph is two dimensional, when your layout actually has a dimension for each route. There had to be a better way, and this program does just that.
To get an overall view of the runs of trains, there is another tab on this form for that purpose. View Schedule Matrix will show all the movements of trains based on your schedule in table form. This form has a number of changeable options. At the top you have the option of changing the start and end times of the display, the interval of the display and the route of trains. What you get is two sets of tables. If you choose all routes, you will see towns across the top, times as rows and intersections will show the train numbers. All trains will display in this view, but no intertowns. Nor are the towns in any milepost order. Meets will have more than one train in a cell.
You will see in this view that times are along the rows, towns across the columns, and the train numbers in the cells. Thus, Trains 89 and M747/748 are in Alton at 9:10 am. This view will not allow much of a following of the movements for each train from town to town, and is not intended for that. It's just an overall view of who is where and when.
If you choose one of your routes, the display will only be of any train that crosses that route (in other words all trains that go into the towns on your route, regardless if the train is tagged to that route). The display of towns changes. There are inter-town columns (for the times trains run between towns) and the towns are in milepost order.
Again, what you will see is train numbers in each cell. You will be able to easily follow each train from cell to cell as it runs the route. For example 89 is running up the route, the cells move from top-left to bottom right as the train moves. Train M747/748 is moving down the route, which is why it is moving from top-right to bottom-left. You will note that the two meet in Alton at 9:10am and pass each other. 89 runs right through, where as the mixed is parked (as it is staying in the town until 9:17am.
Thus as you can see, train meets will have more than one train in a cell. If the meet is between towns, the background is red for that cell (cornfield meet?), if in a town and you have indicated a passing siding size, the cell background will be green (otherwise it will be red).
The times in the rows can be changed to different fineness by adjusting the interval number. The better the refinement or shorter interval, the more accurate the display. Obviously an interval of 1 minute is going to more accurately show the train's movements than an interval of 60 minutes.
This is a great way to see how trains will be interacting with each other. If you do not like what you see, change your schedule.
The matrix is printable, but beware that it could comprise many sheets!
Meets with trains also show on the switchlist, but only AFTER the route has been displayed here. It was faster to have the calculations done once and stored in the database for the switchlist to use, than to recalculate all the meets each time a switchlist is made. Thus make sure you have viewed each route here before running your trains (if you want the meets to display on the switchlist).