Cascading shipments are when a shipment is dependant upon a previous shipment being fulfilled with the same physical car. Examples would be icing a reefer before loading it with meat. The main shipment is the meat to a food processor, but it is dependant upon the car being iced first.
Another example is that a boxcar must be boarded before it can be loaded with grain. Still another example is a single car is partly loaded as the train travels from town to town, with, say, milk. The same car is used for each load of milk, but it dependent upon the previous town by virtue of the train’s travel sequence.
The program can handle these cascading shipments. The level of cascade for the first two examples is just two, but the last example could be 3 or 4 or more towns on the route. Thus some cascading of shipments with one car could have an unknown number of links in the chain.
Creating a cascading series of shipments is simple enough, but must be done in the right sequence. In the first example the ice house actually ships a loaded car to the meat plant (with it’s load of ice), which is then filled with meat.
Thus the first shipment you make is from the ice house to the meat plant. Below is an example from the demo layout. The demo has three of these cascading shipments. In this case there is no meat packing plant with a railway spur, but instead the meat is loaded from truck at the team track in Orangeville. The ice coming from Teeswater. So you make the shipment from the ice house in Teeswater to the team track in Orangeville.
If you want the same train to take the same car next from the team track, check that the train must wait for car to be filled option. Note that the "Next shipment make subsequent to this one option" is selected. This means that the next shipment you make will be linked to this one you just made.
Interesting side note is the "specifically this load of.,." has the word "iced" instead of "blocks of ice". When this shipment is displayed on the switch list you will see under the siding column for this car "Train must wait for car to be [iced]". What is in [ ] is the "load" you indicated above. Thus if you word the load correctly, that line will read like a sentence. Another example, the boarding of the car before the grain elevator, the boxcar in the switch list will read "Train must wait for car to be boarded". Thus any past tense action wording would be appropriate for the load part of the first leg of a cascading shipment.
Once you create this first shipment, the next one is wholly dependant upon the first one just created. The screen will appear as such:
You will note that you do not have access to the left tree (start of shipment) because that is already set because of the destination of the previous shipment (the team track in Orangeville). The frequency is also set based upon the previous shipment and cannot be changed.
You can select the destination, the next load, and stay times. Note you can also check off cascading shipments again. Doing so will make the next one dependant upon this one, which is dependant upon the previous shipment.