250BOB Posted January 30, 2012 Share Posted January 30, 2012 Hi Scruffyduck.........and you thought we werent interested (see your second post #2) I think there are a few interested parties just watching this thread....its a bit beyond me yet, but there is some really interesting stuff. Good luck. Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scruffyduck Posted January 31, 2012 Author Share Posted January 31, 2012 Hi Scruffyduck.........and you thought we werent interested (see your second post #2) I think there are a few interested parties just watching this thread....its a bit beyond me yet, but there is some really interesting stuff. Thanks Bob - it is a bit beyond me at the moment as well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scruffyduck Posted February 4, 2012 Author Share Posted February 4, 2012 I just wanted to let y'all know that I am working on this! I have managed to set up a bar chart display that I think will work to allow at least the display of a timetable and maybe even some visual editing since the bars can both be re-sized and dragged. At the moment I have a deadline in the real world at home. I need to get an en-suite bathroom finished by next weekend. At that time I will be heading south for a while (I am half American and my family are there - we get together in Florida for a month or so each year) and SWMBO is insisting the bathroom is finished before I go. Anyway I find my time in FL each year is great for programming (along with sitting on the porch with a cold beer or two!) so I hope to make some progress then, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkie_pudd Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 Hi scruffyduck Firstly enjoy your family trip and fetch some sun back please hehehe. Great thread and idea and TBH an area i hadnt really looked into the computer side, as normally is in the not for me type. But on reading through this thread and the ideas stated etc. On the frieght side of things and limited too 1 fuel tanker ( for shunter point ) freight stock would be just chemical tankers and box cars. Would this type or your proposed software be able to throw out a random shipping order list ?? examples: load 1 - 4 x boxcars of parts - 2 x tankers (XXX) - 2 boxcar ( YYY ) - 1 tanker ( FFF ) load 2 - 8 tankers load 3 - 5 boxcars load 4 - 2 tankers - 1 - boxcar - 3 tankers - 6 boxcar - 1 x fuel tanker would it just stated X amount of tankers or boxcars required or could you make small database of goods. so under tankers you could make list chemicals and anything else under boxcar, so it can pick either at random. ?? I see you all say about rolling stock lists, say i bought 1 fuel tanker, 10 boxcars , 10 tankers. could you asign a different cargo to each wagon, so out of the 21 freight stock as i say it could do random load list. It sure would give an extra dimension then just out me head at the time. can put up a pic of industrail unit/yard if it helps better explain what i mean. cheers ken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wummyock Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 Yorkie Pud not that I want to take anything away from scruffyduck but Wagonflow will do what your talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkie_pudd Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 Yorkie Pud not that I want to take anything away from scruffyduck but Wagonflow will do what your talking about. Cheers Wummyock, I shall have a look into that. Although im months away from from baseboard yet and running etc, so shall keep an eye out on scruffyduck comes up with. cheers ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scruffyduck Posted February 5, 2012 Author Share Posted February 5, 2012 To answer the question - the specification for the application is still open. I have a lot to learn and the folks here have been very helpful. Wummyock is correct that WagonFlow is a UK oriented program that allows freight generation. There are a number of other such programs but they are generally targeted at US practice which, as I understand it, has much more intensive freight operations than is general in the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkie_pudd Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 Fair do`s scruffyduck and as said to wummyock shall have a look at it, still interested to see what you turn up with and enjoy doing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meadow55 Posted April 14, 2012 Share Posted April 14, 2012 Apologies for being late in catching up to this topic. About four years ago I built an application which was designed to be TOPS-like in nature; so if you would let me share some experiences with you... First, you will (as you have already seen) get some really good feedback from these types of bulletin boards. I produced detailed papers (before I started building) which I published on another site and received really good feedback. I would really recommend doing this - you will get good, detailed honest feedback which you can include, adapt or ignore (as you will have seen already). Second, work out which parts of your software are free and which are paid-for: make sure that you cover your work with appropriate licences (I used the European Union Public Licence for my free software). Be ready to have any free or even paid-for work 'lifted' - the software from my site was taken and posted onto sourceforge by someone else, then this person passed it off as his own on a number of US sites. Even the JMRI had a legal battle at one point about ownership (see http://en.wikipedia....obsen_v._Katzer) - so guard your code obsessively! Third, because I didn't care about graphics (as I was replicating TOPS, which was for most of its life a command-line system (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPS)) and as I was building for multi-user cross-platform, I used Python running against an SQLite database. You are obviously set on using C# (fair enough) but I would suggest you had a look at an SQLite database as the data repository - it has a light footprint, can be multi-user and you can create new databases from within your code. Turning to your paper - I though it was a good start, by the way - I agreed with your Stations/Locations structure (I used Areas/Stations/Places). Rolling Stock I would split into powered and unpowered, as their characteristics are different - and a train always has to have a powered unit. I created Industries to generate Commodities; and Commodities load into Cars (one specific type of Car was indicated for Passenger use - in the end, passengers are also commodities!!!). You can then use a Loading/Unloading indicator to link Industries, Loading areas (ie specific locations) and Wagons. Staying with rolling stock for the moment, you also need to be able to build sets (think of HST or DMU sets, where you have semi-permenantly linked mixes of powered and unpowered vehicles). Someone else has already mentioned fuelling and maintenance. Creating a timetable is hard work - you need to work out how to build the route, then lay the timings on that; then you have to work out how to 'build' trains from locos/coaches and run them against the schedule/timetable. It's not impossible, but you need to really get down to some nuts'n'bolts data analysis to get it to work (but when it does, it's brilliant). You might like to consider platform displays - what train is leaving from what platform and where it's calling. Given that most UK layouts are station-centric, that might be a nice little add-on. Whether you have it as a 1950's roller, or a 1980s clapper display, a 1990s VDU or a 2010s dot-matrix would be up to you! But I think that that would strongly distinguish it from its US cousins. I've written a lot, hopefully it's useful. You probably don't want my software, but you can see my User Guide at http://sourceforge.n...railmops/files/ which hopefully might be of a little use. Finally, I wrote my software and never used it on my model railway. But it was great fun writing it and I use it stand-alone (it's really a virtual model railway now). I could have bought Train Player to do something similar, but it's great to have your own system running the way you want. Go for it, and enjoy! Brian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold geoff Posted December 19, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted December 19, 2012 Scruffy duck and other interested parties, I have just discovered this topic after a google search for alternative operations software to Wagonflow. I have been using Wagonflow for several years and I have enjoyed the way it generated the freight flows for my railway. I use it alongside a timetable generated from working timetables for the line my railway is based on. I currently run it on a Windows 98 platform in Parallels on my MacBook. Originally I ran it on a pc lap top but in each case I have experienced glitches and frustrations. Some print options only result in error codes and there sometimes seems to be failure to perform consistently. The latest issue seems to be a failure to respond to "time setters", codes which can be included in a timetable to differentiate between days which trains run. I always believed that the programme should load the appropriate timetable for the day the programme has progressed to. I am sure it was working in that way until recently but now it will only load the whole timetable, irrespective of the day. I originally received the programme by email from the developer and saved it to floppy disc which of course I can no longer use, so I appear to be stuck with software which seems to be slowly dying. I would hate to go back to operating my railway without the facility to generate traffic flows in this way as it has made the operating sessions really good fun while also being quite challenging. All this is a long winded way of saying that I am interested in what you are doing and hoping that somehow a more up to date piece of software may eventually become available. Regards Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bescotbeast Posted December 15, 2013 Share Posted December 15, 2013 An interesting topic, did anything come of this at all? Simon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovex Posted September 8, 2016 Share Posted September 8, 2016 HI, just been re-reading this topic as I am interested in some simple timetabling software. In my case I'm modelling somewhere that actually exists and have details of the traffic flow through my station. I also have some idea of the types of trains and the platforms they occupied. I don't have all the necessary information but arguably enough to construct a reasonable representation of the timetable. What I would like is somewhere of presenting this in chronological order. So, 9.00 am, Paddington Express - from fiddle yard (South) to Platform 5 9.05 am Local Kidderminster - from fiddle yard (North) to Platform 7 9.10 am Paddington Express - from Platform 5 to fiddle yard (North) via fast line etc - I think you get the idea I started doing this on index cards so that I could slot additional ones in, but they must be some software I can download that would allow me to operate such a timetable, with each movement coming up on screen and showing the next every time I click a button. Dean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJS1977 Posted September 8, 2016 Share Posted September 8, 2016 HI, just been re-reading this topic as I am interested in some simple timetabling software. In my case I'm modelling somewhere that actually exists and have details of the traffic flow through my station. I also have some idea of the types of trains and the platforms they occupied. I don't have all the necessary information but arguably enough to construct a reasonable representation of the timetable. What I would like is somewhere of presenting this in chronological order. So, 9.00 am, Paddington Express - from fiddle yard (South) to Platform 5 9.05 am Local Kidderminster - from fiddle yard (North) to Platform 7 9.10 am Paddington Express - from Platform 5 to fiddle yard (North) via fast line etc - I think you get the idea I started doing this on index cards so that I could slot additional ones in, but they must be some software I can download that would allow me to operate such a timetable, with each movement coming up on screen and showing the next every time I click a button. Dean It would probably be quite simple to write an Excel macro to do this, with the individual movements stored in the spreadsheet, making it easy to adjust the timetable if needed. I've contemplated various ideas around the presentation of such a spreadsheet, either in the style of a modern dot matrix board or even in the style of a Solari indicator panel, being mirrored by a scale model Solari panel on the layout, built around a cheap smartphone running Remote Desktop! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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