Route trouble...

[Richard Finlayson]

Greetings! Brand new. Downloaded 5 minutes ago. Looks pretty dang cool.

Problem:

I set up freight cars. I then set up my industries. Then my yards.

Then when trying to start a session I was required to create Towns. I then assigned all the industries to one town (Midway). I then assigned my West Cost (westbound) yard to SLC, and then assigned my east bound yard (a car float) to Deer Creek.

Now, I get a page of errors such as: "Cannot find route to get car LNE 12755 from SLC to Midway."  In the case this is a covered hopper RO that only goes between West Coast (a yard) and an industry named (so creatively) Grain Elevator.  (Grain Elevator is in the town of Midway).

So, I tried to find some info, did a search here... I'm probably not visualizing industries, yards, and towns correctly. Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

-Richard

[Robert Bowdidge]

Hi, Richard,

Have you defined any trains?  Switchlist looks at the trains you define to see how cars can move.  If Switchlist can't find a sequence of trains to take your car from A to B, then you'll get that error message.  Make sure you list every town where a train can work, and make sure that the trains between the two towns will carry that particular car type.

Also make sure the cars are in a staging yard or town on the layout; I'm not sure whether Switchlist will do the right thing if you've placed a car in an offline (imaginary) town.

Robert

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[Richard Finlayson]

Robert, thank you for your reply. Switchlist is a great thing!

 

I wonder if you could give me your guidance on what I am trying to do. I am new to HO, have never operated on anyone’s railroad. But I have some good friends who have helped me out along the way.

 

I am basically trying to set up a switching layout for personal 30-60 minute sessions. I will have an hour here and there and I like to go up and switch the railroad. My friend helped me create a paper system of a card holder for each card, with 6 loaded and 6 empty cards that fit in the envelope. I roll a dice to get the destination. It was fun… but got too complicated. So I simplified.

 

The basic concept is this: (I attached a JPG of the layout… and an embarrassingnly barren video that shows what I’m up to….)  https://youtu.be/A3_S7IY3ObY

 

West Yard receives in inbound train (from SLC)  that is then switched out to industries.

The cars come back to West Yard from the industries, and then get sent back to SLC.

The tank farm is dedicated to the car float and vice versa. (There’s a back story!)

 

Covered hoppers only switch between the grain elevator and West Yard.

Reefers only switch between the west yard and Warehouse. (I will add one more reefer destination once I get this figure out.)

 

Box cars can switch to Grain Elevator or Warehouse.

 

Open hoppers switch mostly to Wharf, but I need a car every now and then at my yard coal tipple.

 

Cars, unrealistically, do not switch between industries but I like it that way. Once a car goes out to industry it only comes back to the yard.

 

Each industry has a limit of total number of cars that can fit.

I would like to do unit trains of 3 cars for covered hoppers and the tank cars.

 

I am sure you are busy, but can you get me started in the right direction? Again, I would like to create a 30-60 minute operating session and call it good…

 

Thanks Robert!

 

-Richard

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[Richard Finlayson]

[Richard Finlayson]

(I think my reply was truncated...)

[Micheal Hodgson]

Have you figured it out? I can help you with what you need to do. But I don't want to type several pages if you have already got it figured.

[Richard Finlayson]

Michael, no I haven't, I could use some help! I sent you an email, thanks for reaching out to help me out.

Best,

-Richard

[Micheal Hodgson]

I have replied but not heard anything back. 

 Micheal