Table of Contents
Operator & Trains
Content → Objects → Operators & Trains
Operating trains is the main issue on real railroads. Why should a loco running when not moving a train from one location to another carrying people or goods?
All Rocrail features around assembling and operate trains are described here in chapter "trains"
Shunting freight cars and delivery of goods, including logistics by car cards and waybills are a second element in reality.
All Rocrail features around these themes are described here in chapter "operator"
For both issues this dialogue “Operator & Trains” is used.
Trains
Train Features
- Support for shunting.
- Easy change the locomotive of a train.
- Locomotives and cars are managed completely independent.
- Max. km/h for each member of the train.
- Weight loaded and unloaded which can be used for automatic modification of Loco acceleration.
- Decoder function synchronization.
- Dedicated functions for a train, controlled by loco throttle by "shift" when loco assigned to the train.
- Automatically update of the train locality.
- Block and Route permissions can be defined on a train respective on a car
Description for assembling and operation of trains
Operator
The Operator Control is an assistance to do car forwarding without real cards, but with help of a dialog. Also composing a consist together is done by this dialog. Cars can be added and left behind for loading, unloading or maintenance.
It offers an easy way for running some parts automatically and the rest by hand.
Car Forwarding
Source: http://www.opsig.org/
Car Card
A card used to represent a specific model car on a layout. It will have at least a basic description of the car such as type and color as well as reporting marks and number to identify it. The carcard information is "permanent," ie. does not change regardless of what the car is currently doing.
Waybill (card)
A card used with the carcard (above) to indicate the destination, routing and other information about the specific shipment the car is currently being used for. Usually the waybill card is a separate item smaller than the carcard such that it can be clipped to or (more commonly) slipped into the pocket of the carcard leaving the car identification information showing. The waybill may show information about 1, 2, 3, or 4 (sometimes more) movements depending on which side of the waybill is turned up.
Car Card
Each card represents one car or a block of cars and contains at least following information:
- Type
- Class (AAR)
- Railroad and number
- Description
- Status: empty, loaded, maintenance
The actual "owner" of the card can be either a consist or a location.
Waybill
Waybills contain the instructions for the movement of the cars over the layout.
A car can have one or more Waybills and each card defines:
- Shipper name and addresss (Point of Origin (ie. load pickup spot))
- Consignee name and addresss (Destination (ie. load dropoff spot))
- Consignment Load Description (Commodity)
- Cartype Required
- Routing
- Status: set ready, shipping, delivered
understanding-model-railroad-waybills-operations.pdf
Locomotive Card
A locomotive card is placed on top of a deck of car cards for a train. (Consist)
- Railroad and number
- Type
- DCC Address
This already exists in Rocrail: Locomotive Table.
Car Forwarding in Rocrail
Top Down
Every operator get a train/consist, by extended LocControlDialog. (Operator ↔ TrainID)
The dialog contains:
- Locomotive card; top of the stack(tabs)
- A From-To selection for an "automatic on demand" controlled "Main line Run"
- A "Move to" button for:
- freeing up the last known location of the train in Rocrail and reserve a yard(block group).
- leave a yard and enter a main line block.
- A stack of Car cards; second tab in a list sorted by order. (Switchlist)
- On the same tab one or more waybills for the selected car.
- Move Car Cards to edit the consist. A move can take place between locations and consists.
- All waybills sorted by routing order on the next tab. ¹
- Set status of progress.
- Add/Delete/Modify Waybills.
¹) At least the waybill table must be shared by all Rocrail servers.
Rocrail Networked
See: R2Rnet Networking
If every Yard or station is controlled by its own Rocrail server it needs a networking functionality to run trains from station to station in automatic mode.
New functionality
-
- Select a free block to bring in a train to give it over to the automatic control.
- Set an end block/location to get back into manual control.
- Free blocks manually.