What would you do? Options

[Frascati]

Hi

AG has a number of limitations. One is that it will sometimes tell you to pick up wagons but then not tell you what to do with them. On a straightforward pull from A to B that's simple... you end up with the string in tow, looking for a yard marshal to tell you where to put them... and he probably would... but luckily the activity ends before he has a chance.

But on a turn it's more problamatic... My situation is this. I'm in Klamath in the BN E Yard, about to set out on a turn to Crescent Lake (100 miles away) I have to pick up 3 empties in the yard with no destination set. So what should I do...

Do I drag them to Crescent Lake and back to Klamath (200 miles round trip) Or do I Assume I've just been asked to move them in the yard and shuffle them to the back of the cut they're in (having nowhere better to put them).

The above is a special case, but it highlights that in fact I could satisify ALL of the pickups en-route by simply picking them up and dropping them off somewhere nearby...

And on a turn, would I leave the outward pickups at Crescent Lake and the Inward at Klamath?

It's a bit much to expect AG to tell you this sort of stuff, and I guess I'm left to do whatever I want with them...

But a set of House rules would be good to keep me on the straight and narrow.

I propose the following... (The underlying pricipal is to minimise movement)

1) pickups at the beginning of a turn activity with no destination are assumed to be movements to the rear of the cut that they are currently in.

2) Outward pickups are left at a convenient track at the turn location for forwarding.

3) Inward pickups are brought home.

Nuff Said. Comments please...

[nbeveridge]

[TO ALL READERS:  I hope that everyone reading this topic has the patience to read all of what Frascati has said, because you need to read the whole topic and think about it to fully understand.]

This is a dillema for all trains, in fact, not just a turn, since as stated on a straight pull the activity will end before you have to do something with the cars you pick up.  I believe that Steve's basic assumption is that the cars which are picked up will stay in that train until the activity terminates.  Consequently, AG does not  specify a further destination for those cars.  In fact, the default ending "last pick up" will exit the activity exactly at that point, even before putting that last pick up in the train, if all set outs have already been made.  And the player train will never get back to a yard unless that is where the final pick up or set out is made.

The user can complicate issues by selecting the "assemble train" option for terminating the activity.  When this is done, even if all the set outs and pick ups have been done, the train will not terminate until the cars are sorted in the order listed on the workorder.  Now the question is this:  Where do you sort, at the last siding or at the yard?  AG doesn't care where you do it.

For operating a turn, you have a very good point.  Some turns in the RW work sort of as you describe, dropping some cars at the turn point for forwarding on down the line, and returning to the point of origin with the rest.  But sometimes all pick ups return to the point of origin.  And in any case it is not certain that all pick ups on the outbound leg are set out at the turn point for forwarding.

When you develop your operating scheme and then generate an activity for that purpose, you can carefully choose what track to work, but the end point is sort of free form.  Steve has talked of helping the run through activities by giving a more definite end point, and I suspect that this would help the local freights and turns as well.  For instance, another option for ending the activity would be to choose an ending track at some town or yard, and stop the entire train on that track.  Due to track length vs. train length issues, this may be more complicated than it seems.  E.g how do you end an activity where the final train is 20 cars long, and the end point has only one track, and that track is less than 20 cars + locos + caboose in length?  I think MSTS has our hands tied in this case.

And that doesn't solve the question of forwarding on the outward leg of a turn.

All in all, the end point of these activites requires a little imagineering.  Have you done the work specified in the work order?  Yes.  Has the train run to its terminus and the crew departed.  Probably not.