Adding cars to a Template, Increasing the total Number of cars Options

[Conductor Chris]

I am a relatively new user of Activity Generator and am slowly learning how everything works. I appreciate that the program is here.

I got to thinking I'd like things better if some of templates had more cars in them to reduce the instance of the same car being seen over and over when sidings are populated as "eye candy". I presume that the way to do this is to add cars to the .act file using activity generator.

My first attempt to do this resulted in me breaking something and the activities generated had no random cars added on sidings at all, just the placeholder boxcar used in the .act file. I'm not sure if my errors were from managing to put more cars onto sidings than they could hold or if I did something wrong that involved the two .csv files.

So I am getting ready to go back and do it again, more slowly and testing every step instead of rushing. I have a few questions.

First, is there any limit to the number of cars in an activity file?

One limit is what tracks are available to stuff these cars. If I put cars in the .act file on sidings that are not referenced in the .csv file, will that cause problems? Will it result in more cars placed by activity generator or make no difference? Can I put cars in a long consist that spills out onto the mainline and runs up it for awhile? Is there any limit to consist size?

What about cars used by AI trains? Do they get added into the database of cars used to populate sidings? That might be an easy way to go . . . add more AI trains.

If, instead of using single marker boxcars for sidings, I were to add several cars per siding, does that change how many cars AG will put there? I don't think so right - because that is controlled in the .csv file, right? So in theory, I should be able to add, say, 99 cars that spills out onto the mainline a long way, right? As long as the car in the activity is positioned in the right way, instead of the usual AG pattern of being positioned closest to the switch and pointing towards the end of the siding.

thanks.
Christopher

[Conductor Chris]

I am still working on this problem.

I now cannot use the MSTS activity editor. Previous computer died and I'm on windows 8. My only option is to manually modify .act files

I am modifying the FJ&G template, going slowly and testing things out.
I am adding cars to loose consists on the .act file and then adding the cars into the ACT file.

I am able to manually switch cars by changing the .act and the ACT .csv file.

I do not seem to be able to increase the total number of cars that activity generator includes in the activity. Which is my goal.

If, for example, there is a siding with a capacity of 4 cars, but in the .act file only one car was used, I cannot add more cars. It doesn't throw an error, however the cars are not seen by activity generator, not used in activities and if you make a test car type for one of them and call for it in the TDB file activity generator won't find it and will throw an error. Likewise if there is a siding with a bunch of cars, for example matching it's capacity of 22 cars, no cars can be added - the same behavior is seen.

I got to thinking the missing cars are because the loose consists do not have an associated pickup.
But I believe I have successfully manually coded in another pickup and it is having no effect - the cars on the affected siding are still not read by activity generator.
As a test, I found a four car siding with a pre-existing pickup with only one car in the .act file. I added another car. This second car was not seen by activity generator.

Another approach would be to figure out how to just add the additional cars to existing sidings that Activity Generator can see which already have a pickup. So far I have not been able to make work either. It doesn't work, regardless of if the siding capacity has been reached or not.

My approach has been to modify the .act file, one change at a time and then drop the additional car into the ACT .csv file. But I never got it working in my earlier attempts at making new activities with the activity editor. Just to experiment I also tried the approach of directing activity editor to make a new ACT .csv file -- but this included none of my attempts at putting in new cars, landing them in the match errors . . . even when there WAS a corresponding pickup. Nothing new was seen by activity generator. Again, the same behavior as when previously creating a new activity using MSTS tools activity editor.

Because I am able to replace existing cars in the activity with other cars, I do not think there is a problem with how I'm listing them in the ACT .csv file.

Christopher