Restricting Stock to certain tracks Options

[Frascati]

Hi

Is there a way of restricting stock to appear only on certain tracks. I have some military stock which I wish to appear only on military sidings. By putting this stock on Industry tracks, Ive got it partly doing what I want. But it also appears in the random mix of stock that is used to fill the route.

Secondly is there way to influence the selection of stock. Say have the local operators stock predominate but have foreign stock occasionaly turn up. It seems that at the moment all boxcars (say) are put into a pool and treated equally so that if you had say 5 SP boxcars and 20 foreign, the SP cars would only appear 20% of the time.

Thanks

[nbeveridge]

Hi

Is there a way of restricting stock to appear only on certain tracks. I have some military stock which I wish to appear only on military sidings. By putting this stock on Industry tracks, Ive got it partly doing what I want. But it also appears in the random mix of stock that is used to fill the route.

Secondly is there way to influence the selection of stock. Say have the local operators stock predominate but have foreign stock occasionaly turn up. It seems that at the moment all boxcars (say) are put into a pool and treated equally so that if you had say 5 SP boxcars and 20 foreign, the SP cars would only appear 20% of the time.

Thanks

I don't know an easy way to do this short of manually editing the activity (after generation by AG) using CB?

These are certainly ideas worth considering for inclusion in the program, and Steve and I have discussed these and many others in the past.  Steve is gradually adding more and more nice features to AG.

Two similar issues which we have discussed are (1) having more than one "car type wanted" for a given industry (for example, a lumber yard will commonly receive both box cars and center beams), and (2) industry frequency (which would influence the likelihood of car movement at an individual industry).  Perhaps Steve could add a "car type not wanted" and a "home road / foreign road frequency" to help with your questions.

[Frascati]

Thanks for the response. One way I've thought of of achieving the first point would be to mark the cars in the activity csv file with a Y/N in a new column 'include in random setouts'. These special cars usually appear only on a few tracks, so it would not be onerous to do. AG could default this column to all 'Y' if missing (the current situation) for backward compatibility.

On the subject of random fill setouts I would like to see a bit more grouping of similar car types, rather than the current potpourri. Say an 80% chance that a car-pick will be the same type as the one previously picked. This would produce strings of similar cartypes which I think is more prototypical.

Yes it would be nice to have more than one car type wanted / produced. But surely this can already be achieved by having a cartype of say 'LUMB-IN'  which is used for both boxcars / center  beams and woodchippers. Similary 'LUMB-OUT' for the production side.

[AT RR]

Frascati,

If you are up to editing the files I have found if you add 2 or more seed cars of the type you want to see using MSTS activity editor will give you about 80% to 90% of same car type filling into industry. It looks like the extra seed cars helps cut down on the odds when you compile the switch list.

Then add a unique car type for your cars in your case "ARMY" for full cars and "ARMYMT" for the empty cars. You will have to edit your switch list, track table and car type CSV files so AG will recognize the new car types.

On my template I put 4 empty coal "CLMT" seed cars at the power plant and 4 full coal "CL" seed cars at the coal pier. Then mark cars wanted for the powerplant to "CL" and the cars wanted on the coal pier "CLMT". This way the empty cars will end up on the coal pier and the fill cars will end up at the power plant.

Steve I hope I did not butcher up this explination. 

Peter   

[nbeveridge]

Thanks for the response. One way I've thought of of achieving the first point would be to mark the cars in the activity csv file with a Y/N in a new column 'include in random setouts'. These special cars usually appear only on a few tracks, so it would not be onerous to do. AG could default this column to all 'Y' if missing (the current situation) for backward compatibility.

On the subject of random fill setouts I would like to see a bit more grouping of similar car types, rather than the current potpourri. Say an 80% chance that a car-pick will be the same type as the one previously picked. This would produce strings of similar cartypes which I think is more prototypical.

Yes it would be nice to have more than one car type wanted / produced. But surely this can already be achieved by having a cartype of say 'LUMB-IN'  which is used for both boxcars / center  beams and woodchippers. Similary 'LUMB-OUT' for the production side.

I am glad you wrote back.  This exchange of ideas and desires is very productive to further development of the software.

Your first idea sounds like a good way to accomplish restriction of cars from random fill.  Maybe your suggestion will help Steve find an easy way to implement this in a new version of AG.  And your point about backwards compatibility is very important -- he has delayed certain desirable improvements simply because they would not be backwards compatible.

Your second point, about wanting random fill to roup cars by type, is another option which Steve and I have discussed.  What we desire is to have another user option (yes, we know that there are already many!) so that the user can choose to have total random cars, as occurs now, or you can choose to more likely have strings of like car types.  A lot depends on era and locale.  In modern times, you are very likely to see strings anywhere.  In olden days ('60's, for example), strings were likely in coal mining areas (coal cars), of course, or near specialized industries such as refineries (tank cars) or produce (ice reefers), but most other places you found quite a mix.  That is why we want to make it a user option, perhaps with a slider or maybe just an on-off toggle.

On your third point, yes, you can do some manipulation of car types.  We do this already with empty and loaded cars, such as coal cars (CL and CLE) or gons (G or GE), i.e. anything with an open load.  This is easy to do, but is almost always within one car type.  Because this was so easy to do, Steve will probably never implement the empties/loads option unless car weights become critical to a lot of users.  My own preference, however, is for a general service car, especially a box car, to be able to go anywhere that a box car is needed.  But that's my preference.  Your solution is perfectly valid, and if you don't mind, I may very well use it for lumber yards in future or revised templates which have enough different cars!

This brings up the subject of another change to AG which most users probably have never noticed.  As the templates become more and more sophisticated, we end up using more and more car types.  For instance, the early templates may have only about 12 to 15 car types, including one type of gon, one type of flat, one type of hopper, one type of covered hopper.  But as we learned to make more realistic templates, we pushed the limit of how many car types were allowed, and Steve has increased this number at least twice that I know of.  This was to accommodate car types like gons with scrap loads (GSCR), gons with pipe loads (GPIPE), gons with gravel loads (GGRAV), gons with RR ties (GTIE), gons with coal (GCL), etc.  Yet the counterpart for all of these gon types is one car, just an empty gon (GE).  Similarly for other open load cars such as flat cars and hoppers.  But it also applies for cars without open loads, such as covered hoppers (plastics, grain, chemicals, sand, cement, etc.) and tank cars (crude, gasoline, food, water, LPG, etc.).  To be realistic, we don't want to mix these car types. So you can see that from 15 car types, we could easily push up to 60 or more.

All of this would be much easier if the route designers broke down the industries a bit more.  For instance, it is not uncommon for a mega industry to have a long track going past three different box car doors, a hopper unloading elevator, and a tank car hose rack.  Yet this is all one industry.  If we had multiple "car types wanted", the user could get those cars to the proper spot on that track by his own volition.  But it would still be possible for AG to route ten tank cars and only one box car to the track, where it has room for five box cars, four hoppers and one tank car.  So it would still be a compromise.  In this case, I would ask for not only multiple "car types wanted", but also a breakdown of how many of each per track so that AG could get it right.  Not sure how hard this is for Steve to put into the program.

Finally let me add that I am truly glad that you wrote back.  You have stimulated my thinking.  I now see new ways to make better, more realistic templates, which will result in better, more realistic activities, which will benefit the entire MSTS community!

nbeveridge2007-2-28 17:1:38

[AT RR]

Norman,

Last night I did some out side the box thinking, if I can force empty and loads to different tracks why not force home road cars to fill tracks. What if I reset some of my car seed car types to NYC. I then changed my seed car type for a yard track to 3 different NYC cars I put 2 of each on the track. These cars were a bx, tofc and RFR car types. I then created 3 new car types in the car type cvs. BNYC (bx) TNYC (tofc) and RNYC (rfr). Edited all the support CSV files to match the new care types. When I ran AG I ended up with a string of mixed NYC cars and 1 ERIE box. The Erie box may be a random joker after the car fill crunched.

Using this method one could set some yard or industry tracks to only fill with home road roling stock to give the sim a family look. All the other tracks will still fill with random rolling stock.

This is only an quick test and will need further testing.

Peter 

[nbeveridge]

Peter,

Thanks for writing another response full of thought provoking ideas.

I have noticed that the "seed" car placed on an industry track in the template has a great influence as to what cars are placed on that track via the "fill world" function.  But I had never thought to place more than one car there to try to influence it even further.  How exactly this works in AG I don't know, but I will discuss it with Steve.

This idea will help with template development, and I will stash it in my bag of tricks for use in future templates and in modification of existing templates.

How easily this can be done is dependent in part on how many cars are in the template.  For instance, if I have only one NYC box car, I cannot use it for both a BX and for a BNYC.  Common practice is to create the template using as few downloads as possible, maximizing use of default equipment.  If a route has no default equipment, then this pretty much restricts the template to the 23 basic car types in the MSTS default set.  That leaves little room for manipulating car types in the way you have described.  Even when "forced" into using a lot of downloads, as with the NS templates that I did, the template really does not have a large variety of most car types.  The NS set has 52 cars, I believe, of which 23 are the MSTS default set and 16 more are from a nice coal car download.  That leaves only 13 of all other cars!

But for the end user, like yourself, who is savvy about modifying the templates and who has a large amount of rolling stock, this trick may very well solve some of the issues at hand.

As I said, I will discuss this with Steve to see if we may have a way to accomplish the "home road" world fill that you desire.  This may also lead to some other ideas of how to influence car placement.

Once again you have stimulated my thinking.  As a result, as I said before, I see more ways to make better, more realistic templates, which will result in better, more realistic activities, which will benefit the entire MSTS community!

[AT RR]

Norman,

Thank you for the complement but I'm far from savvy as I have only had MSTS for little over a year. Actualy after I did the test I re-set my template for the exact reason you stated, TOO many cars.

What made me try with the "home road" concept was in answer to Fracati's question on how to force more dedicated military cars into locations.  This is an option but as you stated there is a down side too. We just have to find the correct balance.

 Working on my NYC West Shore Terminal temlpate has made me think and look deep into the workings of MSTS. Doing things like overfilling sidings just to see what the limits of the program are and then correcting for a good balance.

The nice thing about the Jersey City route is to test an area to see if it will work goes very quick due to the high density and everything is with in a few "miles" of each other and you don't have to travel 50 miles in you train from Clovis to find out the siding or a pick up does not work correct.

Peter

[sgdavis]

You can tell Activity Generator what kind of rolling stock goes on each track by setting the car  type for that track.  So if the car type is box car then only box cars will go on it.

You could give your military box cars a different type, say MBX, and then only put that type where you want it.

[sgdavis]

Frascati,

If you are up to editing the files I have found if you add 2 or more seed cars of the type you want to see using MSTS activity editor will give you about 80% to 90% of same car type filling into industry. It looks like the extra seed cars helps cut down on the odds when you compile the switch list.

Then add a unique car type for your cars in your case "ARMY" for full cars and "ARMYMT" for the empty cars. You will have to edit your switch list, track table and car type CSV files so AG will recognize the new car types.

On my template I put 4 empty coal "CLMT" seed cars at the power plant and 4 full coal "CL" seed cars at the coal pier. Then mark cars wanted for the powerplant to "CL" and the cars wanted on the coal pier "CLMT". This way the empty cars will end up on the coal pier and the fill cars will end up at the power plant.

Steve I hope I did not butcher up this explination. 

Peter   

This is exactly correct, thanks for the response!

[Frascati]

Steve,

I think there has been a misunderstanding. I have no problem with getting military stock onto military sidings and picking up and dropping off correct stock too them. The stock is used correctly within cuts that are to be worked.

No...

The problem is one of having the stock scattered willy-nilly throughout the route wherever the AG needs to generate a random stockfill... I think my proposed solution would solve the problem.

 

 

[nbeveridge]

Steve,

I think there has been a misunderstanding. I have no problem with getting military stock onto military sidings and picking up and dropping off correct stock too them. The stock is used correctly within cuts that are to be worked.

No...

The problem is one of having the stock scattered willy-nilly throughout the route wherever the AG needs to generate a random stockfill... I think my proposed solution would solve the problem.

 

 

What has happened is that the string of discussion is so long that the original question got lost.  I will discuss this with Steve this weekend.

[nbeveridge]

The new version of the program, AG4, will have enough options for car type wanted and shipped that I think this issue will be resolved.  See the topic on AG4.