Cars Shown In Work Order Don't Show Up in Sim, .act file only shows UID and siding number, not info on car Options

[Conductor Chris]

I've been modifying the Buffalo template, adding a larger variety of rolling stock and changing things up.

After adding cars to the template .act file and making new SLGTBD and SLGACT files I got everything working, I thought. I generated an activity which produced a credible looking work order and a SLG prefixed activity file to use which I then loaded up in Open Rails. I eased the locomotive out of the engine house and got a surprise when I found the yard bare.

A little investigation shows that the .act file that was produced by activity generator shows only UID and siding number for the cars instead of the car folder name and file name.

In other words, it looks like this:
Events (
EventCategoryAction (
EventTypePickUpWagons ( )
ID ( 1 )
Activation_Level ( 1 )
Outcomes ( )
Name ( "Action 1")
Wagon_List (
UiD ( 2184839168 )
SidingItem ( 3827 )
UiD ( 2184839169 )
SidingItem ( 3827 )
UiD ( 2184839170 )
SidingItem ( 3827 )

Any idea why this might have happened?

Obviously Activity Generator is able to read the cars it has to work with, as it produced the switch lists, but it wasn't able to property write them to the new .act file. Why?

Thank you
Christopher

[dgionet]

Hi Christopher,

Not an easy question to answer.

Normally in one SLG-generated activity like the Washington and Old Dominion Westbound template done this morning (WODWB), the WORKORDER-WODWB and the SLG-WODWB act file show the following:

WORKORDER-WODWB
WORKORDER-WODWB file by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr

SLG-WODWB
SLG-WODWB act file by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr

As seen on the SLG generated act file, the cars to be picked up by the original consist ( 2 engines, 8 cars at start, from 0-20 to 0-27, with caboose) for the first order ( see item 1) are identified by numbers I do not know what it corresponds. It displays siding item 1190 twice, corresponding to the two cars to be picked up. The second order ( item 2) for cars to be set out identifies the car numbers from the original consists, here from UID 23 to UID 27.

What does the workorder for the activity displays on the txt file for the SLG-generated activity?

Could it be possible that the activity generated only pickups and no setouts?

Thanks

[Conductor Chris]

Thanks, Dennis

I went back and had a second look and tried the activity again. Apparently I got distracted looking at the pickup events, expecting to see cars listed there. But the wagon lists in the activity look fully stocked and there are an expected number of cars to pickup and setout listed on the work order. But opening up open rails and none of the loose consists are present. The original template makes SLG activity files that work fine.

Well. I've fixed it now. Apparently I needed the process of posting here and being reassured by you that those goose chase I was on isn't the answer.

The problem turned out to be that in the process of adding back in the pickup activities to the template .act file I had deleted the first line of the activity objects list:
ActivityObjects (
The next line is
ActivityObject (
So I hadn't noticed there was a problem.

It now works fine.

Thank you
Christopher