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]

Thank you Jim -- most helpful to confirm you can have cars spilling onto the mainline in the .act file.

The video tutorials are quite good. Indeed they contain information in addition to the manual.

The problems I was having seem to be happening with the two .csv files. I'm not sure why they worked sometimes and not other times, but I am going to focus on getting my .act file the way I want, then go make a new SWLACT.csv file and get that the way I want, then drop in the original SWLTDB.csv file (with modified car types).

Christopher