Basically I am trying to make a way where, when I
come across an activity that requires a BNSF Dash9 I can go into
activity editor and from the Wagon Categories list select BNSF which
would have in it all BNSF Locomotives that are on my Hard Drive. The
problem I am having is that no matter what I do I cannot save any of my
BNSF Engines under the category of BNSF, every time I do this and exit
the program when i return to it they all have changed back to the
generic "DIESEL" instead of "BNSF" I have looked in the Car types,
RSLIST, RSDB and Replacement Matrix excel sheets with no success. Every
time I alter rsdb from Excel when I use activity editor it over writes
what I have saved in the excel rsdb file.


Any help would be greatly appreciated thanks.

I'm not as knowledgeable about AM as I am about AG, but I do know that many files are involved.  Perhaps you are still missing one -- like maybe the sort list???  I will have to defer to Steve's expertise. nbeveridge2007-8-29 15:54:24

Right now this is a limitation of the program and MSTS.  The reason is, locomotives must be differentiated from "wagons".  So to know if I'm dealing with a locomotive, I use either "DIESEL", "STEAM" or "ELECT", or "ENG~" if it is a missing locomotive of unknown type.  AM doesn't allow any other type classes for locomotives.

As I said in my response to your email, you can use the "Rolling Stock Groups" capability to accomplish what you're trying to do.  Just put all your BNSF equipment in a group.  Note that any piece of rolling stock can be in multiple groups at the same time.

For a future release I'll see how I can get around this limitation.  I am thinking about a major update to Activity Master, like I did to Activity Generator with AG4.  It would be AM2.  If I tracked whether something was a locomotive (which needs the "EngineData" tag in the consist or activity files) or a piece of rolling stock (which needs the "WagonData" tag in those files) separately, then I COULD allow you to set types for locos.  Even have types for 6 axle vs 4, modern diesel vs transition era, different railroads, etc. 

The advantage of my allowing all this would be you'd have a lot more control over what replacements are made.  The disadvantage is that would be a lot more work to set up.

One third option: use the "Specific List" option (click "Specific List") when replacing so you only replace locomotives with the era, railroad, and number of axles that you want.  That's the way I do it, so I don't get 4 axle Geeps trying to do the job of an SD75MAC etc.

Thanks,

Steve