This may be a toughie, Steve, but here goes:

Let's say I download one of Bob Pickering's monster activity packs for a particular route. It contains, say, 12 different activities, all using the same downloaded stock. The way it works now, Activity Master will only create an archive for one activity at a time, which can be a fairly time-consuming process for users like me who desire specific replacements for unknown and known stock (less work than using Conbuilder or Route Riter, I admit, but still...). Has any thought been given to an AM upgrade that would, as an option, replace all stock in an activity pack with a one-time set up?

Just wondering...

Uncle E

That is an interesting idea. One way to get what you want would be to use the "Rolling Stock Groups" feature so that the cars that are available for replacement are always the same. I suppose one way to handle your idea would be to allow users to save their choices for what is replaced with what. Then you could load that as a starting point and only have to fill out any cars in a new activity that weren't in the other activity in the pack. Would that work?

Thanks,

Steve

Yeah, that should do the trick. I already have dedicated groups set up for each of my routes, but (for instance) replacing 15 or so D9-40W's, 25 or so autoracks and God knows how many coal hoppers in a dozen activities with the handful I have can cause my eyes to sink into the back of my head.

I wouldn't call it a high priority for an AM upgrade -- just when you have time to tinker with it.

Uncle E

Just want to add my vote here to do this as well, Steve; this is a great idea!

Cheers,

Dave

I guess the tough thing for me would be how would AM know which activities were in a "Pack"? To me, if you set up groups for replacement then that should solve most of it, granted you'd need to go through each activity and do the replacement but the actual work involved would be minimal.

I have quite a few rolling stock groups set up on my system and really don't run into too many issues using them. I do have some that are setup for a bare minimum of car types. I might choose between 5 and 15 for each car type to save in group. That seems to work best when replacing stock. This way, I can just go down the list and just check each item that needs replacing. I usually leave the ones I do have in the activity. With the locomotives, I usually leave F-Units, both A's and B's out of the mix within the groups. You can get some strange combinations if you're not careful. Also, as Activity Master learns the rolling stock, it gets even easier. You have to keep assigning 'Unknown' stock, when it comes up, to some sort of car type. Most times, I can be up and running an activity within 10 minutes at most. Depending on who the author is of the activity, I have found many that use the same consists in those packs. That makes it even easier to work with and, of course, you could alway run it through AM again if you like.

Jim