Software

Car Forwarding / Traffic Generation

When trying to determine how to operate the railroad, there are many things to consider beyond the layout design. A critical decision is how is traffic going to be generated? I have operated on layouts using many methods: software generated switchlists from RailOp and ShipIt; manually created computer switchlists using a spreadsheet or word processor; and many variations of the car card / waybill system.

I decided early that if I could help it, I did not want to use car cards. Many people like them and successfully use them. I don’t care for them due to need to physically keep track of the cards and carry them around during op sessions, and I think they limit traffic flexibility. Manually creating switchlists has its benefits, but again limits variation and traffic flexibility, and can be time consuming to maintain.

I have not made any final decisions yet as I have not tried to implement any system, but right now my plan is to use a car forwarding software program. After spending some time looking at RailOp at the 2006 AmRail operations event, I plan an attempt at implementing it. I am probably at least six to twelve months away from this project though (Fall 2007).

Dispatching

The next consideration is how to dispatch the layout. While my layout is not huge, it is far too large to effectively use a mother-may-I approach. Since I am modeling the modern era, TT/TO was ruled out, although I enjoy operating layouts using this process. I have been at several layouts that have operating CTC panels, and I really enjoy the realism that they lend, and they are just plain impressive when well implemented. I did not want to incur the expense they require, nor do I feel that I have the capability to implement one in any sort of reasonable time frame. This is something I may do in the future.

I contemplated computer control, and looked into several of the programs out there including Railroad and Company, WinLok, and JMRI. While attending the 2005 national convention in Cincinnati, I attended a clinic on CATS. CATS is a custom, JMRI derivative developed by Rodney Black for Pat Lana’s CRANDIC layout. I liked a lot of what I saw and read about CATS, so I contacted Rodney, got it installed, and started playing with it.

CATS is a flexible system, and allows you to implement CTC, APB, and ABS protocols. For most model railroad implementations, I think it would work very well, and I am happy with it so far. I have not hooked up any on-layout signaling yet, but I do have some detection blocks installed and interfaced with the program, and have most of my layout configured on the panel allowing me to experiment with the program prior to hardware installation. (I think this is one of its many strong points.) I set up CATS on a friend's TT/TO layout without any detection or on-layout signals basically as a CTC magnet board and it has been working well. It really has several ways it can be utilized.

CATS Clinic given at 2007 Midwest Regional Convention

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