Using DecoderPro® to Operate Trains

Operations Locations Window

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The Operations Tool, Locations opens the Locations window as shown. Locations are places on your railroad that trains visit to pickup or drop off cars and engines. Locations can be cities, towns, or just places where trains need to work cars. To enter a new location press , which will open the Add Location window which we will discuss in a moment. But first let’s discuss the “Locations” window itself.

locations

menu bar

Tools
- Print

Preview
Schedules

Opens the Schedules panel. If you would like to see cars delivered in a particular sequence, or with a specific load for delivery or shipping, the program allows you to apply a schedule to a siding. This is an optional feature and shouldn't be used until you become very familiar with how the program generates manifests and switch lists.

Modify Locations -- Allows you to modify the location parameters.

Show Cars -- Shows a listing of cars at this location.

Sort by Name Id Sets the sort order for the locations

Press to add a location

The Add Location window is opened. At this point only the Location Name and the type operation at this location entries are active.

Add Location

Name The location name must be unique; the program will not allow two locations with identical names. However, if you want more than one location to have the same name for your manifests and switch lists, add a hyphen and a number to the locations name. For example, Boston-1 and Boston-2 will print as Boston. The program will remove the hyphen and number when printing manifests and switch lists.

Press the at the bottom of the panel. The various fields that were disabled should be enabled.

Add Location

Each location can have several yard, siding, interchange or staging tracks. Yards are where cars and engines are placed for temporary storage. A siding can be an industry or any place where a car is loaded or unloaded. For a train to service a location, there must be at least one track for that location. See below how to add tracks to your location.

The tables show the length of the tracks, the amount of track that is occupied (Used) by cars and engines, the total number of cars and engines (Rolling Stock) at each location, the number of cars and engines that will be picked up (Pickups) by trains, and the number of cars and engines that will be delivered (Drops) by trains.

This Location is Serviced by Trains Traveling North South East West
You can decide which train direction the location can service. For example, if only south bound trains can access the location select South and deselect the other directions. This can be useful if you want to only support trailing point switching for a given location. If a location can support multiple directions then select the ones that are appropriate.

Select the Rolling Stock serviced by this Location You can control the rolling stock a location can service. Push the "Clear All" to deselect all types, or "Select All" to select all types, then select or deselect the rolling stock you wish the location to accept.

Operations at this location Sidings Yards Interchange Staging only
To add a location, press the "Add ... Track" button. Now enter the name of the location along with the length of the track in scale feet or in actual inches. Append a double quote (") to the length when entering actual inches and the program will convert the length into scale feet. Append cm if you want to convert from centimeters to meters. Press the "Add ... Track" button at the bottom of the panel and the disabled fields should now appear.

The at the bottom of the window will change corresponding to the location added.

Each of these buttons opens a corresponding dialog to describe its function.

Rolling Stock Serviced

You can control what type of rolling stock the yard can service. Note that the yard rolling stock is restricted to the ones that the location can service. If the rolling stock that you wish doesn't appear for a yard, confirm that the location's rolling stock types are properly selected. If the rolling stock type you want doesn't exist for a location, you will have to create the type using the "Cars" panels, see Cars below.

Road Names Serviced

You can also restrict which roads a yard can service. Select "Accept Only" if you want to build a list of road names that the yard will accept. Select "Exclude" if you want to build a list of road names that you want to exclude from the yard.

Comment

You can enter an optional comment for the yard.

Save Yard Track

Press the to save your work. The program will create a file (OperationsLocationRoster.xml) in your JMRI directory in a folder called "operations". The program will also create a backup file containing the last settings for all of your locations.

Add Sidings, Yards, Interchange, or Staging Only(corresponding to the present task)

To add a location , press the "Add ...(location)" button.

Sidings are very similar to Yards, so see above for more information. You can if you wish schedule the order that cars will be delivered to a siding. See Schedules below for more information.

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