If you would like to see Cars delivered to a customer's siding in a particular sequence, or with a specific Load for delivery or shipping, the program allows you to apply a (Manifest) Schedule to a Spur Track. This is an optional feature and shouldn't be used until you become very familiar with how the program generates Manifests and Switch Lists.
A Schedule provides very fine control on the order in which specific Cars Types will be delivered to a Spur Track. You can also specify the Road name for the type of Car delivered. For example, if you wanted two SP boxcars to be delivered followed by a tank car loaded with "Oil", you can create a Schedule that will make OperationsPro do exactly that.
You can also access your Schedules from the Locations panel Tools menu. The Schedules table provides status for each Schedule. Since you can assign one Schedule to multiple Spurs Tracks, the table also provides additional status info for each of the Tracks that use that particular Schedule. The table also allows you the edit a Schedule once its been assigned to a Spur Track.
First open the Locations window.
Then press in the column to the right of the location that you desire to schedule and the Edit Location window will open.
To Schedule a location, select in the column to the right to schedule the specific track at a location, then the Edit (Spur or other type of track) Track window will open.
|
Next to Optional Schedule on the Edit Spur Track panel. Presssing opens the Add Schedule panel. |
If the Schedule already exists, the Edit Schedule for Spur [spur
name] window opens so you can modify (or delete) it.
If no Schedule is selected, then pressing
opens the Add Schedule for Spur [spur name]
pane.
A Schedule can operate in two modes:
Type a Name for your Schedule and then press on the bottom of the panel. Multiple Spur Tracks can use the same Schedule as long as the Tracks use the same Car types and Roads.
Now add your first delivery for this Track by selecting a Car type and pressing . . A new item of Type "Boxcar" should appear in your Schedule list:
A Timetable may be specified using drop-down menus.
If you wish, specify a particular Road for the type of Car you entered, or leave the Road
field blank if you don't care about the Road name.
You can also specify the Car Load for both Receive and Ship.
The Add/Edit Schedule panel has a new "Random" column with a menu of 8 items. The default is [Blank] (disabled), and there are values between 5 and 50. If you select 5, it tells the program to randomly reduce the number of Car Moves at this Location by up to 5%. So if you asked for 10 Moves, you could get 10 or 9 Moves. If you selected 50, you could get any number of Moves between 10 and 5. Be sure to press "Save Schedule" to save you setting.
If you want more than one Car of this Type to be delivered consecutively, increase the number in the Count field. The maximum Count is 10 and the minimum is 1. Repeat selecting Car types and pressing until you have a delivery Schedule that you like. Press and close the Add/Edit Schedule panel when you are done.
Note only Car Types and Roads that are accepted by this Spur Track are available. If a Car Type or Road isn't available, check the Car Types and Roads set up for this Track and Location in the respective panes.
If you want a specific Load for your cars, you can create them using the Edit Car Attributes for car Load. Each new custom Load type is associated with the Car type. For example you can have "Screws" for a Boxcar, and "Oil" for a Tankcar. OperationsPro will only deliver Cars with a "Schedule Load" to a Spur Track that has a matching Schedule that also requests that particular Load. However, Cars with a Schedule Load can still be placed at Yards, Staging, and Interchange Tracks.
You can optionally use your Staging Tracks to empty cars with a "Schedule" load, and you can also create "Schedule" loads using staging tracks.