Well, we’ve had an overview of Operations, so let’s see if we can make it work. We could sit down and enter a whole bunch of information into the Locations, Cars, Engines, Routes and Trains screens or do it the easy way and use the built-in Demo Railroad. Since this is a training (pun intended) exercise, we’ll use the Demo files.
To get the demo files entered, Go to the main menu and click on Tools, scroll all the way to the bottom to select Operations, and slide sideways to select Settings. On the Operations Settings screen click the box marked Tools and slide down and click on Load Demo Files.
Now go back to the DecoderPro main menu to quit and then re-start the program. When the program presents the main DecoderPro screen, click on Tools, scroll all the way to the bottom to select Operations, slide sideways and this time click on Locations. You should have a Locations Screen that looks like this:
If you select Lakeview and click on the Edit box way over on the right of the entry for Lakeview, you’ll see a screen like that below, showing that Lakeview is a staging area that can accommodate almost any kind of car. This will be the starting point for our mythical trip.
We will now exit the description screen for Lakeview by clicking the red X in the upper right.
Next, let’s take a look at what’s available to make up our train. The Cars Screen is loaded with entries from which the Operations Program can choose, so many that there’s a slider on the right to scroll the list. Again clicking on the Edit box on the right we could see the specifics of any one car and of course Edit the data (if it was our own). We won’t bother.
Of course, we’ll need Motive Power to pull our train, so let’s look at what’s in the Engines stable.
Since we know we’re departing from Lakeview we probably want to eyeball that pair of Trainmasters sitting over on track #97. The Command Station on our Demo railroad is obviously an NCE product because these locos are assigned NCE consist #118.
So how does Operations REALLY work?? Well, once you have all the data entered as we’ve seen above, we can generate a set of manifests for the train operations. To do this we use the Trains Screen:
Here there are several trains ready to build. The highlighted train is #LB3029 from Lakeview to Bakersfield. By putting a check mark in the box under build and then clicking the Build Box at the bottom of the screen we were able to get the manifest built so that we can preview it. It’s a short run, but still takes more than one page of fine print instructions for the crew.
We pick up our engines in Lakeview and head over to the yard to gather up a bunch of cars and a caboose. Then we get ready to depart at 7:10 on the fast clock. We should arrive at Farmington at 7:14, and since there were no Farmington bound cars in Lakeview, and nothing in Farmington bound for
Hillsboro or Bakersfield, the program has scheduled no work to do at Farmington. So we’ll keep going. When we arrive at Hillsboro (hopefully at 7:18), we have some set-outs and pick-ups to attend to. Then, we’re off to Bakersfield, gliding through Danville and Port Arthur on the way. Arriving at Bakersfield right on time at 8:21, we drop the boxcar at Heritage Furniture, the Coalhopper in the yard, and slide the caboose gently into the caboose track. Now we can take the motive power over to the engine terminal and call in to Dispatch asking for the trip to be terminated.
The trip is terminated by selecting it in the Trains screen and clicking the terminate button. This would then enter the new locations of the rolling stock into the data screens and release them for the next build.
So that wasn’t so difficult, was it? Hope you enjoyed your cab ride.
