For my small switching layout I am starting to build some structures to
go along the spurs I have. However, in the meantime I occasionally do
some simple switching; just moving cars from one spot to another.
I thought about buying a railroad-operations software application, but
so far all the ones I have seen or tried, including the free JMRI
version, do not seem to allow me to just have the application generate a
random list of movements. At this point in my layout's development
stage, I don't care if a tank car is dropped off at a lumber yard
siding. I just want to have the fun of moving cars around.
In the back of my mind I am thinking of writing my own software
application down the line. However, the other night I had the simple
idea of writing down on a piece of paper all the cars I have (you could
use a word processing application as well). I cut the individual
"entries" out, so that I wound up with a pile of pieces of paper, each
listing a car's road name and number, as well as the type of car. I then
shuffled the pile around. Next, I randomly put one such piece of paper
at each car-spot on my layout.
The "operations" objective was to move a car from where it was currently
on the layout to where the piece of paper had it going. I spent an hour
and a half over two nights having fun switching my layout.
I guess this dove-tails into Jeff Madden's article in the June Dispatch
about how to enjoy this hobby of ours using little or no money.
Until I get more serious into operations (i.e. no tank cars delivered to
lumber yards anymore), I'll use this method to just have a relaxing
30-45 minutes enjoying my layout at the end of the day.
Enjoy,
- Peter.
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Peter Vanvliet ([email protected])
Houston, Texas
My Model Railroad Site <http://pmrr.org/> (RSS feed
<http://pmrr.org/rss.xml>)
Fourth Ray Software <http://fourthray.com/>
Houston S Gaugers <http://houstonsgaugers.org/>
N.A.S.G. <http://nasg.org/>
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