My Trackmarks Disappeared

boleyd

Well-known member
I have been working on the geography of this route for a tleast a year. I recently decided That it was time to run some trains. My objective was not to just run local trains amongst the towns but to also interact with other railroads as well. So I bult an interchange area to exchange consists. That works well. Next was to accept trains from another railroad, return their engine and parse out the inherited cars.

this led to trackmarks. They were placed at drop points and assembly points. Well on the first test of a train arriving with cars and dropping them. then returning home. Trackmarks said where the "yard engine " should retrieve and drop the newly arrived cars. All OK. Next, a local engine picks up the consist to deliver it on the route. At this point when I ran the scenario al the trackmarks on the yard disappeared and the engine just ran several miles to the end of the route with no cars.

Yes, I can reconstruct the trackmarks but time grows short. At 85 it it not "limitless". I was hoping to get in some run-time setting up more foreign railroad connections and run what you might call a "distribution railroad. Memory ssues will begin to challenge the recall f what has to be done and how totally ruining the experience. I do not have the time to interact with the helpdesk. Minutes mean more to me than the mean to them.:eek:

I only submit this as a trouble report. If it is the wrong place then it will die here. Thanks for Reading.
 
After reading the above, my first reaction is that the cause of the vanishing track marks is a Session and/or a layer issue.

Now I do not know how you have setup all your consists, locos and track marks. In my case all consists and locos are placed in a session layer and are saved with the session. Track marks are more variable in that any that will be session specific (i.e. only needed in one session) I place in the session-layer or in a "trackmarks" layer in the Session layers group of that session. Any track marks that will be required in all sessions I place in a suitable Route layer (e.g. the "route-layer" or a "Trackmarks" layer in the Route Layers group).

That way I have to load the session to be able to edit the consists and the session specific track marks. I only need to load the route to edit the layout and the route track marks.

My initial thoughts.
 
I can't rule out human error. However, the design of the Sessions concept is not to my liking. I don't doubt that the issue lies there. It rises when confusion and poor design mix into chaos. I understand the Session approach but the management of it is a problem for me. As you jump around between the two flavors of session you see displays where the two flavors of Session have very similar appearances. I would have used color and font to differentiate them, and perhaps add some "do you really want to do that" logic to make sure my paying customers were not harmed by the similarity, in appearance.

Adding in the wide range of abilities of customers, a smart manager will tilt design toward the less capable. I have designed, and implemented, large software projects where I was the sole person on the project. The nice ladies in our West Coast office did complain that they could not tell if my stuff was working or was stuck during a longer processing cycle. So I designed, and implemented, a full screen clock to reduce their anxiety. The next time I was in California I received a large can of almonds for my efforts. Something as cheap and simple as clock can retain customers. But, this seems to fall on deaf ears.

If I resurrect the project I will probably have to do periodic CDPs. This breaks into the development and lengthens the project but it is the only way to protect the program development.

Thanks for your help
 
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