Montana Rail Link MP V2 OP-Session's (This aint your daddy's circle burning)

I've been checking out the INDs in Billings and having no problems.
As far as drivers go i only need one but it a problem when trying to move from one loco to another,if there a driver in the 2nd loco.
You have to unasign the one you are asigned to then go choose the one in the loco you just need to uncouple from a train then reasign yourself back to the one you had before that was in a switcher.I don't need 4 locos to switch with. So jib if you would, could you remove all drivers from locos that are asigned to player now.? Also can you put some Locos & cabooses to match the locos in Billings.
Now for commands go i would like:uncoublez,stop train,decouple from by #,uncouple by #,Movetoloco.
Now when i'm in the session i'll be working Billings yard and all INDs with in 10 miles.
The North side of the yard will be trains going to logan yard,Livingston Yard, Helena Yard.
The 2 tracks from the main on the south side will before East & West bound dropoff Tracks.
All other tracks i will use for local trains or to go to Hunley.
If thats ok with everyone????
 
That sounds good Danny. You can work Billings yard how ever you see fit. I have been to many operating sessions on different layouts of different scales. Ive found the ones with fewer restrictions on how trains are ran are the more fun ones.

As for the drivers, I am out of town right now, so have no control over the session. But this week as I make the session only update, Ill put consideration into your thoughts.

But as for content, I put only MRL locomotives in the session. But as there is a lack, at least last I looked, of good MRL cabooses I left them out. The ones that are there in the route are left over from the last version of the session. They maybe removed, or I may leave them there. As it stands now, Ive gotten more lose on my "All trains must have a caboose" rule. You can have one, and should have one, but I wont crack down on you if you don't have one. The idea was, you would use a caboose to mark some cars as your or in use. The logic behind it was, if your working a town and do need to go AFK, you could. Youd leave your cars with your caboose and locomotive, or some of your cars with your locomotive. This way if some one happened to come upon your cars, they would see a caboose and know it was some one else's train.

But I have yet to hear of us running into that situation.
 
I have finally worked out why I have been having so much trouble with the Pro Lars Industries. It is a Multiplayer Issue but whether it affects just me, a few people or everyone remains to be seen. First of all I believe it only affects clients not the host. To test whether or not the Industry works requires two players neither of which have to be the host. I realised what was going wrong when I placed loaded Log cars and empties for woodchips at Millers Timber in Great Falls. After a short while the logcars started to unload one at a time until they finally all emptied. I never did see the Woodchips load but that is besides the point. After the Logs had unloaded Danny came and had a look to see how I was getting on and he said the Logs were still on the cars. I checked one car and the description said "empty". I asked Geovany to double check and he said the logs were still on the cars. I then relogged (no pun intended) back into the session and I could then see the Log Cars were, in fact still loaded. I also believe the same thing happened to me at another Industry, with hindsight. I do know that people said you cannot use Pro-Lars Industries in a MP session so maybe this is why. Danny has used them in one of his sessions and he said they worked ok. In order to establish how widespread this problem is requires a Client to place cars, probably for unloading is best, and if he sees that they have unloaded ask another player if, indeed they have unloaded. The same method could also be used to test loading as well.
 
If these problems persists, then I will replace all the inds with the MIN's again. I really hate to, as then people just push a car up, and the pull the car away. Unless there is some alternative that will let them MIN's act like a PL. Maybe a rule that causes a car to stay put for a set time before loading it.
 
After playing the session for a few days in Jibs session and now I,m in Danny,s I feel I can give an unbiased opinion of both the Route and the session. For those unfamiliar with the route it is one of the longest routes in TS12, about the same length as UMR. it takes around 4 hours to drive from end to end at Line speed and has a max speed of 50 mph. Apart from Laurel to Billings the majority of the Route is Single Line with passing places. There are four huge Yards. Helena which is located near the eastern end and services one or two industries at Helena itself but quite a few on the way to Logan which is about halfway to the next yard at Livingston. Helena also handles Great Falls traffic which is situated at the end of a single track Branch Line. Livingston is in the center of the route and has a few industries of it,s own as well as a few more on the way to Logan, mostly at Bozeman which also has one of the two power Stations. Livingston is also in a good location for drivers to take a well earned break. Next is Laurel which is the least important of the big four having only one industry of it,s own. Finally a short 20 minute drive from the Western End is Billings. Billings has so many Industries as well as the other Power station it,s hard to keep track of them all. it has two yards, one on either side of the main but strangely no station. Billings boasts two industrial estates, an inter-modal interchange, a car plant and grain Silos where grain HP is delivered. Motive Power comes mainly from depots at Laurel, Livingston and Helena and a small facility at Great Falls with one locomotive. Again, strangely no Main Line locomotives are based at Billings. There are a number of stations and a few Passenger trains as well..... Possible improvements to the Route? Some people say that the Route is too big and it takes too long to drive from one place to another. Personally I consider that to be one of the attractions. I have never been anywhere near Montana but it does sort of feel right when I,m in the session. The track and scenery I,ve no complaints about. The track could do with straightening out in a few places. The distortions are caused by the addition of Infrastructure to the Route such as Road Crossings and Bridges. A good example is the track on the outskirts of Billings on the line to Laurel where there are several road crossings. I do feel that the max Line speed could easily be raised to 60mph in places, notably on straight stretches and gradual curves. This would reduce the journey time a little and make the journey a little more interesting. Apart from those two points the Route is so good it needs very little else. The next post contains my opinion of the session.
 
First, Iportals These have only just been introduced to the session and the Jury is still out, as they say. Personally I think their introduction has generated a great deal of interest in the session which is a good thing and adds a new dimension to train operations. How well do they work? That is a difficult question to answer. I have seen a couple of trains come through successfully but the one time I sent a train through an Iportal it was spit back at me in bits!. Danny has also reported a couple of failures sending a batch of locomotives to MRL. This brings me to my first point. Is it possible for a client to send a train through an Iportal in the session or should that be left to the host? Next the big one....Interactive Industries. While they are great, as well as being arguably the most important aspect of a session getting them to, not only work, but to produce or consume satisfactorily is very difficult to achieve not just in this session but in all sessions including my two. Jib may not want to hear this but the Industries in this session need a great deal of work to make them attain a higher standard of reliability. Why is this? The main reason can be summed up in one word, Multiplayer. The fact is Multiplayer dislikes interactive Industries and goes out of it,s way to prove it. in this session the two main problems are the Pro Lars industries coupled with the well documented (I have posted on this subject) problem with the MIN,s. The problem with the MINS affects all multiplayer sessions. After further investigation I feel the Pro Lars industries are one multiplayer problem two many. I now know of a number of players who have had difficulties with them. I have already described the problems I have had personally in this thread. Either a car unloading on your screen which has not really unloaded at all or cars not loading at all. to complicate matters is the other problem and that is players unable to load a commodity. For instance I cannot load scrap in this session. In UMR there are several Commodities I cannot load. In order to learn whether or not you can load a car with a particular product simply use the commodity picker. The only solution that I know of is too ask the host to take over at the industry and do it for you. However, cars loaded with one of these commodities will unload ok. I would sugest that the pro Lars industries are more trouble than there are worth and should be replaced with MINS. The reason for the Introduction of the Pro Lars industries was to create an Industry that loaded/unloaded and consumed/produced in a more realistic way. I believe this can be replicated in a MIN but to a lesser extent. For instance, I hate unloading a trainload of, say, iron ore only to find it has been consumed before you have got out of the Industry. You cannot stop a Min working straight away but you can adjust the production and consumption rate to a reasonable amount. If you can get the maximum amount limited to, say, a typical carload for that product and the same start amount then you have created a more realistic Industry. Leaving out the question of Pro Lars v MINS there are a few Industries that have their production rate far too low. A good example is Montana Grain 1 in Helena which takes around 3 hours to load a car after placement. This is far to long unlike the Loomex Mill which unloads a Woodchip Car in around 7-8 minutes once it starts. I would like to see the time it takes to load or unload to be a minimum of 5 minutes per car, where there is a trainload to process to a maximum of around 20-30 minutes where there is likely to be only 3-4 cars to process. I would also like to make three more points. One is, where there is a product chain e.g. Scrap produces Steel Coils which produce Cars it is important to get the production side spot on. The whole chain will collapse if scrap metal is produced too slowly, which it is at the moment. The other point is Industries should have a start amount which I think I have already mentioned. It is more realistic to start a session with a product ready to be shipped out and where a product chain is involved it gives you some insurance against the chain collapsing because an Industry has been correctly set up. The final point is that there are gaps in the Product production and Consumption. For Instance a common complaint is that there is an Industry that consumes Trailers but none that produce them. The same can be said about other products. Now I,m going to assume that the reason for this is so that other players can send what is needed through an Iportal. Perhaps, Jib you could clarify your position on this and whether there is a list of products that must be sent though an Iportal either as an Import or an Export
 
Good points Colour, but might I suggest a little text formatting next time? Bit daunting looking at a wall of text, yet paragraphs help a lot.

But any whys, let me get started, to maybe clear up a few things. The best way to do that is to start at the beginning. MRL was built for TRS04. I found it back in TRS06. And that's when I started working on updating it. My idea was to use it with the iPortal group I and Danny where involved in back in the day. I lost interest in Trainz when TRS09 came out, but then heard that TRS10 was to have MP beta. So I got back into Trainz with TRS10. After doing a few sessions on the little routes that where available I decided to try and get MRL into the mix. So I started work on getting MRL into TRS10. That left with with lots of holes in the route. Every bridge, every grade crossing was gone. And many turnouts where broken. This meant that I had to go over the route, all 300+ miles of it and check every thing. All the yards, all the sidings, every thing. Every bridge you cross, every grade crossing you see, I had to replace or fix. I got to the point where I didn't care if it looked good or not, I just wanted it to work is all. And that's why track work around industries and crossings is not the best.

As for the industries, and other things that I keep putting into the route and session. Its all experimentation. I want to know what does and doesn't work. This way, when I make a new MP route I know what to include. And yes, there will come a point when I no longer support MRL and will have a new route built for us. But for now, I use MRL as a test bed for ideas and concepts.

Now Im gong thought and putting the MIN's back in, as much as I dislike them. And if my math is right, it should take them at least 4 hours to reach 100% full or empty. This is ok though, as I dubt any one will service in industry more the one in a 4 hour period. With the exception of maybe Billings. But I will set them faster there when I get there.

As for the last comment, I do try to make sure every thing has a place to go. And the trailers do have a place to go, Billings. As MRL stands, it can be run as a self contained route. Every thing that is produced has a destination. The importing of goods helps off set the distance between industries. Meaning, a coal train dose not have to run from Logan to Billings, but can be brought in at the iPortal in Huntley.

As for the iPortals, once again, experimenting with them. They seam to be hit or miss, and we'll need to play with them more.
 
Will i wrote a post yesterday and for reason it didn't appear.
Jib, Don,t change the INDs not just yet just set the delay time to 1 minute. This way a player can tell if a IND is working and if he has place the car in the right spot.There others ways to have them take longer to load/unload.(1) Set the interval between each car to load. (2) set the amount each car will load/unload.
(A log car carry 10 logs set Interval to 30 sec. and the load to 1 this will take about 5 hours to load just one car)
I think that if we can add cars of difference Colors this will make it easyer to know what is suppose to be loaded in that car.
(The log car is obvise that it carry logs
but a box car you don't know so letting everyone know that the yellow boxcar carries General Goods
& a green boxcar carry General Autoparts.( This can be done for all products.( green flat car carries John Deere Tractors Red flatcar carries John Deere Combine & so on) Right now no ones know what car loads what except the log car.
Now yesterday i took some boxcars to a IND to load general goods and they didn't load took the same cars pulled them out did a commody check on them and put them back, they loaded.(so they were set to load general goods but until i did the commody check they didn't load) so we must do the check first.
Now we had about 6 to 8 players in the session you had running and it went good for the most part. I think that if we were to set locations (INDs) outside each yard
and let those INDs be serverest by that yard. Like i am doing in Billings. I switch the cars & take care of the INDs with in 10 miles of Billings yard. And where no train gose pass a yard it must drop off it load at the next yard pick up what there for the yard he/she came from and return.And mabe after about 4 hours a train can go from Hunly to Elliston picking anything going west and dropping off cars that he/she pick at other yards.This train may need to change drivers three times.

Like this
Color Car Products
Yellow / TOFC Flatcar TTX 1 40ft Trailers
43ft Containers
Orange / 53ft Husky Stack 53ft Containers
Silver /50ft Boxcar Soo Line Automobile Engines
Gray / Autorack NS TTGX Automobles Invisible
White / Southern Pacific Fruit Expess Beer Pallets
Black / Bethgon CSX Coal
Black / Tanktrain A,B,C. Crude oil
Red & Gray / Tanker 40ft SD Texaco GATX Diesel Fuel
Ethanol
General Auto Parts
Purple / Hy-cubeBoxcar 40ft General Goods

White / 4BayCflow ACFX Hopper Grain HP
I-Beams
IKEA Pallets
Brown / Flatcar 60ft BNSF John Deere Combine
Green / flatcar 50ft Burlington Norther John Deere Tractor
Gray / Log 50ft Clinch Logs
Yellow / TTX Flatcar Centerbeam Lumber 16ft
Red / Flatcar 50ft Norfolk Southern Paper Rolls
Redish / Bulkhead Flatcar BNSF Pipe Load 1
Blue / Bulkhead Flatcar CSX Pipe Load 2
Brown / F4BayCflow BNSF Plastic Granulor
Bage / Flatcar 50ft Milwaukee Plastic Pipe Load
Brown / AOK Centerbeam Flat RailRoad Ties
Brown / Mill Gondola Railgon Scrap Metal
Skid Steer Loader
Brown / Gondola 65ft PRR Steel Coil 2 X 2
Tarp
Green / 60ft woodchip Car MRL Woodchips
Jib, If you would let me i would like to change the junction radis in and around the yards and rename some of them and send my changes to you to look at and upload.
 
Are we still using the LARS (BI2's) or the multi ind ones? Also where do you set the load/unload times? I don't recall seeing that parameter.

As for car color it should work but in my case what shade of "freight car red" do you like :D
 
Ken, I never used the BI2's. I was using PL industries. Some by me, some by Danny. As for the settings, each type of industry as its own.

Danny, I like and at the same time don't like the idea of color coded cars. Yes it make it easy for some one to tell what is in a car and where it is going. But at the same time, if I request a auto parts train, I end up with 50 Soo Line cars. You can all ways use the "Train Load Product Information" command to get a list of all the cars in your train, as well as that is loaded into them. No, this wont show you whats in that cut of cars a few tracks over. But it will help.

Now if you want to load cars in Billings, or which ever yard you work, based on color I am not saying no to that. Go right a head and do it. If you want to organize the yard and trains that way you may. Ill place some more color coded cars in Billings for you to test this idea out. But be warned, other's might not follow this seeing as any box car can be loaded with goods or auto parts.
 
This is true that someone will load what ever they want but the host should let them know that that car loads what ever only and let him/her know where they can get infromation on the cars.The same forINDs.
 
Not to be rude, but how many people do you think are really going to follow it? We already have 2 outside of Trainz reference items that it seems hardly no one uses. I'm just saying that having the host tell each and every new player where to find what and to read this and that, will be a pain for the host. And most users that don't have a printed copy of the reference pages we have made probably don't want to quit loading data, go get another page printed, and rejoin the session. The session seems to be getting like a mechanical object. The more pieces and moving parts, the more the chance of that part to fail. "Keep it simple, stupid" may not be a bad idea to follow. But if everyone wants to follow the idea of having all these guidelines, thats fine with me. I'm only pointing out this for the other users who might want to join in one day.

Just tossing my two cents in on the matter at hand. Not meant to offend or target anyone.
 
Not to be rude, but how many people do you think are really going to follow it? We already have 2 outside of Trainz reference items that it seems hardly no one uses. I'm just saying that having the host tell each and every new player where to find what and to read this and that, will be a pain for the host. And most users that don't have a printed copy of the reference pages we have made probably don't want to quit loading data, go get another page printed, and rejoin the session. The session seems to be getting like a mechanical object. The more pieces and moving parts, the more the chance of that part to fail. "Keep it simple, stupid" may not be a bad idea to follow. But if everyone wants to follow the idea of having all these guidelines, thats fine with me. I'm only pointing out this for the other users who might want to join in one day.

Just tossing my two cents in on the matter at hand. Not meant to offend or target anyone.

You can always ALT+Tab to minimize Trainz while it is loading. And even if you dont print out the industry charts that we have made, you can still write them down. The one that I made, and am reworking, is only for reference any ways. So if you dont know where some thing goes or is produced you can look there to find out.

Now if you really want to add paper work, I was at an op-session once where each train had a set of instructions. And crews had to carry a rule book, a map, and car cards. You also had to fill out paper work before even getting your train. Drop it off at the yard office. Then when ready to leave the yard, fill out more paper work and "fax" it to the dispatcher. (By fax, you had to put it in a drop box that lead to the dispatchers office on the other side of the wall. Then you had to wait for the dispatcher to call the yard maser on a yard phone. Then the dispatcher would call you on your radio. After all that, you might get to go out on the main line. And yet, that was the most fun operating a lay out I have ever had.

Not meant to sound rude.

But I do think that we should have some organization to it. Right now its more like a free for all with trains. And I want to move closer and closer to more prototypical operations.
 
You can always ALT+Tab to minimize Trainz while it is loading. And even if you dont print out the industry charts that we have made, you can still write them down. The one that I made, and am reworking, is only for reference any ways. So if you dont know where some thing goes or is produced you can look there to find out.

Now if you really want to add paper work, I was at an op-session once where each train had a set of instructions. And crews had to carry a rule book, a map, and car cards. You also had to fill out paper work before even getting your train. Drop it off at the yard office. Then when ready to leave the yard, fill out more paper work and "fax" it to the dispatcher. (By fax, you had to put it in a drop box that lead to the dispatchers office on the other side of the wall. Then you had to wait for the dispatcher to call the yard maser on a yard phone. Then the dispatcher would call you on your radio. After all that, you might get to go out on the main line. And yet, that was the most fun operating a lay out I have ever had.

Not meant to sound rude.

But I do think that we should have some organization to it. Right now its more like a free for all with trains. And I want to move closer and closer to more prototypical operations.

I don't mind at all with paper work, really. I actually prefer it more. What you said above sounds great. Just that the chance of everyone following these just might not happen (depending on the person). Too lazy, don't care, take your pick since there is alot of excuses people seem to have. And you have just brought an idea to me for the thread I started in Suggestion Boxcar that would work for TOPSIG sessions.
 
With regard to my current session of Montana Rail Link. Please be aware I will not be installing the new patch until I have closed the session, at the earliest. I believe players with the new patch will be unable to join the session. It is probably not a good idea to download the latest patch SP 1 until the hotfix has been released next week
 
Last edited:
With regard to a more formal approach to a session rather than a free for all I,m generally in favour of it. In my sessions I prefer people to undertake a specific task as opposed to doing whatever they feel like and maybe undoing hours of work another player has done.
 
Back
Top