Car routing with JMRI OperationsPro | The crew continues to prepare the State Line Route N scale model railroad for a prototypical operating session, and the next step is car routing. Instead of the widely used car-card-and-waybill freight-car routing system, David Popp and Trains.com host Gerry Leone use a computer program called JMRI OperationsPro to set up car lists, modify train routes, assign trains, generate switch lists, and more!
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The State Line Route in N scale is a mid-sized stand-alone model railroad inspired by the legendary HO scale Milwaukee, Racine & Troy, a large-room layout built more than 20 years ago by Model Railroader staff and their friends. The series began on Trains.com in July 2021 and covers the construction process from initial overview and planning to building benchwork, scenery, and more. You can also read about these efforts, starting in the January 2022 issue of Model Railroader magazine.
I love using JMRI Operations Pro for my N-scale home layout and have been using it for several years. I have also presented at a couple of local NMRA conventions introducing JMRI Operations Pro to other users. Lots of flexibility in this program. Good information in your video.
Is this an open source program. If then, do they accept donations?
Donald — As I understand it, it’s not “open source” in the truest sense of the words. In other words, the program isn’t out there for anybody to make additions and changes to. However it’s worked on by a bunch of volunteer programmers and model railroaders. So if you were a programmer and interested in donating time, I’m sure they’d welcome you. As far as monetary donations, I would guess they’d accept anything to help pay for their expenses and website. Take a look at their website for contact information and you can get the full scoop from them. We DCC model railroaders owe that group a huge, huge “THANKS” for making our lives so much easier!
Very interesting and informative. Thank you very much. This sounds like the perfect way to go, letting the computer keep track of where your cars should be on the layout. Does it also have an inventory function that would list your engines and cars? Does it also assign locomotives to a consist?
Jesse — The answer to your question is basically: JMRI Operations Pro can be as complex as you want it to be. Bear in mind that I’ve never used this function, but there IS a provision for you to enter your locomotives into the program and tell the program how much each will pull (tons, I guess). Then the program will assign one of your engines to the train you just built based on the train’s tonnage. JMRI Ops Pro will ALSO assign a caboose to your train (if that’s in your era). Again, I’ve never used those functions because the more complexity you add to the program, the more futzing you’ll need to do to get things right. I just generate switchlists and have a great time dropping off and picking up cars. And you’ll see an example of that in the upcoming videos in this series.
That was a fabulous video. Thanks for producing it. I’m just about to start operations on my layout and I’m using car cards and creating new waybills. I’ve still heaps of boxes at siding to create. This looks like a good alternative.
I’m always in favor of eliminating paper. I scan important papers to my computer in the interest of getting rid of paper. In this case, Operations Pro allows you to eliminate things like car cards. That sounds like a good thing, but I eagerly await a future video that describes how Operations Pro is used in practice. Do all the operators need to have an iPad or something like it to access Operations Pro while they operate?
James — keep your eyes peeled for the future episode(s). I run some switchlists and Cody and Brian run some trains, with Eric being the fiddleyard master.
No, everyone doesn’t need an iPad or smartphone. If the computer has a printer — which ours did — you just print out the switchlists and operators walk around with them. When the switching is done it’s easy enough to feed the backside of the switchlists through the printer again to save paper.
But if you REALLY want to eliminate paper, yes, an iPad or smartphone is needed. You have the computer “print” to a PDF, then email the PDFs to the operators.
Thanks, folks!
Michael M– I think you CAN add the coupler length to the car length if you want to. Generally, I don’t bother simply because I’m not that exact with the spur length. You never want to have the car get that close to the turnout end of the spur anyhow.
Randy — JMRI Operations Pro has a “Backup” button that will make a copy of everything. So if you hose something up you can always go back a notch to the backup. I also think you can backup everything to a thumb drive or second hard drive. I’m not certain, but JMRI may backup everything on its own when you close out the program, but I’d have to check to docs about that.
Michael S — really, “Grandpa Gerry”??
This might be what I’m looking for to run my layout, instead of arbitrarily moving cars around. Thanks, David and Gerry!
How do you backup your work. thanks
The outakes were funny
Very interesting and informative episode.
But what has happened to Midday Modeler. Only one episode in last three weeks ??
Nice! Question” when you enter car length, you did not include the coupler length. Instead, you input the spur to be a little longer than the total car lengths to account for the coupler lengths. Is this the best way to do it or should you include the length of one coupler as part of the car length (e.g., a 60-foot box car would be entered as 62 feet in a couple is included?
Thanks – great video!
Mike
Mike: When I first input car length, I allowed for the couplers. But, then I found the cars wouldn’t fit into the space I measured on the spur. I did some quick math and it seems that JMRI is adding a few feet per car. So, I went back and changed the car lengths to the actual car body length without couplers (but allowing for extended gear).
Grampa Gerry is getting feisty, and just wants to play trains. Let him play trains David. Let the wookie… erm… Leone, win.
Very interesting ops tool and great content. Hopefully the next video comes out much faster than this one did. Keep up the excellent work on this layout guys.