A short overview of the goings-on at the Sebastopol Works this month…

What’s new

Car Ordering & Switchlist spreadsheet – DRAFT

I finally have a fully working spreadsheet for Car Ordering operations, in a DRAFT state now. I have been working on this for ages.

It came from an original idea of Mike Rosenberg. I’ve spent quite some time now refining and making the spreadsheet work for the small operating layouts I love. [If anyone knows of Mike and has his contact details I’d appreciate an email or contact so I can share with him what I’ve done with his spreadsheet idea.]

I wanted to share some of the images for the spreadsheet. I’ve done a lot of tidying up over October, and am pretty pleased with it. I’ve been running ‘mock’ operating sessions based on my stalled Evans Hollows layout (still sitting in the garage due to a lack of funding). So far all of the automation (and there is only one piece of code in the spreadsheet) is working well. Doing only what it should and not causing any major issues or dramas with the data.

The Switchlist is printed out and then filled in by the Conductor, in this case Mr Phil McCracken, as the work is completed. Brief notes can be added, as in the case of the UP gondola left on-spot at Scrappy’s recycling, to assist in the movement of cars onto the modelled portion of your layout, and then back into staging (in my case fiddle sticks).

If you are unaware of Car Ordering, full documentation is being completed at the moment to help anyone interested try this out. I am hopeful that I’ll have this completed before the end of November. However, I’ll be spending some time on the operating table then, so it may be finished sometime in December.

I’ve created a page for the project on GitHub for those interested. You can find that here: https://github.com/iandrewmartin/small_ops_switching

The draft version of the spreadsheet is available right now for you to play around with. I am aiming to do some testing later this month on both Google Docs and Open Office/Libre Office to see if it works there too. There is nothing major that should stop the migration outside of the Microsoft space as most of the work is done by formulas with a single macro to move data around with a button press. More of that once I get the documentation finished.

YouTube Video Series for 2024

Small Layouts Designed for Operations has been my passion since 2003. I’ve been working away at this, solo, for 20 years now. My son, a talented musician and writer/composer has been egging me on to make this a passion project on YouTube. He’s very persuasive, and I’ve updated my channel, rebranded and am in the early stages of script writing and filming a new series for debut in January 2024. I aim to pump out 1 video each month that will be a series in 12 parts throughout 2024.

I may make more than this, once I get my workflow figured out, but there’ll be a minimum of 12 videos in that series. The focus initially will be on designing for operations, and then how to get operating using the spreadsheet above. I don’t like the complexity of car cards, and train orders, and blah, blah, blah. The focus is on car ordering by online customers, fulfilling that need, delivering the car, and then picking it up again. I’m going to be using the Evan’s Hollow layout design as an example.

If you are interested in that sort of information, please visit the page on Facebook, the YouTube channel and of course right here. See the staying in contact section below for more details.

Resources

• My GitHub project page: https://github.com/iandrewmartin/small_ops_switching

Files and other resources will begin popping up there during November and December as they are completed.

Staying in Contact

Interested in keeping in touch or discussing posts, pages and ideas?  You can do that in several ways:

• • • Commenting on this post (I read and answer each one)
    • Sending me a note using our About page (email)
    • Connect with me on Facebook at Andrew’s Trains
    • Subscribing to my YouTube channel @TheRealAndrewsTrains