Location!Location!Location!

Now that the track painting has been completed on the railroad, I’ve begun the task of giving final names to the industries. Names are vital to the JMRI Operations program. I’ve pulled out some more rolling stock from storage and used them to see what types are needed at each spur. Combining a list of industry types and a list of names, I’ve come up with a good mix of industries that might be appropriate to the railroad and its theme.

Using PostIt notes, I’ve physically labeled all the industries on the benchwork. Over the last few days, I’ve changed my mind on a few names and swapped tracks for a few types of industries.

Yesterday, I entered each industry’s information in JMRI. The information includes types of cars serviced by the industry, track length, number of spots on the track, direction a train travels to service the industry and other minutia.

In JMRI, a Location is a city, town, area, etc. that contains industries. There are 7 general locations on the railroad. In JMRI, I’ve divided 3 of the 7 towns into north and south based on which side of the ‘mainline’ they sit. This now gives me 10 locations to work with when determining routes for trains to take. This helps break up the work for operators in a more logical way, if needed. In addition, a route can combine the north and south locations and make the switch job more complicated.

Next up, JMRI Routes. See ya.