Trainlists

Trainlists guide crew members operating trains on the layout. Acting as a script, a trainlist walks the crew through their job step by step, so crews of every skill level can work a train successfully, even in a busy train show setting.

Each trainlist starts with the layout name, the train symbol and name, the departure yard, the train length and any crew instructions. As the train moves along its route, the trainlist shows the work to do at each Module/Town: which cars to set out (or pick up) and at which drop zone. Train orders print in their place along the route. The trainlist ends with termination instructions, the terminating yard and space for the crew's comments.

Trainlists screen

Click Trainlists in the sidebar to open the Trainlists screen. The options for building a trainlist are on the left. The right side is a preview of the trainlist exactly as it will print, on a full-size 8.5" × 11" page, so scroll to see all of it. Until you generate something it just says "Select a train and click "Generate" to create a trainlist".

Screenshot needed

Trainlists screen with a train selected and a generated Modern trainlist in the preview.

Generate a trainlist

1. Click Trainlists in the sidebar.
2. Pick a train from the Train dropdown. Each train shows as SYMBOL - Name.
3. Choose a Scheduling Engine. Weighted Selection is selected for you. See Scheduling engines below.
4. Choose an Output Format (MRBT, Modern or SwitchList), Half Page or Full Page, and whether to Use equipment code.
5. Click Generate. The button shows Generating... while it works.
6. Check the result message under the buttons, for example "Scheduled 12 cars" and "Cars: 12 | Length: 480".
7. Review the preview, then click Print.

Generating again for the same train replaces that train's previous trainlist with a new one. Other trains are not affected. If you don't like the mix of work you got, just click Generate again.

tip

You can change Output Format, Half Page / Full Page and Use equipment code after generating. The preview updates right away, with no need to generate again.

Only trains with a route are listed

The Train dropdown only lists trains that have a route. If no train has a route yet, you see "No trains with routes defined. Create a train and define its route first." Set up the route on the train's route tab first. See Train Route.

Trainlist options

Option	Description
Train	The train to build a trainlist for. Only trains with a route are listed. Changing the train clears the preview.
Scheduling Engine	How cars are picked: Random (MRBT), Weighted Selection (default) or Pull & Drop Ops. A short description of the chosen engine shows under the dropdown.
Print Pickup All note	Random (MRBT) and Weighted Selection only. Prints PICKUP ALL WHEN DROPPING on the trainlist. On by default, and remembered with your layout. See Pickup All note.
Number of trainlists	Pull & Drop Ops only. How many trainlists to generate and print back to back, from 1 to 20. Default 1. See Generate several at once.
Pickup Age Threshold	Pull & Drop Ops only. Number of times the train visits before picking up a car becomes mandatory. It is also how often a drop zone gets a PICKUP ALL (see below). Default 3, from 1 to 10.
Include Pickup Alls	Pull & Drop Ops only. Adds a "PICKUP ALL" line the first time a drop zone is worked. On by default.
Reset Pickup Alls	Pull & Drop Ops only. Appears after your first Generate. Makes PICKUP ALL lines appear again for drop zones that already had one.
Output Format	MRBT, Modern (default) or SwitchList. See Output formats.
Half Page / Full Page	Page layout for MRBT and Modern. Half Page is the default. SwitchList ignores this setting.
Use equipment code	Show each car's equipment Code (for example an AAR code such as XM) instead of its class and short description. In the Modern format, module headings also use the module's short name.
Generate	Builds the trainlist. Enabled once a train is selected. Reads Generate 5 when Number of trainlists is 5.
Print	Prints the trainlist, or every trainlist in a batch. Enabled after a successful Generate.

Once a train is selected, the bottom of the panel shows the train symbol, its type and its Max Length, plus the minimum length if one is set.

Result messages

After you click Generate a message under the buttons tells you how it went. Green is good: "Scheduled 12 cars", with the car count and length below it. Orange means it ran but found nothing to schedule. Check that the modules on the route have equipment requests on active drop zones and that the train is long enough for the cars. Red means something is missing, usually a route.

With Pull & Drop Ops the message spells out the work, for example "Scheduled 9 setouts, 7 pickups (3 promoted to fill) (departed: 420, arrived: 300 of 450 max)". departed is the length of the train leaving the yard, arrived is what comes back after the pickups, and the max is the train's Max Length. The "promoted to fill" part only shows when the engine added pickups to fill the train. See Full trains.

Train length

Each train has a Max Length and an optional Min Length, both set on the train's details. See Trains.

• With only a max length, every trainlist aims to fill the train up to the max length.
• With a min length too, each time you generate ModuOps picks a random target length between the min and the max. This gives some variety from one run to the next.

The min length is a target, not a promise. If there isn't enough work on the route, or the cars don't fit the drop zones, the train can come out shorter.

A car is only set out at a drop zone if it fits in the room left on that drop zone.

Scheduling engines

The scheduling engine decides which cars go on the train. Every engine works from the equipment requests on the Modules/Towns in the train's route, and only uses drop zones that are marked Active. Each time you generate, drop zones start out empty.

All engines follow the train's route order. Train orders and timetable entries on the route never get cars; they print on the trainlist as instructions in their place along the route. See Train Orders.

All engines also honor A Only and B Only route rows: only drop zones facing that side (or both sides, or no side set) get work.

Random (MRBT)

Random (MRBT) recreates the simple random selection of the original Mad River and Big Timber program, and is our tip of the hat to the program that got us excited about operations with car types.

There's no weighting at all. ModuOps picks a random row from the train's route, then a random equipment request on that row, and keeps going until the next car picked won't fit on the train. Demand means nothing here; a request with a Demand of 10 has exactly the same chance as one with a Demand of 1. Because it picks a route row first, a Module/Town that appears on more than one route row gets picked more often.

The engine honors A Only, B Only and specific-consignee rows, and the train's Limit Modules. That's as fancy as it gets. Must Service, No Service and the Car Distribution slider do nothing with this engine, on purpose.

Choose Random (MRBT) when you want every request to get a fair, unweighted chance, or when you want trainlists that feel like the original MRBT.

Weighted Selection

Weighted Selection is the default engine. It picks cars at random, but weights each equipment request by its Demand. A request with a Demand of 4 is four times as likely to be picked as a request with a Demand of 1. This reflects the real world, where some consignees ship and receive a lot more than others.

This is also the engine that pays attention to the finer route and train settings. A Must Service consignee on the route gets the first pick, before the random draw starts. One of its requests is tried first, and if that car doesn't fit the drop zone or the train it's skipped, so it's a head start rather than a guarantee. The consignee can still pick up more cars in the normal draw. A No Service consignee is left out of the whole train, even if its Module/Town shows up on other rows of the route. Limit Modules caps how many different Modules/Towns get work on one trainlist.

The train's Car Distribution slider decides whether cars spread out along the route or bunch up on a few tracks. After each car is placed, the slider sets the odds that the next one goes to the same track, meaning drop zones that share a Zone Reference. At Distribute it never does; at Concentrate it always does. Bunching cars up means fewer stops for the crew. See Trains.

When a car won't fit on the train, ModuOps skips it and keeps trying other, possibly shorter, cars until nothing fits.

tip

A single request with a very high Demand can crowd out everyone else. For example, a grain siding with a Demand of 10 on the same route as three consignees each with a Demand of 1 gives each small consignee only a 1 in 13 chance per pick. To balance things out you can:

• run a dedicated unit train for the busy industry,
• lower that request's Demand,
• mark the smaller consignees Must Service on the route, or
• use the Random (MRBT) engine, which ignores Demand.

Pull & Drop Ops

The other two engines forget the layout the moment the trainlist prints. Every car comes out of a yard, gets dropped at an industry, and that's the end of the story. Pull & Drop Ops keeps track of what each train leaves behind, so the next time the train comes through, those cars can go home. If you've run a layout on car cards, this is the same idea with car types standing in for the cards.

Loads and empties come along for the ride. An industry either ships product or receives it, and the engine needs to know which. That's the Flow Type on each equipment request. A grain elevator is a producer. The train brings it an empty hopper, the elevator fills it, and the next train hauls the load away. A lumberyard is a consumer. The train brings a loaded flat, the yard unloads it, and the empty goes back on a later train. Leave Flow Type blank and the request is treated as a consumer. See Equipment Requests.

Here's what happens when you click Generate. The engine looks at the cars earlier runs left along the route and decides which to pull. It doesn't take every car every time; how eager it is comes from the Car Distribution slider, though a car that has been passed over Pickup Age Threshold times goes no matter what. Every car ages on its own, so two identical boxcars sitting at the same drop zone are tracked separately, and a new arrival never resets the age of the car already there. A passing train takes what's there, whether or not it has a request for that drop zone. Then it picks set-outs the same way Weighted Selection does, keeping the train within its length the whole way down the route. Anything that won't fit stays where it is for next time. If the train is still short of its length after that, the engine pulls more cars. See Full trains.

Once the train has run, the industries do their work. Cars at producers are now loaded, cars at consumers are now empty, and they wait for the next train.

The run number prints after the train symbol: ABC-1, ABC-2, and so on. Run 1 is set-outs plus a PICKUP ALL at every drop zone it works, which clears the tracks and gives the engine a known starting point: no cars. A later run may be all pickups and nothing to set out, and that's fine. At each stop the trainlist lists pickups before set-outs, the order a crew works a town.

Full trains

Left alone, a Pull & Drop train could leave the yard nearly empty. Once the drop zones fill up, the only room for a set-out is the space a pickup frees, so the number of cars going out tracks the number coming back, and that can be only a few cars on a train sized for twenty.

To keep trains full, the engine checks the length of the departing train against the train's target (the Max Length, or the random target between Min Length and Max Length). If the train is short, it adds pickups, oldest car first, at drop zones that have requests the train could fill, and plans the set-outs again with the room that frees. It keeps going until the train reaches its target or no more pickups would help. A pickup it adds this way still has to fit on the train, and it can still trigger a PICKUP ALL at a drop zone that hasn't been worked yet.

For example, take three single-car drop zones on one module, a 150 foot train and 50 foot cars. Without the extra pickups, run 2 might pull one car and set out one. With them, the train pulls all three cars and sets out three, and leaves the yard at 150 feet. The result message says how many pickups were added, as in "3 promoted to fill".

The train can still leave light. If the route has no requests that fit, or the cars won't fit the drop zones, there's nothing more to pull. The Car Distribution slider still sets how many cars get picked up on a normal visit. Filling only adds to that when the train would otherwise go short.

PICKUP ALL

Crews make mistakes. A car ends up on the wrong track, or a drop zone gets cleaned out when it shouldn't have been. With Include Pickup Alls checked, the first time a drop zone is worked the trainlist tells the crew to "PICKUP ALL from" that drop zone, and ModuOps clears its record of the track. Whatever was really sitting there is gone, and the layout and the records agree again. The instruction comes back every Pickup Age Threshold visits (the first, fourth and seventh with the default of 3), so a mistake never lingers for long. Reset Pickup Alls makes every drop zone start over as if it had never been worked.

Sessions

Everything the engine remembers belongs to a session, and a session lasts as long as you stay on the Trainlists screen with the same train and engine selected. Change the train, change the engine, or leave the screen, and you start over with an empty layout. Each time you click Generate the run counter moves on by one. Plan on generating and printing the whole sequence of runs in one sitting.

Pull & Drop Ops honors the same route and train settings as Weighted Selection: Must Service, No Service, A Only / B Only, Limit Modules, Car Distribution and the train's minimum and maximum length. A No Service consignee is skipped for pickups too.

Running a sequence

Select the train and set Scheduling Engine to Pull & Drop Ops. Set Pickup Age Threshold and Include Pickup Alls to taste. Click Generate and print run 1. Click Generate again for run 2, print it, and keep going until you have as many trainlists as the session needs. Hand them to the crews in order.

Generate several at once

If you know how many runs you need, set Number of trainlists instead. Enter 8 and the button reads Generate 8. Click it and ModuOps builds runs 1 through 8 in order, showing Generating 3 of 8 as it goes, then stacks them all in the preview. Print sends the whole stack as one print job with each trainlist on its own sheet, and no blank sheet after the last one.

A batch carries on from wherever the session is. If you've already generated run 1, a batch of 4 gives you runs 2 through 5, and the next single Generate is run 6. If something goes wrong partway, you keep the trainlists made before the problem, and the message says how many were generated before the failure. The controls are locked while a batch runs.

Half page mode is unchanged: one trainlist per sheet.

warning

Stay on the Trainlists screen with the same train and engine for the whole sequence. Switching train or engine, or leaving the screen, starts a new, empty session.

Pickup All note

Random (MRBT) and Weighted Selection never schedule pickups, so a common practice is for the crew to pick up everything in a drop zone before dropping. The Print Pickup All note switch, which shows when either of those engines is selected, prints PICKUP ALL WHEN DROPPING on the trainlist so you don't have to type it into every train's crew instructions. It's on by default. Turn it off if your crews work another way. The setting is saved with the layout, not the train.

In MRBT and Modern the note prints in bold under the crew instructions. In SwitchList it prints in the crew reference on the right half. Pull & Drop Ops schedules its own pickups and PICKUP ALL lines, so it never prints the note and doesn't show the switch.

Output formats

Every format prints on an 8.5" × 11" page. The top line is the layout name from the Layout Name field on the Layout screen. The route direction you set on the train's route (for example East, West or Outbound) shows on the trainlist too.

In crew instructions, termination instructions, remarks and train orders, bold, italic and line breaks print; other formatting is dropped.

MRBT

A classic monospace (typewriter style) format that mimics the original Mad River and Big Timber trainlist. It prints:

• The layout name, TRAIN: with symbol and name, Departs: with the departure yard, and Length: with the number of cars and units.
• CREW INSTRUCTIONS, if the train has any.
• Each Module/Town name in bold, with its remarks, followed by one line per car: a short work code, the drop zone name, the equipment, and a blank line for the crew to fill in.
• Train orders in their place along the route.
• Termination instructions, Terminate: with the terminating yard, Complete at: and Comments:.

The work code is S for set out or P for pick up, followed by E for empty or L for loaded when the load is known. PICKUP ALL lines print in bold.

The equipment shows as class and short description plus length (for example B-Boxcar 50), or as code plus length with Use equipment code checked. Long text is cut off to fit the column.

Consignee remarks print once, before that consignee's first car. Equipment remarks print in bold under the car line.

Modern

The default format. It uses a regular proportional font and a checkbox for every task, with more wordy instructions to help crews make fewer mistakes. The header and footer are the same as MRBT (with Train: instead of TRAIN:).

• Each stop starts with a bold heading: Scheduled work at Module/Town. With Use equipment code checked, the module's short name is used.
• Set-outs read like [ ] Set Out ________________ {equipment} (loaded) to _drop zone_. The blank is for the car's reporting marks.
• Pickups read like [ ] PICKUP {equipment} (empty) from _drop zone_, with PICKUP in bold so it stands out from the set-outs.
• PICKUP ALL lines print in bold: [ ] PICKUP ALL from <drop zone>.

On a half page, each set-out takes two lines, with the "to drop zone" part on the second line.

SwitchList

ModuOps' take on a prototype switch list. It always prints as one full sheet split into two halves, meant to be folded lengthwise so it's easy to carry around the layout. Half Page / Full Page is ignored, and the equipment code is always used.

Left half: the switch list form

The header has the layout name, SWITCH LIST, a Date blank, and boxes for Train and Time. The Train box has the train symbol on one line and the train name below it.

The form is a grid with numbered lines and the columns INITIAL, NUMBER, KIND, L, FROM and DEST. Each Module/Town starts with a row showing its name in capitals, between rows of asterisks.

A set-out leaves INITIAL and NUMBER blank for the yard crew to write the car's reporting marks. KIND has the equipment code and length (for example XM-50), L shows L for a loaded car or E for an empty, FROM is the departure yard's zone reference, and DEST is the drop zone's Zone Reference.

A pickup swaps the blanks for a banner, PICKUP ====>, because the car is already out on the layout and nobody has to write its marks. FROM is the drop zone it's coming from and DEST is the terminating yard.

When FROM or DEST is the same as the car line above it, it prints as a ditto mark (") instead, so a run of cars from one yard to one track is easy to read. A PICKUP ALL from the Pull & Drop Ops engine takes a whole bold line, PICKUP ALL from {drop zone}.

If equipment has no Code, KIND uses its short description. If a drop zone has no Zone Reference, DEST shows the start of the drop zone name.

Yard crews write each set-out car's reporting marks on its line after the train is built and before the crew takes it out of the yard. The grid is drawn in fine black lines and the type is large enough to read at arm's length on the layout.

warning

The switch list form holds up to 36 rows, counting car rows and Module/Town rows. Anything past row 36 doesn't print. If a train has more work than that, shorten the train or set Limit Modules on the train.

Right half: crew reference

• The layout name, train name and symbol, Departs: and Length:.
• CREW INSTRUCTIONS, the Pickup All note if it's on, and all the train's train orders.
• Equipment Reference: each equipment code with its description, plus equipment remarks.
• For each Module/Town: its name and remarks, and each drop zone's Zone Reference with the consignee name and remarks, so the crew can match FROM and DEST to the right track.
• Termination instructions, Terminate:, Complete at: and Comments:.

Screenshot needed

A printed SwitchList showing the form on the left half and the crew reference on the right half.

Print a trainlist

1. Generate the trainlist and check the preview.
2. Click Print. The button shows Printing... while it works.
3. Your computer's normal print dialog opens. Choose your printer and settings, and print.

The page prints exactly as shown in the preview. Each print covers one train; to print a whole session, pick each train in turn, then Generate and Print.

tip

To keep an electronic copy, most operating systems let you save as PDF from the print dialog.

Changes from version 5

• The engines were renamed: "Mad River and Big Timber" is now Random (MRBT) and "Use Cars/Week" is now Weighted Selection, the default. Cars/Week is now called Demand.
• New Pull & Drop Ops engine, with loads and empties, pickups, Pickup Age Threshold and PICKUP ALL lines.
• New Must Service route consignees, used by Weighted Selection.
• No Service now leaves a consignee out of the whole train when using Weighted Selection or Pull & Drop Ops.
• Random (MRBT) now uses specific-consignee, A Only and B Only route rows (in v5 it only used all consignees).
• The "Drop Zone Favoring" slider on the trainlist screen is replaced by the Car Distribution slider on each train.
• The "Select Output Format" menu is split into Output Format (MRBT, Modern, SwitchList) and a Half Page / Full Page toggle. "Use equipment type codes" is now Use equipment code.
• The Train dropdown lists only trains with a route, and the button is now Generate.
• The preview is now the real, readable printed page. It no longer shows the last trainlist when you return to the screen.
• SwitchList now falls back to the short description or drop zone name when a code or zone reference is missing, holds up to 36 rows, and shows the yard on FROM for set-outs and on DEST for pickups, with dittos for repeats.
• Each generation starts with all drop zones empty.
• Pull & Drop Ops trains are topped up to their target length with extra pickups, and several runs can be generated and printed in one batch.
• A new Print Pickup All note switch replaces typing PICKUP ALL WHEN DROPPING into crew instructions. It prints on Random (MRBT) and Weighted Selection trainlists in all three formats.