TrainCrew App: Do more than run your train

[Rich_S]

brief hesitation every time you dick under the car(s)?

Careful there big guy, safety first on this railroad       

[mu26aeh]

Visual inspect and return to cab need sound

Maybe walking on ballast with a brief hesitation every time you dick under the car(s)?

Wow, I'm not too certain how to react to that ?

[seusscaboose]

There
Fixed my mistake

Sorry about that auto correct (I guess)

[gkoproske]

Please allow a bit of devil's advocate here ... while I concur with the intent of prototypical jobs, on the model railroad what this amounts to is dead time.  Walking the train, customs inspection, checking a load, setting the brakes, all of this amounts to the C&E standing there and physically doing nothing.

[conrail98]

Please allow a bit of devil's advocate here ... while I concur with the intent of prototypical jobs, on the model railroad what this amounts to is dead time.  Walking the train, customs inspection, checking a load, setting the brakes, all of this amounts to the C&E standing there and physically doing nothing.

Completely disagree on this. In fact, we tend to cram way too much into operating sessions, trying to get that extra train or two, an extra car or two delivered, another track so I can shove the 5 cars I got on sale at the last train show down. It isn't dead time if you're the one pushing the buttons, in fact, it makes it relaxing. I've done this at two operating sessions and you know what, it was actually calming, I didn't feel rushed because I just had a few extra things to do. There's no idle time if you're making this part of a standard operating checklist. In fact, on the layouts I operate on, a number of the operators usually check in when they pick up a train that they've "inspected the train and done the brake test". Well, now, these guys can actually do that instead of saying they did it. You'll have more idle time waiting at yards to get clearance in or pick up your train since the yard doesn't have it assembled yet. And if the yardmaster isn't ready, go ahead and do the locomotive inspection section Ed's created while you're waiting instead of going back and grabbing another cookie or pretzel. I will say this, I wouldn't use this app at all the layouts I operate on or all the stations/jobs on each layout as there are some instances where doing these things would get in the way of the timelines, but, it 100% does add to the realism of actually running and operating a train instead of just ending up doing the Lionel dash between stations,

phil

[conrail98]

The one thing I've been attempting to do research on for Ed and try to add is passenger operations. I have a few things but actual passenger ops isn't really documented and my OpSig copies don't go back far enough to get to some of those articles. If anyone has any resources they could point me to, we'd appreciate it. Thanks,

Phil

[Rich_S]

There
Fixed my mistake

Sorry about that auto correct (I guess)

Typo's happen. I've been having a very bad week, my mom passed away 9-3-16 from Dementia and Alzheimer and your post, gave me a great laugh, it's what I really needed. I hope I did not offend you, thank you for the light-hearted moment 

[seusscaboose]

Not offended at all
Thanks for catching it

Sorry to hear of your loss

[Ian MacMillan]

Post in proper forum. Is that an app option?


Seriously, I like it. Adding dead time is perfect as we spend way too much time rushing these operations. And having worked on the ground full time in commuter territory this pleases me at how it slows it down.

Passenger commuter stops ex "mbta 223 ok to go" would be nice. I also thought of adding a random defect detector. Choose the type of detector and then spin and see what you get. Then add the amount of walking time to the #car and back.
"Test the brake" spotting a car you release all the brakes to test the handbrake efficiency.

I can see if I can find more

[peteski]

There
Fixed my mistake

Sorry about that auto correct (I guess)

LOL, and I thought all along that it wasn't a mistake.   Haven't we all heard of "dicking with it" or "dicking around"?  So "dicking under the car" didn't seem out of place to me.

Quack!
 

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Post in proper forum. Is that an app option?


Seriously, I like it. Adding dead time is perfect as we spend way too much time rushing these operations. And having worked on the ground full time in commuter territory this pleases me at how it slows it down.

Passenger commuter stops ex "mbta 223 ok to go" would be nice. I also thought of adding a random defect detector. Choose the type of detector and then spin and see what you get. Then add the amount of walking time to the #car and back.
"Test the brake" spotting a car you release all the brakes to test the handbrake efficiency.

I can see if I can find more

Yes! These are great.

[Rich_S]

Ed, I really enjoy what you have programmed so far, great job.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Since it's already been blogged about (http://lancemindheim.com/2016/09/audio-props-traincrew/), I figured I should write up my own post about this thing, so I did.

http://conrail1285.com/traincrew-operate-more-than-your-throttle/

[bman]

Hey Ed..  I'm guessing that being a web app, I'll google it later low on caffeine at the moment, this needs web access to run correct?  This whole computer thing as changed a bit since I played.  Which was in the 80's.  Commence laughter track now. 

How much effort would it take to turn this into an app for a phone or tablet? I've not talked to my app creating gaming friends just yet about this.  The reason being that, at least for me(and it's gotta be about me ya know), the cellular reception where our club layout is is just downright horrible on it's best days.  That is unless you put your phone on the ledge next to the basement windows. Then presto, access granted.  But then your tied to your device looking to the window holding your phone in arm raised antennae fashion.  It's not conducive to operating one's trains at all.  Since we are in the basement of an older home turned into offices, I wonder how many other folks who are in basements run into the same situation.  I know we as a group are just starting to work on getting some ops sessions together, and this would add greatly to those sessions.  Just curious.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Hey Ed..  I'm guessing that being a web app, I'll google it later low on caffeine at the moment, this needs web access to run correct?  This whole computer thing as changed a bit since I played.  Which was in the 80's.  Commence laughter track now. 

How much effort would it take to turn this into an app for a phone or tablet? I've not talked to my app creating gaming friends just yet about this.  The reason being that, at least for me(and it's gotta be about me ya know), the cellular reception where our club layout is is just downright horrible on it's best days.  That is unless you put your phone on the ledge next to the basement windows. Then presto, access granted.  But then your tied to your device looking to the window holding your phone in arm raised antennae fashion.  It's not conducive to operating one's trains at all.  Since we are in the basement of an older home turned into offices, I wonder how many other folks who are in basements run into the same situation.  I know we as a group are just starting to work on getting some ops sessions together, and this would add greatly to those sessions.  Just curious.

Well, yes, you would need web access to access my hosted version.

However, if you wanted to host it locally, on say, a laptop, you could totally do that. It's just a bunch of flat HTML files.
Does the club itself have a wireless network already?

If so, all you need is a laptop or desktop that you've installed the Chrome Web Server thing I linked from the post. Fire that up, and point it to the folder on your machine that you've downloaded the app into. That'll give you a url you can punch into any device that's on the same network and pull it up.

If you don't have a network, you can create an ad hoc one. Here's how you'd do it in OSX: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/182760/how-to-create-a-password-protected-ad-hoc-network-on-yosemite