Switchlist Program Alternatives

[Guilford Railman]

One of the model railroaders I follow on Youtube has mentioned a program called Switchlist several times over the years. He has stated that it is only available for Mac, and unfortunately I do not have a Mac, but rather a windows PC. My layout is small and I have been using JMRI to generate switch lists but it's overkill and can make things more difficult than need be. Does anybody have recommendations for alternatives I could use for my layout?

 

[santafewillie]

Our own forum member, Dave Husman, dave1905 published one in the early 2000's that I used up until recently. I only stopped when I built a new layout and have not updated stations. I believe that he has kept it updated and it is available on his website through Dropbox. Look for it under operations. I have not tried to download the current version, I just know that it is there.

 

[Guilford Railman]

Our own forum member, Dave Husman, dave1905 published one in the early 2000's that I used up until recently. I only stopped when I built a new layout and have not updated stations. I believe that he has kept it updated and it is available on his website through Dropbox. Look for it under operations. I have not tried to download the current version, I just know that it is there.

Awesome! Thanks for the info, I’ll check it out.

 

[Guilford Railman]

During the past week, I've continued exploring alternatives for the Mac program Switchlist. Ironically, the same Youtuber who I learned about Switchlist through a while back, has posted in one of his more recent videos about using probability tables and dice to manage the operations on his small switching layout. I copied his table (which he copied from someone else) and modified it to suit my layout. It actually seems to work quite well and I love the simplicity of this method compared to JMRI, at least with regards to having a small layout.

Here is the table below:

I also marked the corresponding locations on a schematic of the track plan from Scarm so you can get an idea of what I'm referring to.

I think what would make the randomized switching through this method even more enjoyable is if I had more diversified rolling stock for spots C and D, such as gondolas. I will have to buy some I guess

I figured I would share this method for anyone who hasn't heard of it yet or would like to try it.

 

[Guilford Railman]

I spent a few hours today trying out the dice-roll tables I copied from a fellow modeler. I modified his tables to work with my layout and expanded upon his idea further by creating a third table.

This third table allows the user to roll one die and select which numbered car of the various car types from table two to use for the switch move. After trying out 19 “sessions”, I came across two problems.

The first is that some of the dice rolls resulted in the same car being selected for a switch when it was already spotted on a spur track. I wasn’t sure how to fix this issue but then I realized that with the same car being selected, this could represent a delay in the car being unloaded, and therefore another identical roll would be required to get the car swapped.

The second problem is a lack of rolling stock to support some of the switch moves. Due to only having two flatcars, I wasn’t able to swap spots C and D very often. The lumber flatcar ended up residing on spot D most of the 19 sessions. This is primarily because the other flat car was occupying spot C, and couldn’t be relocated to spot D. The easiest solution is to dedicate flat cars to either spot C or D but not both. However, this limits operations further so ideally it would be nice to have a few extra rail cars to supplement the inventory.