Building a Switchlist Using OpsBuddy
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- Опубліковано 4 січ 2024
- OpsBuddy is a free switchlist building tool designed specifically for smaller model railroads and shelf-style layouts where fewer industries and less traffic is the norm. You can access OpsBuddy here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/... (NOTE: To save a copy of OpsBuddy, click on the "Use Template" button in the upper right. A Gmail account is required to edit and save the document.)
Feel free to adjust it and make changes to meet your own operational requirements.
OpsBuddy was inspired by the free switchlist template by Bill Neale. His original Excel document can be found here: www.trains.com/mrr/how-to/mod...
To check out a longer video that goes in-depth into the many features available with OpsBuddy, visit this link: • OpsBuddy: The Switchli...
This is awesome. I have been trying to develop my own system using Microsoft Access for the last few years and making little progress. This looks pretty intuitive and fun. Going to give it a try. Thanks for your work on this!
thank you for opsbuddy, im going to use it on my switching layout
Awesome to hear!
Looks very useful, especially for small layouts. Interested also in the 20 dice roller app - there are plenty out there but the one you are using looks really good. What is it and is it available for both android and Iphone? Many thanks.
Just started playing with this, but so far, it's pretty cool. Seems just the right size for my one train switching layout. Love what you've put together. I was wondering about loading/unloading times. Seems like it would be pretty easy to add a loading/unloading column so that cars would have to move through it for a session before moving to the pickup column. Mainly wondering if the added complexity adds to the ops session or gets in the way.
Yeah that should work great! You would just create another column next to each industry with your tracks that is titled "Unloading". After each session, (as you are building your next switchlist) cars dropped off last session gets moved to the unloading column and anything in the unloading column is moved into a "ready for pickup" column for each industry and that way you know if you can pick up those cars yet or not.
There might be a simpler way of doing that, but I think that technique would work fine.
Practically speaking, are your "in staging" cars in a staging yard, or are they stored in, say, a draw?
How often do you run these sessions? Does the repetition of the same two type whatever cars showing up get repetitive or otherwise diminish the suspension of disbelief?
I’m intrigued! I love Google Sheets and your system looks simple enough. It’d be cool if you could build a database with a bunch of cars to choose from. I’ll wait for the 2.0 version. 😉 Just kidding. Well done, you must be a D&D fan.
I am! Thanks for the comment.
I have a question. When you put the cars from the yard to staging, how you move them to staging? Then staging to switch list onto the industries? Are they routed via interchange both ways?
I have a train called the "Sandpoint Turn" which brings cars from staging to the interchange at boyer yard where they are dropped off and any cars ready to go back to staging are picked up. the MFR local will then take over and deliver those cars to the individual industries. At the end of a session, the cars that are picked up are delivered back to the yard where the Sandpoint Turn will pick them up at the beginning of the next Ops Session.
You don't actually have to have a physical train to represent this though. Often times when I run it by myself I just start and end the day at the yard with the MFR Local. It doesn't change anything I do with the switchlist, but I can pretend that the staging move performed by the Sandpoint Turn just happened before I "went on duty" that day.
It is a bit complicated I know. (I went into more detail in the longer video found on my channel) Part of the reason I created OpsBuddy was because I was having a lot of problems getting some of the other tools out there to deal with that complication.
Thanks. That was helpful and I assume that what you where doing but didn't want to assume. I watched the longer video as well and it is very helpful. Will this work with excel as well or any spreadsheet?
I have not tried it, but I believe you can import it into Excel and it should transition over pretty well. @@thomascanady1967
Will this work on my I-Pad?
You can view it and save it, but You'll probably need a computer to edit it. Any edits you make to it on a computer will be viewable on your iPad though, so if you don't want to print out a switchlist, you could use it like that.
As long as you have the Google Sheets app on your iPad, you should be able to edit it on there.
Ah right, I forgot about the sheets app.@@MMRails