Model RailRoad Manager (tm), MRRM (tm), software provides model railroad Inventory, Maintenance and Waybill-based Traffic Generation. Advanced version includes Dispatcher, Fascia, Cab Panels Editor and Operations, Layout Locomotive, Turnout, Signal, Block Occupancy, and other sensor Control. Advanced edition also provides HyperThrottle Cabs that integrate rail traffic workload and layout control, Multi-layout Operations for virtual car forwarding between layouts, Remote Operations to drive trains from a distance, Web Cams, Internet features, and extended DCC support.

Rolling Stock Inventory Management


Purpose | Screen Images | Data Description | Function Descriptions | How to Use


Purpose:

Rolling stock comprises your locomotives, passenger cars, freight cars, cabooses, and MOW cars.


Screen Images:

The next two figures show the upper and lower portions of a sample rolling stock in form mode. The first figure is the upper part of the rolling stock form.

This is the lower portion. Some data elements have bee clipped from the total form.


Data Description:

Rolling Stock inventory information is divided into several collections: primary, model, prototype, maintenance, and other data.


Function Descriptions:

The next figure shows the primary buttons and other controls for the rolling stock data.

The first button is used to create a report on a single piece of rolling stock.

The second button creates a report on all or a subset of the rolling stock.

You may save a picture of the model of any piece of rolling stock and a picture of the prototype of that rolling stock item. The 'View Model Pix" and "View Prototype Pix" pop up your preferred image viewer with the respective picture that you have linked to the data selected.

As you can see, we have a lot of data elements available to properly define a piece of rolling stock. The "Copy a Rolling Stock Record" clones the data from the currently selected rolling stock to make entering your rolling stock data for new, similar items. When copying, MRRM asks you for a unique ID for the new piece. After it is copied, you can edit the fields to properly capture the information for the new addition to your inventory.

The "Where are Rolling Stock" report tells you the current stop for the selected item as far as MRRM knows. (If you move a piece when fiddling, of course, this datum will be incorrect.).

The "Roadnames on Layout Report" provides a sorted and distinct, current list of the roadnames of rolling stock in your inventory.

The "Create Car Card" report produces a single car car suitable for use in a car card and waybills type operations if preferred over switchlists and schedules based operating sessions.

The "Create Car Card Set" report produces a set of car cards of all or the filtered, displayed inventory items. In general, summary reports can be filtered to your selection criteria before printing.

The "Collection Valuation Report" provides a convenient summary of your rolling stock inventory and its current value, if you maintain valuation data. I use this report when I go to shows to avoid inadvertently buying duplicates of a piece of rolling stock. If you have a PDA and suitable software such as Documents to Go by Datawiz, you can produce an Excel compatible file of this data to load into your PDA. (In general you can create Excel, text or html variants of most reports produced by MRRM.)

If you and a friends operate on one anthers layout, you can also bring your rolling stock, temporarily, to one another's layout prior to an operations session. The "Export Filtered .. ." button allows you to create a file of selected rolling stock items. This file can be given to the host of the next session before the session. The Host uses the "Import Foreign Rolling..." button to add your rolling stock records to the host's inventory database. The host picks an Interchange on the layout which will be the temporary home of the rolling stock. When the host creates the traffic for the next operating session, the friend's cars can participate in the session (scale and unique IDs matter of course!). When the session is over, the host can delete the records using the provided buttons or mark your rolling stock as "Out of Service".

Using the "Create Web Page" button, you can create an "html" web page for any of your rolling stock inventory items. MRRM places them is a dedicated subdirectory ("WWW"). If you have a picture of the model, it will be inserted into the web page. If you check the "Sell Format" control, the current value will be used as the asking price. Whenever you click the "Create Site Index" button, all web pages will be linked under the site index in the "index.htm" file.

To activate your site, upload the contents of your WWW directory to your Internet Service Provider assigned web space. (The MRRM Internet Server features are not available at this time).

The "Open DCC data set for this locomotive" opens a window with the DCC data if the selected rolling stock item is a locomotive and if it has a DCC decoder.

Not all data elements are required to use the inventory information with the operations aspects of MRRM. The minimum data elements required are shown if you click the red "Show Minimum Required Data Elements" control checkbox.


How to Use:

Inventory management, Maintenance and Operations


Return to Top of Page