I have been fortunate enough to finally find a local layout group to get involved with. Everyone gets together to work on anyone else's layout who would like the groups help, and we all share in the enjoyment.

This is wonderful for me, as I dont have a large layout of my own yet, so being able to help work on other's layouts has really been helping hold me over until that great day I start my dream empire, but also to learn new skills from others in the group, and share and practice my skills and techniques. Recently, one of the layout owners asked me if I had ever heard of ShipIt! He went on to explain that he was thinking about changing his car movement methods to a software based car forwarding program.

He uses DecoderPro to program all his DCC locos, but when I asked him if he considered JMRI Ops, he didnt know what I was talking about. After a short explanation, he asked if I knew how to set it up, and if I would take charge of that project. Lucky for me, I had already wanted to get my hands dirty learning Ops, so I could know if that would be the right fit for me on my future layout. My motivation was already in place.

So here I am. The last few weeks I have been studying very thoroughly the fine Worked Example on MRH by David Haynes, reading over the Q&A's on the JMRI yahoo group, and of course playing with the software in my free time. I am getting close to being able to physically run a few trains using the manifests, so that is keeping me motivated. I cant wait to see how well a full op session will go using this.

And as I go, this is going to be a fairly large undertaking, due to the size of the layout, the complexity of the routing of the trains and cars to meet the layout owners expectations, so if I come out the other end of it all alive, hopefully I can join the ranks of those who so graciously provide help and tips to those (like me wishing to learn the ins and outs of Ops. 

Who knows, maybe I'll will even make a video of how our finished system works.

Steven