Coal Mine

I used the same idea to generate a "Call Sheet" from the coal mines. The background idea was to simulate the local mine operators calling the local yard office and placing their request for empty hoppers. On the Clinchfield, they called Dante Yard. Then the CRR would get empties and then send the local Turns out to work the mines.

Some mines get the same each day, but some tipples get a random count.

By excel, I used the max number the spur could handle, then created a random number from that max.

Pressing F9 calculates it over and over, allowing me to create a switch list for the Mine Turn of how many empties the tipple will get. I also used it to work out how many Turns I would need to switch out all the customers, based on my max tonnage of trains.

Its adds some variety and makes staging easier. I know by the switch lists for example, how many empties Ill need for the locals. I also randomly add a boxcar of "parts", a flat of steel pipe, or even a covered hopper of dust. Breaks up the continuous strings of coal hoppers.

Spread sheet

I also use the same basic idea but have it broken down by car type instead of DOW.

What I haven't figured out is how to break it down further by inbound route.  Let's say I have 4 routes onto my layout, out of staging from the rest of my layout, from the B&O interchange and from 2 PRR interchanges.  I would like to allocate the cars by industry and by inbound route.  The H&H shipyard gets 8 cars this session, 5 gons, 3 boxcars, 3 gons from on line industries, 1 gon from the B&O, one from my railroad, 1 boxcar from my railroad, 1 from the B&O and 1 from the PRR.

Ultimately I would like to enter how many of each car type I have in each staging yard and then it would select cars by type and origin so that I would never have more cars ordered by number and car type from each source than I had cars in those staging tracks (I consider interchanges staging tracks).

Break down by Car Type

Dave, the spreadsheet *is* broken down by car type/industry. Each row represents a different such grouping.

The frequency and DOW columns control whether or not anything actually gets ordered from that car type/industry/group.

Car type

​Agreed, but my spreadsheet has car type in the columns rather than rows, hence my comment that I have "car type" instead of "DOW".

​With my concept, if I wanted DOW, I would have a different tab with different demand values for each DOW.  My goal was to have the whole layout on one (eventually two) sheets of paper.

​I will have to experiment with having car types in rows, with just the car types for each industry (to reduce the number of rows) and then I can use the columns for source (staging, on line or interchange).

Google Sheets

I have a similar generator built in Google Sheets instead of Excel. Just a couple of advantages - Google Sheets is free. It's "in the cloud" so I can access the spreadsheet anywhere from any device. I keep my inventory in another sheet.  Handy when you're at a show or the hobby shop so you can check your inventory via your phone.

Nothing wrong with Excel. Just throwing this out there for those that may be thinking about experimenting. Of course, it goes without saying you need internet access. But, if you don't connect to the internet you're probably not reading this.  

gs

@ Dave

wtf is easy but I haven’t decoded DOW.   I can think of a few but they shouldn’t appear here.

Thanks,

Nick

Acronyms

DOW = Day Of the Week.

DOW

Sorry, it was used in the website description of the spreadsheet and defined there, forgot to define it in this forum.

Google

Yep, Google sheets or any other spreadsheet software should be able to do the same thing. I've happened to have a copy of Excel since before Google Sheets became a thing that was available/widely known.