Wagonflow? Never heard of it!

Probably because it doesn't go through the retail trade and it has hardly ever been advertised. The reason is that for a long time, railway modellers with home computers weren't very numerous. That put Wagonflow in a very specialised niche, making advertising difficult.

Instead, it has sold mainly through exhibitions, where people could see what it could do, ask questions about it - and buy and upgrade it as new versions appeared. In fact, Wagonflow has been notable for the fact that a very substantial percentage of its users upgrade as soon as a new version appears - a good indicator of the quality and value of any software.

Happily, computers are now far more common in homes than they were, and this greater familiarity, coupled with the growth of the Internet, has finally provided a better way of getting Wagonflow known.

What is it - some kind of game?

No, definitely not. It's a serious system, but designed to make your layout more fun. Wagonflow is a unique traffic generating and despatching system that can produce different trains for every day of the year based on the needs of the towns that your layout serves. It does this by storing the traffic patterns of your stations and industries and telling you what traffic is required when. It allows for unloading time and tells you when wagons are due to move. Each wagon has its own unloading time, which means they may return at different times even if delivered together, and this breaks up the regular rakes that tend to run on some layouts.

You're sure it's not just a random wagon-shuffler?

It really isn't! The movements are based on logic, they go to individual clients along the line or in your station area, they work to a calendar, and with two exceptions* they are fully repeatable. So you can have a wagon-load of timber delivered every Monday, a block cattle train every Friday, a rake of empty wagons daily during a crop-picking season, and so forth. You can also have wagons delivered at day intervals - e.g. every two days, every three days, and specify when the first delivery day will fall. You want one delivery per year on Christmas Eve? You can do that.

You work out what each client on your line needs: a wagon of raw materials every day, 2 wagons of coal twice a week, and so on. Each of these needs is quick and easy to set up, and well-explained by the manual. Listed together for a station, the needs are called the station profile, and the result is continual operating variety. It might take you 30 minutes to do this for a medium sized station when it's new to you, or 15 minutes with a little practice.

*The two exceptions are (a) the length of block trains - you can randomise each train's length between two values you set yourself (it helps to keep operators on their toes!); and (b) a destination control to prevent traffic always being exchanged between the same two stations if alternative destinations exist.

Do I have to set this all up every session?

Absolutely not! You do it once, save it to a file within Wagonflow, and you may never need to touch it again. However, most people find they do need to make adjustments in the first week or two of running their own profiles.

The commonest mistake is to call for more traffic than you've got wagons to carry it. Don't worry! If you find you've got it wrong, you can make changes in moments. And because Wagonflow is based on logic and is therefore repeatable, you can test your changes right away. After a few sessions, you'll find it starts to work well for you, doesn't need any more adjustment, and you can really enjoy running your layout. Of course if you buy more stock, a little more tweaking may help it work harder - and it's quick and simple to do!

Is it just about freight? - What about passenger services?

Wagonflow has full time-tabling abilities, allowing you to set up regular passenger services and add different frequencies to them. For example, you can have passenger trains that run on Tuesdays and Fridays only; trains that run on summer Saturdays for the holiday traffic; trains that only run on specific days of the year such as for the old fairs, or modern exhibition specials, and so forth.

The timetable can present all this information on screen if you want - but it will also display only the trains due to run today. And you can filter this further so it displays each station timetable separately. All these variants can be printed out - again to allow you to run the layout without the computer being there.

What's the difference between the full system (Flow) and Autoflow?

Flow is the original and most realistic mode. Your Import screen displays the types of traffic each station is hoping to receive on the next train arriving. The traffic might be coal, timber, grain, oil, and so forth, for delivery to different parts of the station area. The dispatcher (hidden sidings operator) then makes up a train with suitable vehicles and tells the computer which ones he's sending by tapping in their wagon numbers. So he has full control over which vehicles he uses. If he's short of wagons, he may hold back some traffic and send it later, when he has suitable stock. If he's got a printer, he can print out the finished list and pass it to the station operator, who then knows how to shunt the train when it arrives.

Autoflow is a more relaxed system. It operates as an automatic dispatcher - telling you what specific wagons should go into each train. It sticks to the wagon fleet you've got (whereas Flow can get more exciting by demanding more wagons of a particular type than the dispatcher has available to him at that moment). It's ideal for operation when the computer is elsewhere, but existing users say they normally work with Flow. One or two even work in Flow on their own, and switch to Autoflow when friends come round to help operate.

How many stations will Wagonflow support?

You can run one small station with a few hidden sidings, or up to fifteen stations plus several sets of hidden sidings and plenty of storage loops. The more stations you have, the more essential a printer becomes.

Sounds like it's more for big systems

No, it goes big and small. Wagonflow actually evolved from one medium-sized terminus running straight to hidden sidings because that's what many modellers have. It widened its horizons to larger systems, but also kept even smaller ones in mind - stations that would choke on ten wagons or even less. Really small layouts are difficult to keep interesting, especially when all the scenery has been completed, but Wagonflow can give purpose in a realistic manner, along with the sense that every operating session is a little bit different.

I don't have any hidden sidings - are they necessary?

It's certainly helpful to have them, but not essential. An alternative is to allocate two or three of the sidings in your largest station to the hidden sidings role. If you do this, you do not count those sidings as part of the station area. A train heading from these surrogate hidden sidings to the station they are already attached to would normally go around the layout in whatever manner suited your particular line, in order to arrive back as a train from elsewhere.

If you run a layout where all stock and all sidings are in public view, this may lead to using several stations under their own identities, but also as external destinations such as North, Main Line or whatever. The practicalities of this depend very much on how your line is laid out - especially size and location of stations.

How many freight wagons will I need?

It depends on a number of things, like how many stations you have, how long your trains are, and how many trains you run each day.

... Understood, but give me some examples

Okay - if one train normally hauls nearly all your wagons, you haven't got enough!

On a very small layout with (say) one five-wagon train per day to one station, almost all your wagons would unload between trains, so you'd get more use out of them. If your daily goods train collected yesterday's wagons, you'd need 10 wagons right there (5 in, 5 out), but to get the variety that Wagonflow offers, you'd really need something like 20, even if you didn't run block trains (single cargoes such as cattle or coal).

Wagonflow includes a full working example of a bigger branch (short-line) terminus with two trains in and two trains out per day. Train length averages about 8 vehicles, but will vary considerably either side of that. No vehicles return on the train they came in on, which means there is always stock in the station sidings. The Terminus example uses 40 wagons, which is five times the average train length. This gives plenty of variety, but all the vehicles work hard. The manual explains in detail how the traffic is identified, defining what the range of vehicles should be. It's quick, it's not difficult - and you'll probably enjoy planning it.

On a bigger, multi-station layout, you obviously need more wagons again, but it needn't be a huge increase, depending on the level of service you're trying to sustain. 75 would probably support three stations if they weren't too big, but 100 would give you a lot more operational possibilities, supporting non-stop trains, more block trains, and so on. Using the Empties option also adds realism, helps to reduce the wagon demand, yet keeps plenty of trains running.

Above that level, depending on the amount of stock standing around in station sidings, probably three times the number of wagons in a train, times the number of trains per day (up to three*), times the number of stations served. So if you're planning a small empire with ten stations each running two 8-wagon trains per day each way, you'd better put (3 x 8 x 2 x 10 = 480) wagons on your shopping list - though you might manage with a handful less! Fortunately this figure comes down a lot if the trains are exchanged between stations, rather than sent to storage loops or hidden sidings.

(*The limit of three is not the maximum number of trains in a day; it just recognises that above three per day, wagons delivered in the morning will be free again for use in the afternoon or evening).

Will Wagonflow work with any mix of freight on any layout?

No. (That floored you, didn't it?) If you've got three coal wagons and one siding and that's your entire layout, or if your layout is so non-prototypical that you cannot separate sending and receiving (either between different stations or between separate areas of the same station), then Wagonflow would be struggling. But so, too, would any other despatching system.

Wagonflow assumes a mix of block trains (unit trains of one cargo type such as coal or fruit) and mixed freight trains assembled from multiple types of vehicle. Because most layouts have relatively few vehicles and because most of the variety of operation lies in mixed freight operation, it does favour that, but block trains have been a feature of Wagonflow from the very beginning and can be given full treatment in the timetable.

You mentioned the Empties Option, earlier. What's that?

Very small layouts can only operate between a single station and hidden sidings that represent the main line. But when a line has two or more stations, the Empties option allows direct exchanges of (some) traffic between the stations, and also redirects free wagons to other use within the same station.

So the Empties option is another layer of realism, and makes more efficient use of your stock. But it can also reduce train lengths, which you may not want. That's why it's an option: if you don't like it, you can turn it off. The option only works in Flow; Autoflow does things in a different way, so it doesn't use it.

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