Frolin Marek's

 

RailOp  Software  Clinic

 

October  2010

 

 

In 2010, I flew to St. Louis to present a clinic to the St. Louis Area Narrow Gaugers, at their Fall Meet.  My clinic was on operations and the base setup and use of RailOp software, to do operations.  The clinic was held in Jefferson City, Missouri, on on October 23rd, 2010.  The clinic was well received by a crowd of about 70 people.

 

For this clinic, I designed a new model railroad track plan and setup the software (in advance) to operate that railroad.  While my 'example railroad' was based on a narrow gauge short line, it was design to include many basic features found in operations on most model railroads.  So anyone interested in operations could view the clinic and gather the some basic ideas of what you need to know, to setup a railroad for operating.  And in this case, how you could setup that railroad in a program like RailOp.

 

The clinic was video taped and I am making it available here on my site for those to view if interested.  Due to the length of the clinic, just over one hour, I have broken it up in to chapters.  This making the file download delays more tolerable I hope as well.

 

The clinic included a robust Power-Point presentation, with me talking (sorry, no blonde model to narrate).  The very nice facility for the meet had a standard pull down projector screen, about 4x6ft maybe.  So during the lunch break, I unscrewed a big framed picture off the room's side wall, and turned all the chairs 90 degrees.  You will see two black dots on the screen, there are screw hole inserts in the wall from the picture frame mount.  The wall gave me about a 7x8 display for people to see nice, bigger, projection.

 

 

Video files are rather 'large' in nature and cropping the video to a smaller format gives the viewer the same video, same audio, but smaller screens and less quality.  I was not happy with the smaller formats, so I am providing each chapter in two formats, so you can decide which you would prefer to download watch.  The larger file sizes may take 3-4 minutes to download a 10 minute video. Yes the format is wide-screen even though video is not, but you may prefer the better quality.

 

You may consider downloading the video files to your local PC drive first, then watching, to have better control in playing. Say you want to pause, back up and replay a few lines.  If so, simply 'right click' on the icon and select the 'save file' option, and pick a folder on your computer to save to.  Then simply go open and play with most media player programs.

 

There are two test clips you should try, so you can compare the formats to help pick which format you want to get. Each test clip is the same 1 minute video. Carefully look at the projected RailOp menus and text and see how the quality is between the two.  And how long it takes to download each, so you can project how long the 10-14 minutes chapters will take to download.  You may find it worth waiting a couple minutes, to download the larger video files for the better quality.

 

 

You should be able to easily follow and read the screen images the majority of the time.  To help out, I am providing the handout given at the clinic, which includes the model railroad track plan I designed and several pages of sample Train Manifests, Car and Location reports and such.  This is in a PDF format.  If you plan to watch the videos, I encourage you to download this handout before hand and maybe print to have handy while viewing.

 

 

	RailOp  Clinic  Handout  in PDF format, 6 pages
		Minutes	720x480	1440x1080
	Test Videos,  try each to test download size and video quality	1
	Chapter 1  -  Introduction	10
	Chapter 2  -  Know your Railroad	13
	Chapter 3  -  Engines, Cars, Trains	7
	Chapter 4  -  Train Manifest	12
	Chapter 5  -  Crews & Dispatching	14
	Chapter 6  -  Running Trains  &  Questions and Answers	14
	Chapter 7  -  Support Options & Closing	4

 

 

I would appreciate some feedback after you watch the clinic.  About the content, the presentation,

and which video file size you opt'd to use.  And if you feel you gained anything from the clinic. 

Please send me your comments after viewing via this email link...   < email clinic feedback >

 

 

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