Grouping locos with elink

[salmontrout]

Hi

Tried to group locos using pc and e link without success. User guide not clear. Can any one advise please

[Chrissaf]

Grouping is basically a 'Filter' system that allows you to select a loco from your loco roster (the column of locos on the right hand side) faster than having to scroll through them all individually.

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Say you have 50 locos. Your right hand side loco roster would be a column 50 locos long. By configuring your locos into Groups, say for example 5 Groups of 10 locos each. Then you only need to scroll through 10 locos on the right hand side loco roster column.

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The pull down group filter (see red circled menu box in image below) will not appear until you have configured your first group.

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Once you have placed your fleet of locos in different 'Groups', then the Group names you give them will be listed in the pull down box. The top entry in the pull down box will be 'ALL' and this would list 'ALL' 50 locos in this example. Then as each Group name is selected, then only the locos designated in that group will show in the list. As said before, grouping is just a simple 'filter' loco selection feature.

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OK, that explains what it is and how to use it, but how do you configure the groups in the first place?

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Simple....you use the 'Loco Settings' screen - see below:

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/media/tinymce_upload/2b4407d65416b63b441f6f2f58e79a56.jpg

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First things first you need to decide how you are going to Name your loco Groups and what locos in your fleet will belong to each Group.

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For example you might have this following list of Groups (I am just making these up as I go along - you will need to make your own choices based upon the loco fleet you own):

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• Steam pre 1950
• Steam post 1950
• Diesel GWR
• Diesel Freight
• Diesel Passenger

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So having decided on the Group Names you want to set up. You click the "Add new group" box (arrow 2 in image above) and add the 'Group Names' you have defined above one at a time. Follow the on screen prompts.

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You now have (in this example) five Groups configured. When you restart RM the pull down box shown in the first image will appear with a pull down list starting with 'ALL' followed by the five groups you have set up. Clicking any of the five groups will show a "No loco in group" message. This is because, although the 'Groups' have been set up, you haven't yet allocated a loco to any of them.

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Go back to the second image, the 'Loco Settings' screen.

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Select each of your locos in your loco roster box (arrow 1) in the image and with that loco now populating the window, select the group you want to add it to using the pull down box (arrow 2) in the image. Save the loco before selecting the next loco in the list. Once all locos have been allocated to a group and saved. Go back to the main RM window and see what happens when you select each group name in the pull down box above the loco roster list.

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Simples......

 

[Chrissaf]

One thing I forgot to add.

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A loco can belong to more than one Group. Say for example you have two groups named "Sound Locos" and "TTS Locos". A TTS loco IS also a Sound loco and can belong to BOTH the "Sound" and "TTS" groups.

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To configure this, when selecting each individual loco in the 'Loco Settings' screen to assign it a group. The Group pull down box (arrow 2 in the earlier image) has a 'Tick' box against each group in the list. Thus, more than one Group can be 'ticked'. This makes the 'Group Filter' at the top of the right hand side loco roster list a quite powerful loco searching feature.

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TIP1: The secret to this is planning. Make a list of your loco fleet on paper and look for patterns. Work out your Groups (names) and Loco to Group assignments on paper first before starting to configure it all up in RM. It is much easier to change your mind on paper, than it is to change a whole load of configured RM entries.

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TIP2: If you make a complete hash of it and want to delete all the Group configurations and just start again. Just delete the "Group.dat" file located in the RailMaster "program (x86)" folder. A new "Group.dat" file will be created once you start creating another group.