Before I commit myself irrevocably to the location of the track by painting and ballasting it, I've been shunting wagons around.....up to now, completely randomly.
Yesterday I decided that it was time to try doing the Inglenook Sidings game properly.
First I listed the eight different wagons that are currently on the layout, assigning each a number from 1 to 8.
Then I needed some way of randomly selecting a five wagon train to make up from the randomly placed stock on the layout.....traditionally people have used dice, a multi-sided spinner, cards or tiddly winks but as I had a smart phone in my hand, I found a free random number generator app, which can be customised to generate a number between the values of your choice, in this case 1 to 8.
To make up a list of wagons I can now use the number generator; OK so sometimes I get repeats of numbers already drawn so I just hit the button again....just as I would with dice or a spinner.
A quick shunting session ensued, the only issue being that I have made the sidings slightly longer than the three wagon lengths they should be, and the "main line" the whole length of the baseboard where for the game only five wagons are allowed.
If I want to stick to the Inglenook rules I will either have to physically prevent myself from putting more than the permitted number of wagons on each track, remember not to do so......or just cheat!
When the layout is more developed I might sort out some way of adding a temporary buffer stop to each track...I don't want to shorten the tracks permanently as I may sometimes want to "just shunt" without playing the game.
All good fun......perhaps I should get out more!
Simon.
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