I’ve been working with JMRI which has really nice graphics, but so far I haven’t been able to figure out how to set up a schedule and let the trains run automatically.

So I thought I’d look at Rocrail, which is supposed to be good at that.  The graphics are not quite as nice as JMRI’s and the GUI interface can be awkward.  For one thing, the fonts are too big to fit into the boxes on the screen.  Another thing that I find annoying is that clicking on OK after updating the info on a locomotive takes you right out of the locomotive section.  One thing that I do like is having pictures of the locomotives in the GUI.  Being able to pick “that one” instead of having to remember whether it’s the Rugen or Waldenburg locomotive is great.

Here are the pictures that I took for Rocrail.

Both applications have very active users.  JMRI has a mailing list which had 31 messages so far today.  I get them in digest form.

Rocrail has a forum which is divided into English and German. Many of the search responses are in German.  I took German in graduate school, but it didn’t take and that was 50+ years ago.

I’m going to continue to work with both programs.  I can run the trains on JMRI.  I haven’t gotten that far with Rocrail.  It seems to be talking to the controller.

Now that I’ve figured out how to show a gallery of pictures, here is my truck.