Model Operations Processing System

Welcome to MOPS!  MOPS is designed to support an operational aspect to running model railroads and railways.  Using MOPS provides a reason for running trains and moving cars and wagons – industries want their products moved!  You can read more about MOPS here.

MOPS is based on the type of mainframe system that was used fro the early 70s until now, and is text-based!  Systems during that time didn’t have mice, windows or graphics, and MOPS replicates that feel.  But once a limited number of commands are known, using MOPS becomes fast and easy.

MOPS is available for download here, and includes a User Guide, a Quick Reference Guide and some sample data.

Please be aware that installing MOPS does require a limited amount of computer knowledge, but full instructions are given in the guide.

If you do download and use MOPS, please let me know by emailing me at admin [at] railmops [dot] net.

MOPS has been released under a free licence.  To read the licence, click here.

An updated version of MOPS has been released.  The version provides an increase in stability of the application as well as improving a number of commands and, more particularly, enquiries.  Details of the more significant changes are identified on the Issues and Changes page, which can be accessed from the Quick Links on the right.  All-in-all, over 100 changes have been made to the software following some longer periods of usability testing.

Due to upcoming work commitments, progress on future MOPS development is likely to slow dramatically, although any issues will be tackled and fixes provided as quickly as possible.  As always, if you are using the software, please let me know: admin [at] railmops [dot] net.

An updated version of MOPS will be released some time next week.

This updated version will include a number of small changes and improvements which have been discovered during ongoing use and further testing.  A note of the changes can be seen on the Issues page.

On a purely technical front, MOPS and TriMOPS have been ported across from the IDLE development environment to Eclipse.  The code analysis is better in Eclipse, and the move has already paid off as Eclipse automatically spotted a few errors which had missed review and testing.  These corrections, mostly in the Car module, will be released in the next version of MOPS (which will probably be in a couple of weeks’ time).

The example data is also being worked on to provide a ‘minimum’ data set.  The current example data, which was used for testing, had larger numbers than necessary in order to ensure that MOPS could handle the volume.  It’s also likely that a UK-version of the test data will be produced in the near future which will highlight its use with a terminal station (many UK layouts are based around a terminal station).

Work has started on three extensions to MOPS – the MOPS History database, the Train Reporting system and the Graphical display.  The three extensions will be packaged as one application called TriMOPS.  However, updating and viewing MOPS will still be primarily command-based (to remain true to its roots as a late-20th Century mainframe system).  No timescale is being set for the delivery of these items; due to other commitments these items may be some time off.

Why TriMOPS?  It’s short for Train Reporting Information – MOPS.  As TriMOPS is built, additional information about its facilities will be provided.  Like MOPS, TriMOPS will be built in Python and will be cross-platform.

There are two other items that are also being looked at for MOPS at the moment: the first is to allow backups of the database to be taken from within MOPS, and the second is to automatically clean up the report files which are generated on the system.  Both these options will be available from the ‘front screen’ of MOPS.

A new page has been created – Issues and Changes – which tracks found and fixed errors as well as detailing any enhancements.

Incidentally, anyone downloading and installing – can you let me know at admin [at] railmops [dot] net?  Would be useful to know how many users there are out there!