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.

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.

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).

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.

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!

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.

MOPS has been over a year in the making, consists of about 17,000 lines of code and has taken in the region of 1200 hours to develop.

Is it finished?  the short answer is no – there are a number of features I want to add.  But at some point you have to draw the line to define the ‘base system’.  Among the features that are likely to appear at some point are:

• Schedule Tracking: MOPS is currently passive about whether a train is on schedule, and these improvements would make MOPS more pro-active in terms of advising of late trains, giving improved estimates of arrival, etc.
• History database:, so you can see what’s been run (trains, car flows).   This history suite would let you see volumes of cars that were run, weight carried over a traffic flow, and performance against timetables.
• Visual Tracker: a graphics view of where trains are.  This would probably be a separate GUI module that plugged into MOPS and would be reasonable simple (trains would either be at a station or on a route).

That’s all for the future.  Tomorrow is the release of version 1.

For details of what MOPS does, see the About page from the right hand bar.  The software will be downloadable from the Software page.

Putting the package together…

I’m pleased with how MOPS looks and behaves; that’s not to say that there isn’t more to do and that it couldn’t be improved – over the next few months I am sure that there will be a lot of changes as bugs are taken out, usability improved and additional features added.  But as a foundation for the system that I set out to build, it’s achieved the original aims.

The next step is to package the code and the documentation into one zip file, then load that onto the web site.

And finally, tweaks to the web site itself.