The Story
Written from the perspective of Lance Hall
One evening in the spring of 2024, at the Coshocton Model Railroad Club, a casual conversation about switching and operations prompted Brad Wujcik to give a suggestion based on how he was performing operations on paper at his home layout. Jim Phelps provided some insight that indicated there was some merit to testing the idea within our club.
I took down notes to understand what was being discussed and asked some questions to gain more insight and started to draft up some basic word documents that laid out example switch lists. I want to say it was late April 2024. I know this because on May 3rd, after our normal club meeting, we tested the idea from those test switch lists using real cars and industries (I have pictures I will upload from that night!). It worked extremely well, and we had a lot of fun.
It was THAT night that we came up with the name. Someone jokingly said we should call it "Brad Rail" (I think Jim Phelps, but I could be wrong). I know I interjected and said we should call it "B-RAIL".
Further discussions were had and the idea began to take shape as to how this might look like from as an application that generated word documents. I began working on the basic idea of a software application, and a basic interface around it. Work began that week in the evenings to create a basic application. By May 7th 2024, the first screenshots in my phone (I will post) show the early application interface of the program. The next Friday (May 10th 2024) we had an operating session with "automatically" generated word documents from a very crude interface and again had a lot of excitement about what we were seeing.
The next day (Saturday) we ran AGAIN with some basic switchlists. We were having a ton of fun! That was the day we sat down and started entering all the industries and tracks into a database to later feed into the switchlist program. Work continued that weekend creating a basic application.
Now it's May 17th 2024 and we are now on the 3rd Friday night of exploring this new idea. A basic application is almost ready to be released.
May 18th, we now have an application that produces PDF switchlists on demand. No ability to create trains though, just pre-defined industries to make the same kind of train over and over again.
On May 24th a basic enough application that allows for trains to be created at will, selecting individual industries to serve is now in place.
Features and things grew from there. Samson Hall took on the role of learning the application to share with others in the club. He became very skilled and knowledgeable on how to not only perform actions, but to teach them to others. In July 2024, Samson and I shared a lot with the club during a live demo presentation to go over all the features we had created. It was very well received!
A few t-shirts were made just because we had the cricut out doing other stuff and thought it would be fun! Samson and his sister both have them! (pics coming)
Development stabilized by fall of 2024 and other than a few maintenance fixes, remained unchanged until summer of 2026. The club ran a lot of switchlists from it during that time! It was observed that on April 30th 2026 over 672 switch lists had been created since August 2024.
In the spring of 2026, Samson and I discussed modifying the codebase to allow for others to use on their own layouts. We had previously used it at home with our seasonal Lionel Layout with various industries. Parker Atkinson had also expressed interest in using it on their new speed-mo layout as well.
New features were added on June 27th 2026 to allow for changing of car types/modifying tracks and industry/location details.
So the idea wheel starts turning from the earlier conversation in April 2026. Samson and I decided to explore a way to make this into something that can be used by others. Samson had been learning some coding skills recently!
In July 2026, I mentioned to Brad that I was thinking about doing a walk-up style demo at the Coshocton Train Show this fall. Because this was only known internally at the club at the time, I wanted to spruce up the logo to imply what it does. I added "Model Railroading Operations" to the bottom, and Brad suggested adding a double RR to make it railroad related.
On July 29th, 2026. BRRAIL.NET was created. More to come!
One evening in the spring of 2024, at the Coshocton Model Railroad Club, a casual conversation about switching and operations prompted Brad Wujcik to give a suggestion based on how he was performing operations on paper at his home layout. Jim Phelps provided some insight that indicated there was some merit to testing the idea within our club.
I took down notes to understand what was being discussed and asked some questions to gain more insight and started to draft up some basic word documents that laid out example switch lists. I want to say it was late April 2024. I know this because on May 3rd, after our normal club meeting, we tested the idea from those test switch lists using real cars and industries (I have pictures I will upload from that night!). It worked extremely well, and we had a lot of fun.
It was THAT night that we came up with the name. Someone jokingly said we should call it "Brad Rail" (I think Jim Phelps, but I could be wrong). I know I interjected and said we should call it "B-RAIL".
Further discussions were had and the idea began to take shape as to how this might look like from as an application that generated word documents. I began working on the basic idea of a software application, and a basic interface around it. Work began that week in the evenings to create a basic application. By May 7th 2024, the first screenshots in my phone (I will post) show the early application interface of the program. The next Friday (May 10th 2024) we had an operating session with "automatically" generated word documents from a very crude interface and again had a lot of excitement about what we were seeing.
The next day (Saturday) we ran AGAIN with some basic switchlists. We were having a ton of fun! That was the day we sat down and started entering all the industries and tracks into a database to later feed into the switchlist program. Work continued that weekend creating a basic application.
Now it's May 17th 2024 and we are now on the 3rd Friday night of exploring this new idea. A basic application is almost ready to be released.
May 18th, we now have an application that produces PDF switchlists on demand. No ability to create trains though, just pre-defined industries to make the same kind of train over and over again.
On May 24th a basic enough application that allows for trains to be created at will, selecting individual industries to serve is now in place.
Features and things grew from there. Samson Hall took on the role of learning the application to share with others in the club. He became very skilled and knowledgeable on how to not only perform actions, but to teach them to others. In July 2024, Samson and I shared a lot with the club during a live demo presentation to go over all the features we had created. It was very well received!
A few t-shirts were made just because we had the cricut out doing other stuff and thought it would be fun! Samson and his sister both have them! (pics coming)
Development stabilized by fall of 2024 and other than a few maintenance fixes, remained unchanged until summer of 2026. The club ran a lot of switchlists from it during that time! It was observed that on April 30th 2026 over 672 switch lists had been created since August 2024.
In the spring of 2026, Samson and I discussed modifying the codebase to allow for others to use on their own layouts. We had previously used it at home with our seasonal Lionel Layout with various industries. Parker Atkinson had also expressed interest in using it on their new speed-mo layout as well.
New features were added on June 27th 2026 to allow for changing of car types/modifying tracks and industry/location details.
So the idea wheel starts turning from the earlier conversation in April 2026. Samson and I decided to explore a way to make this into something that can be used by others. Samson had been learning some coding skills recently!
In July 2026, I mentioned to Brad that I was thinking about doing a walk-up style demo at the Coshocton Train Show this fall. Because this was only known internally at the club at the time, I wanted to spruce up the logo to imply what it does. I added "Model Railroading Operations" to the bottom, and Brad suggested adding a double RR to make it railroad related.
On July 29th, 2026. BRRAIL.NET was created. More to come!
"Try to learn something new each time you go to a model railroad club."
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