Regarding terminology:
"Block" is an American freight term that does not even carry over to passenger operations. Trains that split to different destinations have "sections" rather than blocks. Actually, I don't even think block is a universal term as I've heard "classifications" used as well. Some term that denotes a sub-consist makes sense to me and "section" does carry that meaning more than "block".
"consist" isn't even an American railway term in the freight railroad world - it is more common among railfans and model railroaders and often refers only to the engines. In the old days railroads had "consist books" for passenger trains, listing the equipment regularly assigned to each train. Still, I googled it and the dictionary definition does say: "a set of railroad vehicles forming a complete train"
According to wikipedia, the UK equivalent of "consist" is "formation", "set", "set", or "unit. It also says that "trainset" is equivalent to "consist," which I think is only true in the passenger train world. Looking at the way wikipedia has it laid out (
https://en.wikipedia...ology_in_Europe) it would seem that our use of the word "consist" should really be "train".
I'm going to propose that we call the new format "train" (instead of consist or wagon-list).
It seems clearer, simpler, more prototypical, more descriptive and more accessible to beginners.
I'm going to further propose that we use the term "section" or "set" for the consists/loose consists/blocks, etc that are included into a train. And of course a train can include sections, other trains and engines and wagons as specifically defined or randomized in the "train" file. (when you think about it, this all makes sense and corresponds to real operating practice. For example imagine when a rush hour commuter train breaks down. Standard operating procedure is for another train to couple onto it and proceed. From an operations perspective, the two trains now become one train with one designation.)
I would suggest it would be useful to have "section" files as a separate format designation even if the format is identical to the "train" file, because it helps the user keep track of the difference in purpose.
"set" might be a better name than section because it conveys the meaning of a set of equipment that could be reused over and over for different trains. Block and set are not identical concepts, but are close enough that they could be conflated into one format.
There is a third file type we should specify and that is the list of equipment to be drawn from when a "train" or "set" calls something random. That file would have a list of wagons or engines and (like the others) a comment field. Open rails should be able to check if the selected wagon or engine is present in the TRAINSET folder and make a different choice if it isn't, so we can make long lists of possible cars that will still work if people can't or don't want to download all required stock.
In American usage, the word for equipment assigned to a specific use is "pool". I think that might be a bit of an esoteric term, unfriendly to newcomers. I'm not sure what else to call it though.
Ryan, I continue to be very excited by your work here. Thanks for taking it on.
Christopher