>>Sele traintime as TotTrain Where Not EMpty(traintime)
>
>First thought: "Why aren't i using that?"
>
>then i realized that i want other group totals on the rest of the fields in the group. That where clause would exclude the other records.
>
>I'm working on a nightmarishly complex string to val summation and string reconstituion, and i think it works, but it's ugly.

two selects:
First: select "everything, you want", TrainTime group by "everything, you want", TrainTime order by "everything, you want", TrainTime desc

So, you will have two records for each group, first record contains TrainTime.

Second select: select "everything, you want", TrainTime group by "everything, you want" order by "everything, you want"

Does it work?