I have a table that looks like this:

And I need it to look like this, where net=gross-tare:

How do I do this?
I started by melting the data, then casting as columns, and then creating new columns for the net readings.
df_m <- melt(df, id = 1:3)
df_c <- cast(df_m, ... ~ variable + type)
df_c$wr_net <- df_c$wr_gross - df_c$wr_tare
df_c$wc_net <- df_c$wc_gross - df_c$wc_tare
df_c$tsa_net <- df_c$tsa_gross - df_c$tsa_tare
Which gives

But now I can’t figure out how to melt this table to get the dataframe to look the way I need with a column for ‘type’ with values ‘gross’ and ‘tare’ and ‘net’.
Is there an easier way? Am I barking up the wrong tree with melt/cast?
You can reproduce a small sample of my data using this…
df <- structure(list(train = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L), .Label = "AC0485n", class = "factor"),
position = c(1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 3L, 3L), type = structure(c(2L,
1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 1L), .Label = c("gross", "tare"), class = "factor"),
wids_raw = c(24.85, 146.2, 26.16, 135, 24.7, 135.1), wids_corr = c(26.15,
145.43, 27.44, 134.43, 26, 134.52), tsa = c(24.1, 139.2,
25, 133.6, 24, 131.1)), .Names = c("train", "position", "type",
"wr", "wc", "tsa"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA,
-6L))
I think all you need is to use ddply:
which returns,
EDIT:
And I think this works if you really want to use melt/cast: