diff --git a/moses/SourceWordDeletionFeature.cpp b/moses/SourceWordDeletionFeature.cpp
index 6d2a0ab6b..907a602b8 100644
--- a/moses/SourceWordDeletionFeature.cpp
+++ b/moses/SourceWordDeletionFeature.cpp
@@ -36,10 +36,12 @@ m_unrestricted(true)
   }
 
   // load word list for restricted feature set
-  cerr << "loading source word deletion word list from " << filename << endl;
-  if (!Load(filename)) {
-    UserMessage::Add("Unable to load word list for source word deletion feature from file " + filename);
-    //return false;
+  if (filename != "") {
+    cerr << "loading source word deletion word list from " << filename << endl;
+    if (!Load(filename)) {
+  	UserMessage::Add("Unable to load word list for source word deletion feature from file " + filename);
+	  //return false;
+    }
   }
 }
 
diff --git a/scripts/ems/experiment.meta b/scripts/ems/experiment.meta
index b5803b8cd..c82195b1a 100644
--- a/scripts/ems/experiment.meta
+++ b/scripts/ems/experiment.meta
@@ -581,7 +581,7 @@ create-config
 	in: sigtest-filter-reordering-table sigtest-filter-phrase-translation-table generation-table sparse-lexical corpus-mml-prefilter=OR=corpus-mml-postfilter=OR=domains INTERPOLATED-LM:binlm LM:binlm 
 	out: config
 	ignore-if: use-hiero
-	rerun-on-change: decoding-steps alignment-factors translation-factors reordering-factors generation-factors lexicalized-reordering training-options script decoding-graph-backoff score-settings additional-ini
+	rerun-on-change: decoding-steps alignment-factors translation-factors reordering-factors generation-factors lexicalized-reordering training-options script decoding-graph-backoff score-settings additional-ini create-ini
 	default-name: model/moses.ini
 	error: Unknown option
 binarize-config
diff --git a/scripts/ems/experiment.perl b/scripts/ems/experiment.perl
index 855d6b96c..b4ebe161a 100755
--- a/scripts/ems/experiment.perl
+++ b/scripts/ems/experiment.perl
@@ -2107,7 +2107,8 @@ sub define_training_create_config {
 			= &get_output_and_input($step_id);
 
     my $moses_src_dir = &check_and_get("GENERAL:moses-src-dir");
-    my $cmd = "$moses_src_dir/bin/create-ini ";
+    #my $cmd = "$moses_src_dir/bin/create-ini ";
+    my $cmd = &backoff_and_get("TRAINING:create-ini");
 
     my %IN;
     my %OUT;
@@ -2125,7 +2126,7 @@ sub define_training_create_config {
       $OUT{"word"} = 0;
     }
 
-    $cmd .= "-input-factor-max ".((scalar keys %IN)-1)." ";
+    $cmd .= " -input-factor-max ".((scalar keys %IN)-1)." ";
 
     $cmd .= "-translation-factors ".
 	          &encode_factor_definition("translation-factors",\%IN,\%OUT)." "