Strange and Frustrating Issues With Activity!?

[meeshu]

Created a simple activity for Europe 2 route (Innsbuck to St. Anton).

Created a direct path from Innsbruck to St. Anton for my train. But before leaving Innsbruck area, there are six cuts of cars to assemble into my train. Assembly of these cuts of cars are done manually (Control + M), by driving forward, in reverse, and operating switches manually as required.

First issue is that there are numerous End of Authority points almost everywhere within the Innsbruck area (after changing to manual control; Control + M keys)!! Sometimes my train can pass through EoA points with no apparent issue, but most of the time my train emergency brakes are applied when going through these EoA points! This means having to wait until the emergency brakes are released and then continue with the activity (collecting cuts of cars). This is very annoying as it adds considerably to the time taken to collect all the cuts of cars.

My train HAS to go through these EoA points in order to reach the cars to be collected. Is there a way to avoid this frequent emergency braking, or at least minimizing the occurrences of emergency braking?

Really strange behavior is that sometimes when going through a switch to another track and there is an EoA that has to be driven through, my train would either "jump" back to the original track!? Or, my train would suddenly "jump" to the other track before the train has had a chance to drive there!? Or, my train would jump to the other track and at maybe 5 times the track speed my train would travel quickly along the next track and come to a stop at the end of track (or maybe until the next EoA point?)!!?? <- this is really weird!!

Surely this must be a bug (with trains jumping from track to track, and sudden acceleration to very high speed)!!??

I have yet to test this activity under MSTS.

Running ORTS 1.3.1.

[slipperman]

Hi meeshu,
I can't answer all your queries, but I believe the "jumping track" problem is caused by rolling stock having CouplingHasRigidConnection ( 1 ) in its coupling parameters. Changing this to ( 0 ) usually solves the problem, but may, of course, introduce other anomalies!!

Cheers,
Ged

[derekmorton]

Further to Ged's answer:-
I have found that when going through a switch that is set against you, the train can sometimes jump to the track that the point is set to.

[meeshu]

Thanks for the comments.

Yes, there is definitely something not right here with the trains "jumping about". So presumably this issue must be due a bug in the simulator(?)

I might experiment with coupler settings later and see what happens.

But this frequent emergency braking after running the numerous EoA points is quite a nuisance! Is there a work around for this?

I tried running this activity under MSTS, but it wouldn't allow me to change switches as they were all automatic (dispatcher controlled). So I couldn't complete this activity under MSTS.

Consequently I've had to redo this activity and this time using a number of reverse points instead. Under both ORTS and MSTS, the activity seems to run OK, so far. I have yet to complete the activity though due to problems with camera views and the Track Monitor as detailed here -

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...ction-For-Cab!

[R. Steele]

So presumably this issue must be due a bug in the simulator(?)

No, that may be an erroneous assumption. I think you'll find most will agree with me on this point >>> The fact is, there are activities written for MSTS that must be extensively reworked for them to work in OR...while OR has excellent backward compatibility to legacy activities some just don't work well in OR or not as they should. MSTS had all sorts of ingenious workarounds and hacks to make things work - that just do not logically process in OR.

Once you acquire some familiarity with OR, you'll find you can overcome many of these situations on the fly in OR, by using automatic and manual mode and the Dispatcher window to get through the activity. --- or you can rework the activity...path work, changing traffic starting points and timing, etc. Have fun.

[meeshu]

Thanks Gerry.

I'll try to complete this activity under MSTS and compare results with ORTS.

[mmax45581]

I think the End of Authority points may be switches lined against you. Try to use the G and Shift+G keys to toggle the switches so that they line up with your route. That will also cure the 'track jumping' problem.

[roeter]

It is indeed likely that those End of Authority are misaligned trailing switches.
The rules for aligning trailing switches in Manual mode are as follows.
If the route is cleared through a signal all trailing switches will be aligned. When the train has a clear signal, it may be assumed that the route is indeed properly set.
If however switches are set which are not controlled by signals, or switches are set after the signal has been passed, then trailing switches will not be aligned and will have to be set manually. Failing to do so will result in emergency braking.
The track jump is caused by running through a misaligned switch. The train is placed starting from the front and following the setting of any switches 'under' the train. If the train runs over a misaligned switch, the placing will follow the (incorrect) switch alignment.

Regards,
Rob Roeterdink

[meeshu]

Thanks for the suggestion and for the detailed comments! I'll look into that!

[wwhall]

I've posted some of this before, but for the benefit of some of the newbies to these sims, I'll repeat. MSTS was/is essentially a game to play with trains that has a few features like a simulator. MSTS was/is even pretty "clunky" at doing that. No doubt, MSTS was designed the way it was so that casual gamers could run it and still enjoy it. OpenRails can sort of be played as a game, too, but to get the most out of its features, the player must think about it and run it more as a railroader would--in other words run OpenRails as a railroad simulator, not as a game. So, for example, when switching in manual mode, trailing switches have to be checked for proper alignment, just as a real railroader would have to do. Simmers who aren't willing to "immerse" that way are likely better off to stick with MSTS or Train Simulator 20**. The OR developers have spent tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of hours trying to make OR as realistic as possible. Believe me, they are getting there. I know--I used to work in the railroad industry.

[geepster775]

Here is a private video that shows how a structured activity can have moments of unstructured switching WITHOUT needing reverse points.

The player train pulls into the siding to make a pickup of additional cars. Unfortunately, the player engines need to go about collecting all the cars before adding them to the head end of their train. In the meantime, AI traffic goes by in both directions. After cutting the power off, I go to manual mode to run around my own train via the yard tracks to gather the cars being picked up. I can select any yard track to move through on. Note that once I get off the signalled siding (where the player path is routed onto) the track monitor changes from white to red to indicate the power is off-path. The track monitor also shows an end of authority because a switch behind the engines is lined the wrong way. I go back and forth switching without using a single reverse point. At the end, I need to go beyond the fixed signal at the end of the siding to get headroom to double back to my train, but I am denied until after the passage of another AI train. At the very end after recoupling to my train, I am back on path and can slip back into Auto mode. At a couple of places, I slip into and out of time acceleration mode to keep the video shorter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKCo1kCK7Uc

When you become a patron of payware companies that are dedicated to Open Rails only, you get activities that educate you on how to exploit the new Open Rails features, even if that involves clearing your head of most of the MSTS stuff. And I certainly don't spend time comparing this outcome to what MSTS can do, because MSTS simply cannot offer such unstructured switching options in the middle of a structured activity. And I don't claim there is an OR bug simply because I an deploying the wrong tools as if this were MSTS. MSTS is a waste of time, and so is troubleshooting all the reverse point issues simply because that was how things were done in the MSTS days. There are only 2 valid reasons to ever use reverse points in Open Rails; one is to get an AI train to perform simple switching ( see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRMSHZR-My8 where the AI and player perform a 'pitch and catch' of a group of cars between the two of them ), and the other is to reverse the overall flow or direction of an activity involving the player train (like where a local switcher travels 50 miles away from a yard to work a customer site, and then reverses back to the originating yard. In such a situation, then yes, the track monitor would indeed need to 'flip' direction and the overall flow of the activity changes direction because of the (one and only one) reverse point.

[meeshu]

Thanks for the comments and for the time and effort in producing the video.

I haven't as yet looked at this video.

I'm still curious as to why (some of) the reverse points and Track Monitor displays do not quite function as expected. Reverse Points are supposed to work under Open Rails, but I'm having difficulty in getting them to work properly.

[geepster775]

Reverse Points are supposed to work under Open Rails, but I'm having difficulty in getting them to work properly.

I wouldn't necessarily conclude that. Since the need for MSTS compatibility existed, reverse points remain a path-based train control feature, and they exhibit the same location and positioning frailties in both MSTS and OR. But OR simply built a better switching process that requires reverse points a lot less often when crafting breakaway OR-only activities, so OR users end up seeing their frailties a lot less often.

[meeshu]

As mentioned in this thread - https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...ction-For-Cab!, I've got the Reverse Points (and Track Monitor) working to a degree. But this is still being looked into.

[motormaster532]

Further to Ged's answer:-
I have found that when going through a switch that is set against you, the train can sometimes jump to the track that the point is set to.

And YOU will jump to the Division Superintendants office for a little unscheduled vacation!! Brian