Generating loaded trains on demand?

xenium

Trainz Addict
I'd love some input/suggestions on this. I'm still fairly new at route design so maybe I'm going about this wrong...

I like yard operations, so I've built a little TS12 yard layout. It has a double-track mainline passing by the yard with portals on each end, and I've configured the "incoming" portal at each end to generate a few random trains, configured to navigate to the corresponding "outgoing" portal at the other end of the layout. The idea is that I work the yard with a switcher, and there's a steady stream of trains traveling by every few minutes in both directions on the mainline. If I want, I can take control of one, route it into the receiving track of the yard, and start breaking it up and switching. I can also assemble a new train in the yard and send it on its way to one of the portals. So far, so good, and lots of fun.

Now I'd like to take it a step further, and be able to have one of the portals generate a specific train (consist) for me whenever I want it to, and route it into the yard instead of the outgoing portal. This would be a supply train for the yard itself: coal, diesel fuel, sand, empties for ashes, etc., so I could then switch it out in the engine service area. I'm running into two problems with this:

(1) The trains generated by the portals are always empty, even if I load them up before generating the consist.

(2) I can't figure out how to get a portal to emit a specific train on-demand, only on a schedule. I found the Central Portal Control "Emit Train" and "Emit Train on Trigger" rules on the DLS, but have no idea how to use them. I configured one of them to emit the train I wanted, but couldn't figure out how to trigger it while using driver?

I'm trying to keep things simple. I just use quickdrive and like to play with my yard casually, I'm not looking to set up a rigid schedule and switchlists and all that, so I've never explored setting up sessions. Is that what I'll need to do to achieve something like this?

Thanks.
 
Well, I figured it out on my own so thought I'd share...

It took me some time to find it, but it turns out that there's an "emit now" button in the Quick Portal Manager interface. While in driver I can select Quick Portal manager from the session rules menu, scroll down to the train I want (in this case my yard supply train), and click the emit now button, and my train comes out of the portal and navigates as I've configured it to, to my arrival track. I've combined that with the instant load rule to ensure it's loaded. Perfect.
 
Perfect! And the cars are loaded with what? The way I do it is by pre-configuring the cars with whatever load I need. And this you can't do in driver (at least in T:ane). You could pre-assign commodities to particular cars, but when exiting a portal those cars are not the same as the ones you modified using the commodity picker. But, commodity picker is not operational in T:ane, and we are still waiting for it to get fixed. Way around all that is by configuring the config file, so the car is "forced" to carry what you want. Tedious because you have to find the KUID number of the commodity and apply it following the conventional way of the config file. But not in driver.
 
Well yes, that is the one problem, that I only get the default loads. I read that there is a different version of the instant load rule that will fill a random load rather than the default one, but that would be even worse for what I'm doing.

I was planning on cloning the cars I want to use and editing the config.txt file as you suggested. Tedious, yes, but for my purposes, for now at least, it's only a handful of cars (maybe 6.) I really wish that some of the basic things like this in Trainz weren't so difficult. It would be so nice if you could just configure loads within a consist and not have to do all this fiddling with it.
 
Hi

There is another driver command "InstantLoad with a product from a queue specified by the user" by author "elstoko", kuid:368725:60011 which is on the DLS and will allow you to select which commodity to load. Saves editing the config and can be used with any vehicle.

Regards

Brian
 
Hmm. I just tried to download "InstantLoad with a product from a queue specified by the user", but Content Manager is telling me "Asset not compatible with this version of Trainz". :-(
 
Hi again

The command is for build 3.7 upwards. As you didn't specify your build, presumably you aren't patched up to the final build of TS12 (build 61388).

Regards

Brian
 
Hi xenium - Try lowering the build level in the config file of Elstoko's command. It should still work OK.
 
The command is for build 3.7 upwards. As you didn't specify your build, presumably you aren't patched up to the final build of TS12 (build 61388).

Correct, I'm running 49922. I had patched up to 61388 but experienced quite a few problems with it, so I had to roll back. (I was able to work through most of the problems, but I still had performance problems that I don't have with 49922, and loads did not work properly.) I wish I could run the newest version, but there are still regressions in it that effect me, unfortunately. :-(
 
Hi xenium - Try lowering the build level in the config file of Elstoko's command. It should still work OK.

I haven't figured out a way to download it yet. Content Manager won't let me, it just gives the error I mentioned above, and I can't find any way to force it. I know there's an FTP location given when you look at assets via the web DLS, but it doesn't give the server name, so I still haven't figured out where to FTP it from. If I can figure out how to get it I'll try editing it as you suggested.
 
This may be more work than what you want to do, but I use CMTMsystem3 or CMTMsystem4. Try running one of the CMTM route/sessions on the DLS and you will get a good idea of what it does.

<kuid:32711:100051> Demo Route for CMTM4, <kuid:32711:100452> Demo Session for CMTMSystem4 This is about what you have created for your route. A 6 track yard and 4 portals, North South, East & West. Every car on the route has a destinaion and every car that is emitted from a portal has a destinaiton. Every car is either loaded with whatever product the System tells it to carry, or arrives empty and loads a specified product when delivered to a destination that is marked by a track mark.

There are other CMTM routes/sessions on the DLS. Just do a search for CMTM in the asset name.




Enjoy!

David
 
<kuid:32711:100051> Demo Route for CMTM4

I tried to download that route but got the "Asset not compatible with this version of Trainz" message from Content Manager again. Does CMTM require SP1, or just this route? Is there a web page or documentation for CMTM somewhere so I could check it out? It may do what I want. On the one hand I want to keep it simple, on the other hand, well... "whatever works". :-D

Thanks.
 
I haven't figured out a way to download it yet. Content Manager won't let me, it just gives the error I mentioned above, and I can't find any way to force it. I know there's an FTP location given when you look at assets via the web DLS, but it doesn't give the server name, so I still haven't figured out where to FTP it from. If I can figure out how to get it I'll try editing it as you suggested.

Hi xenium - At the top of this forum page is a tab Download Station. Type or paste the kuid into the Text Search field, click on the KUID button and then click Search. Then click DownloadDetails and Download FTP. The download should go to your downloads folder.
 
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Thanks! Was just starting to look for something like that.

"Unable to download asset. Please check your MyTrainz login details." WTF? Haven't changed password in a long time ... oh, FCT expired. ;)
 
Hi xenium - At the top of this forum page is a tab Download Station. Type or paste the kuid into the Text Search field, click on the KUID button and then click Search. Then click DownloadDetails and Download FTP. The download should go to your downloads folder.

Thanks Trev. Unfortunately I still can't find the download link that you are describing. I can locate what I want in the DLS station:

dls1.jpg


But when I click on it, the resulting dialog only gives me the option to download via Content Manager. It does provide an FTP location, but it does not include the server name, so I don't know where to FTP it from. I can not find any clickable FTP link:

dls2.jpg


Am I in the wrong place?
 
@xenium,

Instead of going to the sectional listing (routes, sessions, etc), try doing a search for CMTM4 in the text search box with category all. Each of the matches should have three selection boxes. DO NOT choose details for the one you want. Choose the download details button for the one you want, and then download FTP. Let me know if this works for you.

Bob Morrison
 
Instead of going to the sectional listing (routes, sessions, etc), try doing a search for CMTM4 in the text search box with category all. Each of the matches should have three selection boxes. DO NOT choose details for the one you want. Choose the download details button for the one you want, and then download FTP. Let me know if this works for you.

Hi Bob,

That's exactly what I did to generate the first of my two screen shots above. I didn't go into a category. I clicked "Download Station" from the menu bar at the top of this forum page, scrolled down to the "text search" field, entered the KUID, left the "category" on "all", and clicked the "search" button. The above screen shot (the first one) is the result. One result, no download links to click on. If I click on the item I get the detail pop-up shown in the second screenshot, where there's a "Download with Content Manager" link, and a partial FTP location, but no link.

Is FTP access only allowed to owners of certain versions? Or only to First Class Ticket holders? Or maybe there's some other restriction?
 
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