Session layer show/hide doesn't work for locos or cars

[h=2] Session Layer Show/Hide doesn't work for locos and cars[/h]

Session Layers that contain trees or buildings respond to the Show/Hide toggle button in the Layer Tab just as I expect, one can toggle the visibility on and off.
But for session layers containing cars or locos? Not so much. In fact to me the response is incomprehensible. My understanding was that session layers were the place to put the trains, so that one can have a freight session and a passenger session at different times on the same route.​

My latest experiment has 5 layers: trees, buildings, box car, flat car and tank car, containing what the layer name suggests. Toggling the view/hide for the cars layers is perplexing at the very least. Can someone explain or point to a link that will explain what i see?
How can I set up a route with a variety of traffic and vary the traffic mix at will?
I am currently working with Trainz 12, but that forum in very quiet and hasn't responded.​

I think there is a misunderstanding here about the difference between session layers and sessions. If I understand you correctly, you want to create two different sessions, one with a freight train and the other with a passenger train, running on the same route at different times but you are attempting to create the two different sessions in the one saved session file.

If so, then that is not how sessions and session layers work. Session layers provide you with the ability to add different objects, such as scenery and consists (locos, wagons, etc) to ONE particular session which will be saved as a session file. A different session, saved as a different session file, can have different scenery and consists in its session layers.

What you should do is create TWO different sessions based on the same layout. In one session (lets call it Freight) you will have the freight rolling stock and locos in a session layer. In the other session (lets call it Passenger) you will have the passenger rolling stock. The two sessions are separate and will appear as separate sessions (Freight and Passenger) that belong to the same route.

Oh. Thank you, pware. Sounds entirely reasonable. I will work with that new knowledge - and surely, in time, succeed. Thanks again.

If I create TWO different sessions based on the same layout and MERGE session into ROUTE before saving, then closing will they become all ONE route.
I understand layers and use them all the time BUT always work on the route layer...session layers are a new concept to me and have always MERGED Session to route before closing as I "lost"Paddington station with 14 platforms set up with Andi06 invisible platforms in my early days in TS 2010 and spent too many repeated periods setting them up again before twigging I had SESSION layers and not Merging then into route.

Also if you alter the route (track etc) in Session layer will the alteration be in the route or only in the session...
It gets confusing with N3V having session meaning two different things :hehe:
Still learning as I go trainzing.....
Helian43

helian43 said:

It gets confusing with N3V having session meaning two different things

Click to expand...

The trick is to distinguish between Sessions and session layers. The description you used in your post above contains a simple but confusing error.

helian43 said:

If I create TWO different sessions based on the same layout and MERGE session into ROUTE before saving, then closing will they become all ONE route.

Click to expand...

You cannot merge Sessions as they are separate files containing layers, industry settings, time of day, weather conditions, driver commands, rules and who knows what else. You can only merge session layers (and route layers) which contain scenery objects including consists.

Below is a screen shot of the View Sessions menu of a layout and Sessions that I am currently building. I selected the route (layout) I had created in the Route selection menu then clicked View Sessions and this is what appears.

https://postimage.org/

Each entry, apart from the Quick Drive at the top, is a separate Session asset in CM - it has its own config.txt file, thumbnail and profile data files. Each Session contains its own session layers with different consists and different scenery items that will only appear in that particular Session.

If I select one Session, load it into Surveyor to edit and open the Layers Tool to display the layers, I get the following ...

https://postimage.org/app.php

The four layers shown at the top are the route layers, they are identical (same names, same contents) in all the Sessions that I have created using this layout. If I edit the contents of one of the route layers (say add or delete a tree) that edit will appear in ALL the Sessions.

The four layers shown at the bottom are the session layers, they only appear in the Session that I have loaded for editing. The other Sessions have different session layers (different names and different contents). If I edit the contents of one of the session layers (say add a wagon in the "Consists" layer) then that edit will only affect the currently loaded Session and NONE of the other Sessions.

If I merge one of the session layers into one of the route layers then the contents of that layer will be in the Route and will now appear in all the Sessions.

PWare,

Thank you for your very clear explanation.
I now know where I may have been getting confused. (my DOB may be giving it away as things do get confused at times.)

Regards Helian 43

Thank you, pware, for the second reply. The first one showed you understood what was going on, but was still leaving me wondering why things weren't yet working for me. The second one explains it in terms that even I even I can understand. I continue to be surprised that Auran and, more recently, T3V don't have a complete and exhaustive online documentation explaining it all. The forums are useful, even indispensable, but the advice offered is sometimes a bit bare-bones not fully matching the enquirers level of confusion, occasionally, I fell, even speculative. But maybe , in this respect, playing simulate train is similar to physical model railroading - the fun is in solving the problems, not just running trains . If everything is running fine, i's t time to up the ante in ambition and complexity.

Layers and Sessions have been one of the best "new" features of Trainz - Sessions appeared in Trainz 2006 (or was it 2004?) and layers in either TS2009 or TS2010. They can be confusing, even baffling, if you have never come across the concepts before. I had the same problem understanding layers in graphics programs until the penny finally dropped, but once I understood them (and I still occasionally learn something new about them) I discovered that I really cannot do without them.