CMTM, TPR Humpyard, TPR Destination database, and Humpyard operations..

I have a few questions and thoughts, hopefully this will start some discussion and maybe lead to a few ideas.....

For those who do not know of the Car Movement & Traffic management system, please search on the forum here and download the manual. The short answer is it is used to manage freight cars on a route.

Trainz Pro Routes produced a Humpyard kit with working retarders AND a destination database as to where the cars were going and to what industries for what loads...


What I am wondering is if the Humpyard kit / Destination Database AND C.M.T.M. could be made to interact?

This would gain us the ability to use CMTM AND the Humpyard at the same time.....


Now, to the matter of not being able to "Kick" cars in TS12...

I did some experimentation with this, if you wish to try and duplicate the experiment, here is what I used:

Route: Smithville Classification facility, KUID: 95512:100030

Engines: Built in UP SD40-2s (Two)

Cars: 12 coal cars, loaded (Your choice)



With the Smithville route, you will notice that the highest part of the hump is not in front of the tower, but past it.... this is important to remember.

What I did was set up 10 - 15 loaded coal cars and used 2 of the built in sd40-2s as hump power...

I started the cars over the hump and tried to maintain a steady speed of maybe 3 or 4 MPH.

When they crested over the highest part of the hump, I uncoupled the last car....

Hmmmm, it wouldn't continue rolling down the hump and into the yard bowl because the hand brakes came on automatically.

So I stopped the train, coupled back up to the car, and started up the hump in the opposite direction.

On a whim, I uncoupled the last car as I was going back up the hump......

The car slowed, and started rolling back into the hump yard!


I started wondering if there was a way to turn off the automatic handbrakes..... or if a small script that could be attached to a piece of track could enable / disable the handbrakes to make hump yard operations possible?


Inquiring minds wish to know....

Discussion?

-I'm wondering how you got TPR's hump yard to work in TS12?

-Joe

I haven't tried it yet, I guess I will give it a go.....

Right now I was musing as to the possibilities. Sounds like the TPR hump may have problems.....

I have this Classification yard in several of my own routes and the humptower has been set up for this yard. Now I just ran one of the sessions I had set up and hooked up a 45 car train brought them to my hump approach pushed them up to the humptower about 4 mph the cars started uncoupling and running down into the tracks very well the switches were setting by themselves and the cars were being sorted just fine.
Until!! some of the cars started to not uncouple at the humptower and the after several of them did not uncouple the next set of cars started to uncouple and work just fine again. Maybe it's the setup of certain rolling stock that makes them not work? I have been using this humptower on all of my routes since it was first made and never had any problems with it. It's a great piece of work from Lars. like all of his assets.
Seems to me that 2012 edition has created a lot of bugs. My Big Boy from Claes does not work in 2012 and it worked fine in every other edition of Trainz. That makes me very sad
I'm going to run this session again and identify the rolling stock that will not uncouple and look at their config file to see what is different.

Wow that's a lot of typing for this old guy.
Hope this helps.
Bob

-I wouldn't say it has anything to do with uncoupling the cars themselves, Auran has made it in TS12, to where the train brake has to be applied to uncouple the cars and if for some reason your hump yard works in TS12, the hump yards script is probably fighting against Trainz's hard code. I dunno, just a guess.

-Joe

I did get the older verison of the TPR Humpyard to work. Once. Then the next time the cars will not roll apart, own thier own. They will if you stop and then backup. Otherwise the switchws will automatically work and route the car onto the correct track.

The TPR Humpyard, the older version, is a hit and a miss. The newer version is crippled in T12 as well as the Retarders. If you have a sufficient grade after the hump crest your cars will free-roll after uncoupling, stopping, and reversing your loco's direction, opposite of the hump crest, the shorter the length of track from the crest to bottom, the more cars you can uncouple at once. What helps in humping are the audible uncoupling sounds from the newer JR cars. Just my 2 cents/AFWIW.

John

I have a route in the making which got CMTM and a small humpyard. Its a 10 route, so it works good.
One of the things to remember is that the retarder with the Kuid ending on :2 doesnt work. So you need to use the other one, which does a fine job once you set it up.

Can you specify what you mean with "interact", Chris?
I tend to use the hump yard thing in manual, so its kinda slow, but it works fine for me.

You get the uncoupling sound not only with JR stuff.

Isegrinns said:

...Can you specify what you mean with "interact", Chris?...

Click to expand...

With CMTM it can automatically read a locomotive or cars road name and number (If the proper entry is made in he config, easy peasy to do). With this information you can assign what a car will be hauling and where either before a session or during a session like a car clerk would (see the Long Island Western route)...so far I have seen it where CMTM has run with enough info to run for a weeks worth of simulation time.

For automatic operation of the hump or yard tower, you needed to use TPR's destination database setup so that you could designate which tracks you were going to use to make up trains with so that assigned cars for industries end up in the correct train.

My thought was maybe the hump or yard tower could be modded to allow the option of using either the CMTM database or the TPR Destination database for the car info and destinations so that the hump or tower could make trains up automatically. It just seemed silly to have to program TWO databases for a session.


For example.......

I had the idea of producing a route that modeled just a terminal and the adjacent trackage....

Say, Maybrook, New York, 1956 (Info taken from Trains magazine, January 2005)

Maybrook had six class I railroads call it home: Erie, NYO&W, Lehigh & Hudson River, New Haven, Lehigh & New England, and the New York Central.

18 scheduled trains arriving, 17 scheduled trains departing.

Numerous extras to be made up and sent off......

There are NUMEROUS jobs to be done in a terminal.... delivery of diesel fuel, sand cars, removal of ash, delivery of coal, pulling bad order cars to drop them at the repair spot, Engines to be cut off trains and serviced (Diesels fueled and sanded, Steamers Ditto plus ashes dumped and inspections needed), Reefer cars to be iced, Cabooses to be serviced and spotted to go back out, company cars to be handled, trains to be made up and broken down.

Some terminals had numerous industries located near a terminal, so various yard jobs switched the local industries.

Not all railoading is down on the mainline far from civilization.

Smaller area to model, more detail can be had. More Railroading to be had.

Thanks for the info that the :2 retarders are borked, I will delete them from my database and stick with the earlier versions.

Perhaps the folks from TPR will read this and weigh in. I would have dual posted this over there, but my forum access is broken. I tried to contact management over there, but with no success.

As for the Automatic Handbrakes, I seem to recall that in 06 / Classics / 09, the handbrakes did not automatically apply.

Perhaps we could have a patch the would allow the option of auto handbrakes or not.

Also, perhaps someone much more versed than I in scripting could produce a trigger / small industry track / invisible asset that could be attached to a track that could turn off handbrakes at one spot, then another instance could be placed that would turn auto handbrakes back on....

socalwb909 said:

-I wouldn't say it has anything to do with uncoupling the cars themselves, Auran has made it in TS12, to where the train brake has to be applied to uncouple the cars and if for some reason your hump yard works in TS12, the hump yards script is probably fighting against Trainz's hard code. I dunno, just a guess.

-Joe

Click to expand...

just a bug. i would think this should be taken care of in the next update.

Yes, I know what CMTM is.

Funny. Some months ago I wrote an email to Lars about just that.
Here is what I wrote:

Hejhej!



I am using your awesome humpyard asset with CMTM in Trainz 2010 and I was wondering if there is a way to tell the humptower beforehand where which car should be going before you hump them.
Right now, I use it in manual mode. Works good, but gets kinda hectic sometimes.

So what I have in mind would be...
Like some kind of switchlist or waiting loop.
So one could tell the humpyard the destinations for the next, say, 20 cars.
Like programming it for the next cut of cars to come.
Cheers from Tyskland
André

Click to expand...

His reply was:

Hi.

Don't know if this works with TRS2010, but for TRS2004, I made a destination database.
With that you could "mark" the cars with a destination while in driver. The humpyard could be configured to switch cars for a destination to a specific track, if I remembers correct.
Best Regards

Lars

Click to expand...

On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with using the humpyard in manual and using pen & paper to determine which track holds cars for what destination.

Isegrinns said:

On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with using the humpyard in manual and using pen & paper to determine which track holds cars for what destination.

Click to expand...

For manual operation this works fine... I was thinking more of a AI hump operation.... you would still have to program the hump or yard tower with destinations... I just figured that perhaps it could be configured to read the CMTM instead of the destination database.... I was thinking of reducing the number of databases that needed program with the same info.

Isegrinns said:

Yes, I know what CMTM is.

Funny. Some months ago I wrote an email to Lars about just that.
Here is what I wrote:



His reply was:




On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with using the humpyard in manual and using pen & paper to determine which track holds cars for what destination.

Click to expand...

Or you could just name the Hump end switches to the destation.

That could be done, but most yards were flexible with using the tracks. As smaller yards didnt have one track for each destination..


Yes Chris, I´d be onto that anytime!
Especially because no matter how hard I try, there is one misplaced car in every hump run I do. xD

Making CMTM work with a hump yard is on my list of things to do. I'd be more than happy to work with LARS, if he is willing, to figure out how the two systems could be merged together. These things usually happen when enough people start asking for it.

I am currently creating a session for the SOO Line Schiller Park yard. This was a flat yard that was their southern terminus. 5 inbound and 5 out bound trains to the north each day plus an extra now and then and as many as 13 outbound transfers and 12 inbound transfers to the south each day. Plus a bunch of industries near the yard. It should be a good MP route if I ever get it done.

David

^Hope you can work around the hard-coded 'have to stop train to un-couple' stuff. I'll be a gimmie when it comes to hump yard operations.

-Joe

socalwb909 said:

^Hope you can work around the hard-coded 'have to stop train to un-couple' stuff. I'll be a gimmie when it comes to hump yard operations.

-Joe

Click to expand...

you dont listen/read very well Joe.

^I must of skipped over or missed you post.

-Joe

I decided to experiment a bit and see what works and what doesn't...

So far, the only thing that works in TS12 from the TPR Humpyard 2.3 kit is the manual.

I found a thread at TPR on this subject:

http://www.trainzproroutes.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6582&highlight=humpyard

So I went ahead and deleted everything the 2.3 Kit installed (Except for the manual) and downloaded the UM E-W Hump Yard route, kuid:137353:100466, on the DLS.

The older Hump tower, yard tower, and speed retarder work just fine in TS12.

Next I am going to work with the destination database and panel selector rule to see if they can work (Can't mod a broken piece of gear, can you?) The built in Panel selector rule (Kuid2:30671:60010:3) or the panel access library (kuid2:30671:90001:2) doesn't work properly with the yard tower and humptower, so I am thinking of cloning the obsoleted panel selector rule ( :2) OR the Panel access library 1) and making a obsolete table entry obsoleting the built in panel selector rule or access lib. Probably should start with the access library......

Destination Database? Haven't even looked at it yet.......................

ADDITIONAL: I briefly tried the Destination Database Library, <kuid2:30671:90002:2>, it seems to work right out of the box.......

I copied the contents of the obssoleted Panel access lib and the obsoleted panel selector rule to seperate folders to my desktop, changed their kuids endings to :3 and :4 (Respectively).... didn't work.

So the only thing that isn't working so far is the panel selctor rule... a minor thing I think... you can right click on the yard tower or hump tower to access their functions.....