A helpful hint for Driver.

[JCitron]

This is actually done in Surveyor, but it's really helpful in Driver.

You know how freight cars in a yard or on a siding will cause interactive crossings to block traffic. This is what the crossing gates are supposed to do, right! Well I've figured out how to use a bit of invisible track and an invisible switch lever to rectify this. I'm not exactly the sharpest knife in the draw a lot of times, but when something like this dawns over my head, I have to tell everyone.

Simply create an invisible junction with some invisible track as close to the crossing, but not too close to where the freight cars will be so that the junction doesn't lock.

Point the invisible track off to one side. I place the track so that by default my crossings are open when the junction lever points to the left while looking at the siding from the opposite side of the crossing or the same when looking into the yard from the throat.

With this setup, I can stuff my yard full of freight cars and still have an interactive road crossing across the yard throat.

I'm not sure how many people know about this already, so I'd thought I'd share it.

John

 

[JIb228]

I do this to simulate a derail. I even use the derail junction lever and have it set to show as the derail when set to the off position, then disappear when set to the through route. But I my current route, I am using ATLS crossings, and none of my sidings are near where a crossing is.

 

[HLJames]

An interesting tip from what I heard involving JointedRail's freight cars is that when you disconnect the engines from them, they turn in to scenery objects that'll deactivate the crossing after a while if you move out of range. It's something they don't bother to advertise, but it's something that it seems the community should end up knowing.

 

[Bill69]

This is actually done in Surveyor, but it's really helpful in Driver.

You know how freight cars in a yard or on a siding will cause interactive crossings to block traffic. This is what the crossing gates are supposed to do, right! Well I've figured out how to use a bit of invisible track and an invisible switch lever to rectify this. I'm not exactly the sharpest knife in the draw a lot of times, but when something like this dawns over my head, I have to tell everyone.

Simply create an invisible junction with some invisible track as close to the crossing, but not too close to where the freight cars will be so that the junction doesn't lock.

Point the invisible track off to one side. I place the track so that by default my crossings are open when the junction lever points to the left while looking at the siding from the opposite side of the crossing or the same when looking into the yard from the throat.

With this setup, I can stuff my yard full of freight cars and still have an interactive road crossing across the yard throat.

I'm not sure how many people know about this already, so I'd thought I'd share it.

John

Hi John,

I had a similar problem way back in TRS2004 with a passenger station close to a crossing, I used the same method to keep the crossing open till the train is ready to leave. I posted a pic at the time which could be still on Photobucket, I'll see if I can find it.

Cheers,
Bill

 

[sniper297]

"It's something they don't bother to advertise, but it's something that it seems the community should end up knowing."

It's been advertised, Justin said when he created the script that anyone could use it on any freightcar.

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...ence-Operation-Framerates&p=833967#post833967

Search for author = sniper297, category = rolling stock, steal the carfizzix.gs script out of any of those to use in intermodal or 85 foot high cubes, or whatever else I didn't do a conversion and skin for. See the "Brakeman" series of freight cars for reskinnable 40s-50s era freight cars with a brakeman riding on the car "cabview" and sleep scripts, free to clone and reskin.

 

[HLJames]

Didn't know it was mentioned before, but it's something that isn't mentioned enough in this case.

 

[JCitron]

I didn't even think of using this script myself, but in some cases I'd still need to do this because the crossings are really close to some of the sidings.

I knew I thought of something that someone else was already doing. This is why I'm not an inventor - everyone else has already been there and done that!

John

 

[sniper297]

And got the T shirt. Screwy part is I discovered this in a couple of Brit wagons, wulf9 wrote a script for those to change coupling types and connect air hoses or something, and part of the script was to disable physics when the car was used as a loose consist. Justin Cornell wrote the simplified "carfizzix" script so it could be used in any freight car as a standalone script or combined with other scripts, the idea was everyone would start using it and eliminate a problem which apparently has been around since TRS2004 - hundreds of loose consists in a big route impact performance simply because the game is programmed to load and continually process the physics for every single car on the route even if it's sitting in a spur 100 miles away from the player. The "sleep script" forces the game to ignore that car and treat it as a simple scenery object until it's actually coupled into a train with an engine. Multiply that by 500 or 1000 freightcars and it's a huge performance boost.

 

[JCitron]

Would placing a single car in a consist with this script put the whole consist to sleep, or would it be better to start editing?

Yup - you got the T-shirt, Jim. You take a medium?

John

 

[sniper297]

Dunno what his Trainz username is, but Wild Willy the Whacko sent me a bunch of "Greetings from the Port Ogden & Northern" T shirts about 10 years ago, here's my youngest son wearing one;

The old geezer is me, pic is in the cab of the 2713 loco in Stevens Point, WI.

As for the other question, better to start editing - coupled into a train of cars with no script the sleep script cars in the consist will be asleep, any car in the consist without a sleep script will be wide awake and hammering the CPU with "Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving Here's my physics numbers I'm not moving" every 17 1/2 milliseconds (or whatever the parse interval is). There's no downside to the sleep script we could find with all the testing, mixed into regular cars they work the same way as without, and of course when they're moving they act the same as regular cars - uncouple on the move and the physics of "fly shunting" keep them rolling until they coast to a dead stop, the sleep script finds 0mph and kicks in again. Recouple to them and the sleep script fires up the "get train" and activates the physics again. Works so flawlessly and seamlessly I'm stumped as to why all Trainz rolling stock wasn't equipped with it years ago.