DWBennett55
Member
While developing a new industry in TANE, I ran across this interesting problem. When trying to have the AI drive to a trackmark near the end of a spur, the driver wouldn’t even move.
The loco is on a track headed to a junction that will take it to the end of the track (EOT) trackmark. After reaching the trackmark, the drive is to reverse and travel up the parallel track. Here is a diagram of the set up (with "L" the locomotive, "JUNC" a junction, "T" trackmarks and, "EOT" the end of the track). Yes, poor diagram but you should get the point.
L |
T |
| |
| |
| |
| |
\ |
JUNC
|
|
T
|
EOT
The driver had unloaded a string of cars and driven to a trackmark, uncoupled from the cars and then just sat there not moving. I checked the track to make sure there wasn’t something wrong by manually driving the loco to the trackmark near the EOT and, no, there weren’t any problems with the track. After several frustrating hours working with several (failed) ideas on how to fix the this, I finally decided to build a test route to work on the problem.
After much trial and error (lots of error), the problem turned out to be the distance of the locomotive from the EOT or the distance, D, shown in the diagram below.
LOCO==================TM======EOT
===<- --------------------D---------------------------- ->
After running several tests with the loco at varying distances from the EOT, I found that the loco would start moving toward the trackmark if D was approximately 700 feet (~213 meters for the metric crowd) or more. At that distance, the loco would creep toward the trackmark with a speed of about 2 mph. With D any less than about 700 feet the loco wouldn’t even start to move which was the case with the industry I was working on.
Well, if you have lots of room and time (I can walk at 4-5 mph so I’d beat the loco to the trackmark with hardly any effort) on your route to have 750 feet of track past the last trackmark that you’ll be running your trains to, that will work fine. However, if, like a lot of industrial spurs, that amount of track isn’t possible or practical, you’ll have to get kind of creative to get the AI drivers to work correctly.
Although there are probably many solutions to this problem, this is the solution I came up with:
I tested this solution with my industry and everything worked fine.
Again, there are probably many solutions to this problem in TANE but I couldn’t think of any but the above. I don’t remember having this problem in TS12. The drivers would creep toward the EOT trackmarks but I don’t remember the drivers not starting to move to the EOT trackmarks inside any certain distance.
Getting the AI drivers to do what you want can be a challenge (understatement) in Trainz. Developing this solution taught me more things about TANE which, in the end, is a good thing.
Take care,
The loco is on a track headed to a junction that will take it to the end of the track (EOT) trackmark. After reaching the trackmark, the drive is to reverse and travel up the parallel track. Here is a diagram of the set up (with "L" the locomotive, "JUNC" a junction, "T" trackmarks and, "EOT" the end of the track). Yes, poor diagram but you should get the point.
L |
T |
| |
| |
| |
| |
\ |
JUNC
|
|
T
|
EOT
The driver had unloaded a string of cars and driven to a trackmark, uncoupled from the cars and then just sat there not moving. I checked the track to make sure there wasn’t something wrong by manually driving the loco to the trackmark near the EOT and, no, there weren’t any problems with the track. After several frustrating hours working with several (failed) ideas on how to fix the this, I finally decided to build a test route to work on the problem.
After much trial and error (lots of error), the problem turned out to be the distance of the locomotive from the EOT or the distance, D, shown in the diagram below.
LOCO==================TM======EOT
===<- --------------------D---------------------------- ->
After running several tests with the loco at varying distances from the EOT, I found that the loco would start moving toward the trackmark if D was approximately 700 feet (~213 meters for the metric crowd) or more. At that distance, the loco would creep toward the trackmark with a speed of about 2 mph. With D any less than about 700 feet the loco wouldn’t even start to move which was the case with the industry I was working on.
Well, if you have lots of room and time (I can walk at 4-5 mph so I’d beat the loco to the trackmark with hardly any effort) on your route to have 750 feet of track past the last trackmark that you’ll be running your trains to, that will work fine. However, if, like a lot of industrial spurs, that amount of track isn’t possible or practical, you’ll have to get kind of creative to get the AI drivers to work correctly.
Although there are probably many solutions to this problem, this is the solution I came up with:
- Extend the track work, using invisible track, a good 700+ feet past where the existing EOT is located.
- Place an invisible signal at the new end of the track.
- Place some type of scenery asset as a bumper at the visible EOT. It’s important that the bumper be something other than a "track object" because the AI must not take the “visible” bumper as a real EOT signal and start working with it rather than the “invisible” signal at the real EOT.
- Place the EOT trackmark at a reasonable distance from the “visible” EOT bumper, say 50 feet or so.
- Set speed limits on the spur such that the driver will have plenty of time to stop the locomotive on the EOT trackmark and not over shot onto the “invisible” track. Nothing will happen, of course, but having the locomotive moving "through" the scenery bumper and past the visible track work (or, in my case, into a hillside) will be “interesting” if the loco doesn’t stop in time.
I tested this solution with my industry and everything worked fine.
Again, there are probably many solutions to this problem in TANE but I couldn’t think of any but the above. I don’t remember having this problem in TS12. The drivers would creep toward the EOT trackmarks but I don’t remember the drivers not starting to move to the EOT trackmarks inside any certain distance.
Getting the AI drivers to do what you want can be a challenge (understatement) in Trainz. Developing this solution taught me more things about TANE which, in the end, is a good thing.
Take care,