About a dozen rules are required to guide the trains over the network.
Steve
Hi Steve - It looks as if your question has been answered by our learned colleagues, but I wish to make a small point here:
It is important to know the difference between rules and driver commands. especially when asking a question on the forum.
Rules are added to the session in surveyor mode and are not usually accessible to the player when driving the train.
They usually affect all trains and often require something to set them going such as a trigger, although many rules start when the player enters driver mode and stay in effect for the whole session. Some rules act only once and then go to sleep for the rest of the session.
Driver commands, on the other hand, are accessible in both surveyor and driver modes. They are applied to a driver's schedule and apply only to that train. Each train can and usually does have a different list of commands on it's schedule. In the case that you have raised, Steve, the schedule could be copied directly from one train or driver to another without using the schedule library, by using the "Copy Commands From" driver command.
Don't get me wrong. The schedule library is very versatile and a brilliant piece of programming by Brummfondel.
If you had really been using rules to control the trains (and this is also a valid way of doing it), then all trains travelling the line would trigger the same rules as they proceeded and no driver commands would need to come into play.
So a train emitted from a portal could trigger a trackside rule which sets up a destination path and (assuming the rules are perfectly set up) no player intervention would be needed. All trains would try to behave in the way same.
All right, I know that that isn't prototypical. I am just trying to make it clear that there is more than one way of doing things in Trainz, and that choices are available. Many rules have the ability to act on only specific trains, drivers, vehicles or other factors like the train priority, which make them selective in their application.
Sometimes, rules and driver commands interact with each other, as in the case of CommWithTTable, a driver command by atilabarut which displays options which are defined by a rule: InputTable (or Worktable). The rule is not accessible in driver mode, but its effects provide variable options to the driver comand.
So, Dr Steve, there is a lot to learn about controlling trains and it is worth while studying the available rules and commands and deciding on how you want to set up a session.
End of lesson.
. The Schedule library is very useful, mine has around 15 schedules in atm and is growing still 