Enhanced Interlocking Towers paths activated without a train

[Mightyena]

Hello all you smart people,

I'm currently building an AI session for a route (Midshire and Rosworth Valley Lines - <KUID2:298788:102630:1>), and I've run into a little problem.

I created interlocking tower paths for almost all the junctions over the route using pguy's Enhanced Interlocking Tower system + mission code manager, and everything was working fine up until yesterday.

Basically, I loaded up the session yesterday, and many of my ITs seem to have broken. For some reason, they show as having paths active in surveyor/driver when the session begins, and therefore AI trains get stuck at the entry signal. The only problem is, they haven't been activated by any train. In surveyor, the space where it says which consist activated the path is just blank, and in driver, it displays the message "active path has no train owner".

If I go into the EIT driver-mode runtime monitor, I can manually cancel all these phantom paths, and the session then runs as intended, but that's not really a reasonable solution. I can also cancel them in surveyor, and the session then runs fine when quickdrive'd into with Ctrl+F2, but as soon as I exit and reload the session, the phantom paths are back again.

Does anyone know what's causing this problem, and more importantly, how to fix it without deleting and recreating every single IT path on the route. This happened to me before trying to create a session for a different route, and that was the only solution I could find (fortunately in that case it happened after I'd only programmed a couple of tower boxes, not the whole blasted route!).

Screenshots of the problem:

In surveyor - the overview page of the EIT manager rule:


In surveyor - the details for one of the affected towers:


in driver, showing what happens when you approach an affected path:

 

[pguy]

Hi Mightyena.

It is always difficult to be sure of what may have caused such a complex situation, but first there is a good news : there is a method using the enhanced IT manager rule that should repair such a situation without any need to delete and create the paths again.
So I will first explain what you need to do to repair your session, and then I will make some hypothesis that only you can confirm or not on how your session may have gone in such a difficult situation.

1 - how to repair your session

You will need to open your session in surveyor mode and edit under surveyor the enhanced IT manager rule.

Go to the tower list page and for each tower flagged as not editable, click on view details. This will open the paths list page for this tower.
You should have a warning in yellow at the top of the list explaining that some paths are currently active and that the tower is currently not editable. On the same line, on the right you should have a link "Make tower editable". Click twice on this link (normaly you should only need to click once, but currently you need to click twice for the click to be taken by the system ... sorry I don't know why but with two clicks it will work ... ). The yellow line should now tell that the tower has been enforced with no paths active ...
Still on the same page, you should then for each path with status path active in white click on the link "cancel path" and also on the link "cancel request" if there is a request pending for this path.
When you have cleared all active paths for this tower, return to the tower page : your tower should be displayed no longer in yellow but in black with a status of tower editable.
Just redo the same sequence for all towers flagged as not editable so that at the end there is no longer any tower not editable with some paths active.

Then you need to save your current session under surveyor with all these modifications just done. Click on the ok button to confirm all you have edited under the IT manager rule and again to quit the edit session confirming all the edits done. Then save your session while you are still under surveyor (you can either owerwrite your current session or write your session to a new session). Quit surveyor and reload the session you have just saved. The session should load this time with no paths active in any tower either in surveyor or driver mode ...

2 - what may have caused such trouble (only some hypothesis as I cannot be sure of what has really happened )

The only way to activate a path is to have a train requesting the path. But when a path is active, you can do by inadvertance some operations where you may loose the train reference that had requested initially the path and so finish with an active path with no current train ...
This may happen if while under a driver session with some active paths for some trains, you switch back to surveyor using the new unified surveyor/driver toggle command (very powerfull tool but potentially very dangerous for session integrity if you do not take care) and while under surveyor you make some edits that updates the train currently owning an active path. Trains are internally in Trainz referenced by an internal consist id, but if you delete a train and recreates it, or if you add a vehicle to the consist or remove one inside the consist, for trainz the consist has been changed and Trainz will assign a new consist id to your train ... And as active paths uses this internal id to reference its owning train, if during your surveyor session you edit by inadvertance your train, the active path will loose the train reference and the active path will no longer have an owning train either if you restart your driver session using toggle mode or if you save your session and later reload it in surveyor or driver mode.

Unified surveyor/driver toggle command is very powerfull for doing some editions needed to continue your driver session, but may be very tricky if you edit either an IT tower, a path, a path object (junction, crossing, signal) or a consist. The system makes not editable interlocking tower and paths when there is at least one active path in the tower to prevent doing some inadequate editions. But there is no protection on editing consists and if the current consist is currently an active path owner it may become tricky ...

Of course I don't know what you have done before saving your session in such an inadequate state, but as it can be tricky to use the surveyor/driver toggle link, it may be better to edit your session the old way by quiting your driver session without saving, then reloading your session in surveyor mode and doing your edits. If you always go back to surveyor using the main menu and not using the surveyor/driver toggle link you should not arrive in such difficulties with your session. But it takes much more time than using the toggle mode ...

Hope this will work to repair your session and will be usefull to avoid going again in such a situation.
And I will also think of adding some links to automate such repair operations in next IT manager updates to make easier solving such situations ...

Hope this helps.
Regards.
Pierre.

 

[Mightyena]

Hi Pierre,

Thank you very much for the advice. I have tried to implement your advice, and this is the results:

1 - how to repair your session

You will need to open your session in surveyor mode and edit under surveyor the enhanced IT manager rule.

Go to the tower list page and for each tower flagged as not editable, click on view details. This will open the paths list page for this tower.
You should have a warning in yellow at the top of the list explaining that some paths are currently active and that the tower is currently not editable. On the same line, on the right you should have a link "Make tower editable". Click twice on this link (normaly you should only need to click once, but currently you need to click twice for the click to be taken by the system ... sorry I don't know why but with two clicks it will work ... ). The yellow line should now tell that the tower has been enforced with no paths active ...
Still on the same page, you should then for each path with status path active in white click on the link "cancel path" and also on the link "cancel request" if there is a request pending for this path.
When you have cleared all active paths for this tower, return to the tower page : your tower should be displayed no longer in yellow but in black with a status of tower editable.
Just redo the same sequence for all towers flagged as not editable so that at the end there is no longer any tower not editable with some paths active.

Then you need to save your current session under surveyor with all these modifications just done. Click on the ok button to confirm all you have edited under the IT manager rule and again to quit the edit session confirming all the edits done. Then save your session while you are still under surveyor (you can either owerwrite your current session or write your session to a new session). Quit surveyor and reload the session you have just saved. The session should load this time with no paths active in any tower either in surveyor or driver mode ...

I have tried this, and after cancelling the paths, the tower is still displayed as yellow, but now reads as "editable". However, on saving, exiting, and reloading the session, the paths are all activated again. I tried also placing down a tree, thinking there may be a problem wit saving, but the new tree appears when reloading the session, so cancelling the paths just doesn't seem to stick.

I took a video of what happens here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynGoN4wANk

2 - what may have caused such trouble (only some hypothesis as I cannot be sure of what has really happened )

The only way to activate a path is to have a train requesting the path. But when a path is active, you can do by inadvertance some operations where you may loose the train reference that had requested initially the path and so finish with an active path with no current train ...
This may happen if while under a driver session with some active paths for some trains, you switch back to surveyor using the new unified surveyor/driver toggle command (very powerfull tool but potentially very dangerous for session integrity if you do not take care) and while under surveyor you make some edits that updates the train currently owning an active path. Trains are internally in Trainz referenced by an internal consist id, but if you delete a train and recreates it, or if you add a vehicle to the consist or remove one inside the consist, for trainz the consist has been changed and Trainz will assign a new consist id to your train ... And as active paths uses this internal id to reference its owning train, if during your surveyor session you edit by inadvertance your train, the active path will loose the train reference and the active path will no longer have an owning train either if you restart your driver session using toggle mode or if you save your session and later reload it in surveyor or driver mode.

Unified surveyor/driver toggle command is very powerfull for doing some editions needed to continue your driver session, but may be very tricky if you edit either an IT tower, a path, a path object (junction, crossing, signal) or a consist. The system makes not editable interlocking tower and paths when there is at least one active path in the tower to prevent doing some inadequate editions. But there is no protection on editing consists and if the current consist is currently an active path owner it may become tricky ...

Of course I don't know what you have done before saving your session in such an inadequate state, but as it can be tricky to use the surveyor/driver toggle link, it may be better to edit your session the old way by quiting your driver session without saving, then reloading your session in surveyor mode and doing your edits. If you always go back to surveyor using the main menu and not using the surveyor/driver toggle link you should not arrive in such difficulties with your session. But it takes much more time than using the toggle mode ...

I'm using TANE (build 105766) to build this session, so there is no unified driver/surveyor toggle. I don't recall having deleted any trains on the session either (though I may well have done and just not remembered). Really not sure what has happened, or why your resetting advice doesn't survive a reload of the session

 

[pguy]

Hi.

this type of problem should not happen under Tane but only under TRS19,so it is quite strange. To go further and help, may be the best would be you send me by email a copy of you session so that I can have a look to it.
I will send you the email adress to use via PM.
Regards.
pierre.