finding missing junction levers

[martinvk]

While in Driver, occasionally the AI will announce that a path could not be calculated because of a missing junction lever beyond a known one. Thanks to the new Unified Driver Surveyor interface in TRS 2019, it is easier than ever before to go and add the missing lever.

However, besides relying on the drivers to tell me or going over the route one junction at a time, is there a quicker way to find the missing levers? For short route, it might not be too much work but when we get to many 100's of km of track and associated junctions, it can become rather arduous, a real pita.

 

[wreeder]

I don't know of a way. Funny that the program knows where it is but won't tell the user. Perhaps bring back the old junction camera view from pre-TRS2004 combined with a check for missing levers feature. Zip you right to it.

William

 

[pware]

I don't know of a way. Funny that the program knows where it is but won't tell the user. Perhaps bring back the old junction camera view from pre-TRS2004 combined with a check for missing levers feature. Zip you right to it.

All junctions are identified by their original assigned number or their user entered name. If the junction lever is missing then it has no name so its location cannot be identified - how do you search for something that has no name or location? Speculating here but the AI algorithm that scans ahead for the next junction may detect the presence of a track junction point without a lever but how can it use the search function to find it without a name to jump to?

It has been a long time since I was able to use the old junction camera view (as you say pre-TRS2004) but even it needed a name to latch onto to jump to a junction.

 

[wreeder]

As I recall, it took you to the next junction in the direction your train was traveling.

I'm not sure why it would need to search by name if it can detect the missing lever along the spline path it is tracing to determine if the path to destination is reachable. As a 3D game there has to be an internal co-ordinate location of every asset in the game. How else does the game know where anything is located when drawing the world?

William

 

[pware]

Good question. Who would know the inner secrets of the "source code"? Programming seems more like a "dark art" than a logical and explicable science.

 

[martinvk]

Well every track node with more than two attached tracks would be a junction and needs a junction lever. We would only need to know those junctions that don't have an associated junction lever. Back in the day when TrainzMap was a thing, I seem to remember that it could show whether a track section was straightened or not as well as the junction levers assigned to each junction. If an updated version was made that could read the new baseboards, that might be a solution.

 

[JCitron]

Using the map view and turning on junctions may help. Each junction is lit up with the levers and you can see where there's a track splitting off without a lever.

The alternative is to get in the cab with a driver and order the driver to drive to a destination. The driver should move of course. If not, manually drive and then use continue schedule again. If the driver doesn't move, continue on until you come upon the junction that's missing a lever.

Either way is a bit time consuming so I'm not sure which way you want to go with this.

 

[martinvk]

That, in essence is what I do, though with many 100's of km of track, it is rather tedious work. Sigh, that this aspect of route building is still stuck in the old days. :'(

 

[JCitron]

That, in essence is what I do, though with many 100's of km of track, it is rather tedious work. Sigh, that this aspect of route building is still stuck in the old days. :'(

Yup it sure is. Surveyor in TRS2019 is still TRS2004 Surveyor except with buttons moved around and a few extras bolted on.

I ran into this on one of my own routes recently that's about 130 km. The issue I found is a lever was reported as missing, but when I checked over the route all were there. I went into Driver, after a lengthy search and got the same message from a different driver in a different location. Is something broken somewhere in the logic that's causing the reports to occur?

 

[RPearson]

Probably

Bob Pearson

 

[martinvk]

At least with the new UDS interface, fixing things like missing junction levers on the fly is relatively easy and doesn't require restarting the whole session.