I'd love some input/suggestions on this. I'm still fairly new at route design so maybe I'm going about this wrong...
I like yard operations, so I've built a little TS12 yard layout. It has a double-track mainline passing by the yard with portals on each end, and I've configured the "incoming" portal at each end to generate a few random trains, configured to navigate to the corresponding "outgoing" portal at the other end of the layout. The idea is that I work the yard with a switcher, and there's a steady stream of trains traveling by every few minutes in both directions on the mainline. If I want, I can take control of one, route it into the receiving track of the yard, and start breaking it up and switching. I can also assemble a new train in the yard and send it on its way to one of the portals. So far, so good, and lots of fun.
Now I'd like to take it a step further, and be able to have one of the portals generate a specific train (consist) for me whenever I want it to, and route it into the yard instead of the outgoing portal. This would be a supply train for the yard itself: coal, diesel fuel, sand, empties for ashes, etc., so I could then switch it out in the engine service area. I'm running into two problems with this:
(1) The trains generated by the portals are always empty, even if I load them up before generating the consist.
(2) I can't figure out how to get a portal to emit a specific train on-demand, only on a schedule. I found the Central Portal Control "Emit Train" and "Emit Train on Trigger" rules on the DLS, but have no idea how to use them. I configured one of them to emit the train I wanted, but couldn't figure out how to trigger it while using driver?
I'm trying to keep things simple. I just use quickdrive and like to play with my yard casually, I'm not looking to set up a rigid schedule and switchlists and all that, so I've never explored setting up sessions. Is that what I'll need to do to achieve something like this?
Thanks.
I like yard operations, so I've built a little TS12 yard layout. It has a double-track mainline passing by the yard with portals on each end, and I've configured the "incoming" portal at each end to generate a few random trains, configured to navigate to the corresponding "outgoing" portal at the other end of the layout. The idea is that I work the yard with a switcher, and there's a steady stream of trains traveling by every few minutes in both directions on the mainline. If I want, I can take control of one, route it into the receiving track of the yard, and start breaking it up and switching. I can also assemble a new train in the yard and send it on its way to one of the portals. So far, so good, and lots of fun.
Now I'd like to take it a step further, and be able to have one of the portals generate a specific train (consist) for me whenever I want it to, and route it into the yard instead of the outgoing portal. This would be a supply train for the yard itself: coal, diesel fuel, sand, empties for ashes, etc., so I could then switch it out in the engine service area. I'm running into two problems with this:
(1) The trains generated by the portals are always empty, even if I load them up before generating the consist.
(2) I can't figure out how to get a portal to emit a specific train on-demand, only on a schedule. I found the Central Portal Control "Emit Train" and "Emit Train on Trigger" rules on the DLS, but have no idea how to use them. I configured one of them to emit the train I wanted, but couldn't figure out how to trigger it while using driver?
I'm trying to keep things simple. I just use quickdrive and like to play with my yard casually, I'm not looking to set up a rigid schedule and switchlists and all that, so I've never explored setting up sessions. Is that what I'll need to do to achieve something like this?
Thanks.