Interlockinf - The Use Of?

boleyd

Well-known member
It seems that multiple paths can be created to handle more than one train. However, there is no time factor. Should the Interlocking train assignment specify a start time for a train? Maybe it does but that item does not work for me. However, if it does you might have say 10 trains during a "day" on the system. It would be nice to be able to send a train to a customer to load or unload and then be held for some time until the track was clear for the next stop.

This may all be available in pieces but shouldn't the Interlocking provide this or will it just become another piece to be added to a large set of rules and commands. New, non-railroad centric customers would simply go other rail games without a proper integrated system for scheduling the use of the nice new Interlocking paths.
 
That I think goes out of the scope of the interlocking towers. An interlocking tower is a switch tower in our vernacular and these control crossovers, yard throats, wyes, and level track crossings, and so on. What you are talking about would be more on the line of a trainmaster or freight scheduler, which is totally different.

John
 
Interlocking is to prevent collisions, has nothing to do with scheduling. Simplest example of an interlocking is a single track section with a switch at each end going to doubletrack - the switches are interlocked so that if switch 1 is thrown for the westbound track, switch 2 automatically sets to the westbound track at the other end and is locked - it cannot be thrown for the eastbound track until switch 1 is unlocked and thrown for the eastbound track. When the route is set for the eastbound route signals for the westbound will be red, when it's set for the westbound track the signals for eastbound will be red. With complex junctions the switches are set and locked for a specific path through the junction, the idea is (1) a train cannot enter until all switches for entering and leaving the junction are set and locked for that path, and (2) another train cannot enter the junction until the switches are set for its path, which cannot be done until the previous train has cleared and those switches are unlocked.

What you're looking for is some kind of trigger that will spawn a train from a portal when an industry reaches a certain level of production, and/or a trigger that will keep a signal red until whatever route you have in mind is completely clear of traffic.
 
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