Options for sending trains off the board?

[RobWed]

Schwaninger Land has a number of lines that run off the side of the map. I want to be able to send trains off to wherever I decide those rails might go and then come back later. I have read of three options. There's probably more;

• Portals
• InstantMoveTrain driver command
• Hiding a yard under a hill and managing it with driver commands

Which of these are the easiest to build and manage?

Pros and cons?

 

[paulper]

The first is unreliable. Portals are still sending out ghost trains.

I’ve just started using the second. I think you’re limited to 20 trackmarks but it has worked really well for me.

The third is the aesthetic winner and can be combined with either of the first 2 options.

 

[RobWed]

Okay, I'll try that then.

I put in a pair of portals but the VSM signals couldn't see the end of the portal so it wouldn't create a path. Added a signal, tried setting it as a permanent green. BOOM! CTD. Still, it was a good learning exercise...

I can put a pair of InstantMove tracks at every off-board point. That still gives me more than I need and if I need to queue multiple trains at one of those re-entry points I can always make a yard then.

 

[paulper]

That should be easy and is what I've achieved. Train appears at the designated 'InstantMoveTrain' trackmark and then the next driver command moves the train up to the next trackmark leaving room behind it.

 

[stagecoach]

Use portals all the time without issue. Don't use a portal for two-way operations as you sometimes get an arriving train meeting a leaving train. Have one portal for exiting trains and a second for new or returning trains.
I place a baseboard some distance away from the actual route which receives all trains from all portals on the route. This baseboard then sorts out returning trains, exiting trains, and those that need loading or unloading.

 

[RobWed]

I place a baseboard some distance away from the actual route which receives all trains from all portals on the route.

Like a baseboard floating away from the route itself? Do you port the trains to that board, do whatever needs to be done and then portal them back? So portal from the route to the far away land. Sort. Portal from there back to the route itself. Is that it?

 

[stagecoach]

The portals on the left bottom produce new trains or returned trains. Portals at the top are unload only, load only, load and unload, don't load or unload and exit. The bottom portals incoming from any portal on the route and exporting portals back to different portals on the route. The central area I use for waiting, shunting or different tracks could be used for multiple industry new track to load specific items. Incoming trains from the route go to the waiting area or the top portals. All trains from the top portals go to the left portals and then to the waiting area or the selected portal back to the route.

 

[JCitron]

Like a baseboard floating away from the route itself? Do you port the trains to that board, do whatever needs to be done and then portal them back? So portal from the route to the far away land. Sort. Portal from there back to the route itself. Is that it?

No. A baseboard connected to the route. Depending upon the length of your consists, you may want to use two baseboards. Here in the US, prototypical freights are now 10,000 feet or longer!

If you do use portals, use the long portal basic and not the short ones. There's been an issue with the short ones for some time where they produce ghost trains or sometimes derail the consists. N3V fixed the long ones and they've worked fine ever since at least for me.

As Stagecoach says, you want to have an incoming and an outgoing portal rather than a single one due to train conflicts.

To assist with sending trains to the portal, place an advance or permissive signal on the track leading into the portal not on the portal. This signal will show yellow and the AI will drive fine.

Things to remember.

Don't place any switches close to the portal. The consists are "blind" until they are completely out of the portal. Once they exit the portal completely, the AI driver and schedule will load and the train becomes no different than any other on the route. If you put a switch too close to the portal, the consist will derail.

Use the Schedule Library and prebuilt consists. This will save a lot of time setting up the portals. When setting up drivers, use the option Use existing consist, or however it reads. I can't remember offhand from memory. The schedule library allows you to drop a schedule in once and be done with it, otherwise you need to edit the driver schedule as you do in Driver Setup.

To help things load better, my first command in the driver schedule is a wait command. I have the driver wait 20 seconds before loading the schedule and then configure commodities using Instant Load and Instant Load Random.

Any editing needs to be done in the Session and not in the Route. The consists with drivers will appear in the portal config if you get properties while editing the Route, but editing the portals will screw things up royally

 

[stagecoach]

Hi John, as in my screenshot, the baseboard is in the route layer but not attached to the route. It is placed several baseboard spaces away from it and only deals with portal traffic. This allows all portals on the route to send trains to it and do any movements required and then send back to the routes various portals. That one baseboard is saved on its own so can be quickly added to any layout.

 

[JCitron]

Hi John, as in my screenshot, the baseboard is in the route layer but not attached to the route. It is placed several baseboard spaces away from it and only deals with portal traffic. This allows all portals on the route to send trains to it and do any movements required and then send back to the routes various portals. That one baseboard is saved on its own so can be quickly added to any layout.

Oh, that's different than how I set things up and I've never done that. I only generate traffic from the portals and send the AI trains to them. I must try this.

 

[stagecoach]

You only need one portal for incoming trains (bottom of the map) from all your existing leaving portals on the layout. A portal allows returning trains to do one of 5 things (shown at the top of the map) Exit sim or

So I set up 5 portals, one for each task.
I set up exit portals (bottom of the map,) for each entry portal on the layout.
I added portals (shown on the left of the map) for producing trains and for the returning trains from the 4 portals above.
Driver commands would be
drive to the layout exit portal
drive to one of the 5 portals
drive to the exit portal that matches your layout entry portal.

 

[ek.skirl]

The consists are "blind" until they are completely out of the portal. Once they exit the portal completely, the AI driver and schedule will load

Unfortunatly the point trains generated by portals will be "visible" depends on the length of the train. So I principly add a "spawn" track to the portal that may hold the longest train that bwill be used. After that I place a Trackmark. To avoid all trains (espacially shorter ones) to stop inside the "spawn" area, all trains generated by portals get minimum the task to drive via this trackmark, followed by the further tasks.

 

[RobWed]

Hi John, as in my screenshot, the baseboard is in the route layer but not attached to the route. It is placed several baseboard spaces away from it and only deals with portal traffic. This allows all portals on the route to send trains to it and do any movements required and then send back to the routes various portals. That one baseboard is saved on its own so can be quickly added to any layout.

Thank, coach. I expect the good thing about the floating board is that I can tweak it as I go. Using a 1 minute portal transfer and having a marshalling area on it means I can use Wait Until to effectively give me a range of return times instead of a single one.

Thanks, John

If you do use portals, use the long portal basic and not the short ones.

The long portal appears to be 6 pieces of track with a label at one end and an industry at the other. Do I need to leave those 6 pieces of track as is? So any point work I do has to come after that? Are the 6 pieces of track a sort of spacer to fix the problem of the returning consist being blind?

Use the Schedule Library and prebuilt consists. This will save a lot of time setting up the portals. When setting up drivers, use the option Use existing consist, or however it reads. I can't remember offhand from memory. The schedule library allows you to drop a schedule in once and be done with it, otherwise you need to edit the driver schedule as you do in Driver Setup.

I've been using Schedule Library over the last few days. Is it possible to copy-paste commands from Driver Commands to Schedule Library?

Any editing needs to be done in the Session and not in the Route. The consists with drivers will appear in the portal config if you get properties while editing the Route, but editing the portals will screw things up royally

So, do I place the portals in the route layer but configure them in the session? I'm going to have a static set of connections between portals so it would be handy to have everything established in the route layer.

 

[RobWed]

You only need one portal for incoming trains (bottom of the map) from all your existing leaving portals on the layout. A portal allows returning trains to do one of 5 things (shown at the top of the map) Exit sim or

So I set up 5 portals, one for each task.
I set up exit portals (bottom of the map,) for each entry portal on the layout.
I added portals (shown on the left of the map) for producing trains and for the returning trains from the 4 portals above.
Driver commands would be
drive to the layout exit portal
drive to one of the 5 portals
drive to the exit portal that matches your layout entry portal.

Sweet, that's just how I set the first one up. Funny thing, I was just wondering to myself what happens if two trains leaving the layout on different portals arrive at the floating board portal at the same time?

 

[stagecoach]

They wait.
Do it all in the routed layer.

Portals
1 <kuid2:30501:22006:5> Portal Basic
2 <kuid:-25:1264> Portal

 

[JCitron]

I've been using Schedule Library over the last few days. Is it possible to copy-paste commands from Driver Commands to Schedule Library?

No, you can't do that but you can copy the schedules in the Schedule Library and create new ones from those. I've done that when schedules are the same and all I need to do is modify a station or track marks. It saves a ton of time when setting up drivers.

Another useful thing is the groups. On my Gloucester Terminal Electric route, I grouped them by which line the trams will be running on. Gloucester to West Gloucester, Smith Cove to Northside Mall, etc.

Portals are in fact an "industry" of sorts but with differences. You only connect one end and when the track is connected to them, they change to the connected track if you use them the way I do.

I have always placed the portals when editing the route but configured the schedules in the session. This goes back to TRS2004 or when the portals were developed. Again, I work very methodically and modally. Modifying driver setups in the Route and not the session can cause issues. We were told not to do this by N3V developers when either TRS19 or TRS22 came out. I can't remember now.

 

[WestSideRailways]

First time using Schedule...

Question #1
what is the difference between schedule library and the rule.

Question #2
how do you get the schedule to take over the consist, when it leaves the portal.

 

[ek.skirl]

what is the difference between schedule library and the rule.

The Schedule Rule holds on list of driver commands in a command bar inside.
The Schedule Library Rule is a database of schedules (driver command lists in command bars). These Library Rule elements may inserted into a driver command list (command bar) using the "Copy Commands From" driver command.

how do you get the schedule to take over the consist, when it leaves the portal.

Inside the portal you are able to edit, for every train the portal generates, a schedule (command bar). This schedule will start right after the portal leaving train is registerd in the session.