Hi Paul
I'm not familiar with the Dartford Loops but I assume it is a commuter service. How are you controlling when the trains are being emitted from the portals? Its been a few years since I used Central Portal Control (TS12 days) but if I remember correctly there was a limit on how many trains could be emitted. When I was using it the maximum was 99. If you only had the one portal then you could emit 99 trains but if you had more than one then the 99 was divided by the number of portals and the resulting amount was allocated to each portal.
If you had three portals for example then each portal would be allocated 33 trains. A portal could be emitting just one train but it was still allocated 33 slots while another could have been set to emit 42 trains but would stop emitting after it had reached 33. Obviously the more portals you have then the number of allocations to each portal decreases. It could be that it has been improved over the last ten years or so but I haven't used it since TS12.
Do you delete the trains when they reach the portal at the end of their run? If so then could the train be reversed to get another run out of it? For example build a small yard with two or three tracks along side the portal that a train could be diverted into and stored for a few minutes and then be dispatched on a return run. If you use P Guy's Enhanced Interlocking Towers with Track Circuits and Mission Codes the yard can be completely automated.
Regards
Brian
Thank you both for the kind responses. Brian you are correct it is a busy passenger route.
I've been using P Guy's EIT and Quick Portal Manager with Mission Code Stops and Timetables Manager. QPM provides a total of the portal entries setup to run and it's currently at 109.
Not all portals stop working. For example, this morning when running the session, the Bexleyheath line portal into Dartford carried on working fine, but the Sidcup and Woolwich lines stopped, with the latter being the source of the stalled 'consist 1496' that I referred to in my first post.
To smooth the running of the session I've already abandoned using portals to absorb trains because they often got stuck at the end after entering. Instead I use the Delete Train command, which works fine.
Although I think there is a bit of a clear run out of all of the portals, I shall check that is the case (referring to the Bexleyheath one which seems to survive) and maybe even use a Drive To a Trackmark to clear the portal before a timetable is added to the consist. And if that fails, I'll look to setup yards at either end of the route to return consists instead.
Pretty certain this should all be a lot easier though!
Thanks,
Paul
