Sabotage?!

[nathanmallard]

Hi
I was recently driving a train on the "Heartbeat Revisited 2" route on the DLS. Not long in to my session the train took a very sharp, inexplicable turn to the right and subsequently derailed. I went in to surveyor and decided to check the area out, and I found this:

As you can see, there is a tiny bit of invisible track swerving off to the right, with the points set so the train goes down it. A quick investigation led me to realise these little blighters were all over the route, but the curious thing is that there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to exist. All of them, without exception were set so the train would derail. They appear mostly near signals and in station areas, so I thought it might be something to do with that. However, removing them does not appear to affect the signal, or anything else for that matter. Without any other feasible explanation, it look likes someone has deliberately gone and put these all over the route to trip people up. With N3V's anonymous community updating program still on-going, is it possible that someone could have sabotaged the route for some reason?

 

[sniper297]

Unlikely, most probable reason is an attempt to stop AI trains from grabbing control of real junctions;

http://www.trains.0catch.com/Bells Horns and Fooling the AI.pdf

There are better ways to do that sort of thing, mainly using multiple track markers with drive to trackmark / wait for X seconds / reverse direction then reverse direction again, etc. I personally never use invisible signals or invisible junctions, but some people like them because it makes setting up the AI traffic less complicated.

 

[JCitron]

These are probably being used to prevent the trains from closing the gates while they are parked on the tracks near them. I do this all the time on my routes where I have single track and want to leave a string of wagons on it for later on and don't want to tie up the traffic. I park the freight cars, uncouple them from the engine, back the engine away, and flip the lever towards the invisible track going nowhere. The gates stay up and the traffic is happy.

What I do though is put a dwarf signal before the junction so I know that the track goes off to nowhere when it's red.

John

 

[CPRailSD40-2]

I agree with John, I think they were trying to connect the crossing to the switch so you can leave cars on the tracks and open the crossing, and I think they did not finish the system.

 

[sniper297]

Even with the visible switches I use

297 Switch wLamp Rt RG,<kuid:522774:101209>
297 Switch wLamp Lt RG,<kuid:522774:101208>
Switch wLamp Rt RG,<kuid:520526:1501>
Switch wLamp Lt RG,<kuid:520526:1502>

To make it easier I edited the built in United States,<kuid:-1:7804> so one of them is automatically placed instead of the lever. Takes a lot of work to make sure the switchstands are correctly positioned and aligned to show green for the through route and red for the diverge, but it cuts way down on those annoying derailments.

 

[dougtrain]

I remember this from a few years ago and it was a suggestion by Bill69 in response to a question by a fellow trainzer. The problem hinged around the fact that the crossing was so close to the station and a stopped train meant the crossing gates stayed closed to vehicles until the train had departed. I forget exactly how it worked but the "catchpoints" tricked the signal and gates into believing the train was not there. Sorry I cannot explain it any better as it was a few years ago when we were using 2006 I think. Perhaps Bill will come along and put us all straight. One thing for sure is that it is meant to be like that but the interpretation in Trainz now may "see" things a different way.

Regards
Doug

 

[JCitron]

I remember this from a few years ago and it was a suggestion by Bill69 in response to a question by a fellow trainzer. The problem hinged around the fact that the crossing was so close to the station and a stopped train meant the crossing gates stayed closed to vehicles until the train had departed. I forget exactly how it worked but the "catchpoints" tricked the signal and gates into believing the train was not there. Sorry I cannot explain it any better as it was a few years ago when we were using 2006 I think. Perhaps Bill will come along and put us all straight. One thing for sure is that it is meant to be like that but the interpretation in Trainz now may "see" things a different way.

Regards
Doug

Doug you explained this well. I vaguely remember that post from the ancient days and a lot of discussion ensued on how to accomplish what we're doing now.

On some routes people have used derails to switch the track out rather than putting an invisible line off into the bushes to accomplish the same thing. The issue is still there in the current SP1 build so I don't think the issue has changed since the early days.

John

 

[dougtrain]

Right John. The reason I mentioned bill was because the post we remember had a set of screenshots with it and Bill explained the routine. We cannot see because of the tree but I think there was an invisible signal placed before the points and after the gated crossing, about where the SB is.

Doug

 

[AnalogOldguy]

Another version of the same route, (plain old "Heartbeat Revisited"), does not have these red invisible tracks and does not derail.

I'm pretty sure it is exactly the same route. I gave up on Heartbeat Revisited 2 long ago, and happily, it is one of my more favorite routes.

Bob P.

 

[cascaderailroad]

I have run over wrongly set switch's in 06 and derailments rarely occur, perhaps the derailment realizum setting is the problem when driving manually in DCC or CAB control

I am sure that they are placed there to lock the switch as in the article: http://www.trains.0catch.com/Bells%2...20the%20AI.pdf

You could either drive AI (as is the purpose of these "Blocking Junctions", meant to fool AI Trainz) ... or tug on all the spline points to see if there are disconnected tracks ... or go all along the route and set the turnouts the correct position ... or remove the switch levers, and or the invisatrack

 

[Matt3985]

By looking at the screenshot, it looks to me more along the lines of Trap points (which I think are only used in the UK) are just for use to stop runaway trains (it's just by using invisible track of course)

 

[BLACKWATCH]

By looking at the screenshot, it looks to me more along the lines of Trap points (which I think are only used in the UK) are just for use to stop runaway trains (it's just by using invisible track of course)

By looking at post #6, I think we already know that.