Share your sessions... please...

treblesum81

New member
Hi All,

I'm really just writing this in the hopes that someone out there could help me out by sharing their sessions for the following routes:

UMR 2009
UMR 2009 Winter
Alberta Run
Clinch TRS II
Clovis Sub West 2.1a
Cumberland to Connellsville
Montana Rail Link
ProtoClinchfield (Elkhorn Ext)
Tehachapi Loop
And any other large layouts anyone can think of...

I'm requesting these because my sessions end up being devoid of life and hence boring. I also have a lot of trouble for some reason putting together consists in a session that will actually be worth using in driver (ie I'll make a 40 car oil train when there isn't enough oil to fill all of the cars...), and I will still forget to put some specific type of cars on the map so I can't keep an industry going without restarting the whole session. Even worse, after I've built up some sort of session, I realize that I haven't really included all that much to do in it, so I'll run it end to end once or twice and get bored again...

Basically I'm asking for someone else who's shown their creativity with sessions on these routes to let the rest of us (me included) benefit from your talents... That and, aside from some notable exceptions, there are very few sessions / scenarios available on the DLS compared to the number of routes to be found. Unless, of course, I'm just missing them all and someone just needs to point me in the right direction to find all of the hidden sessions...

Thanks,
Greg
 
I guess I'm wasting my time here because all else has failed.

The Trainz Resources Directory has a tonne of space and bandwidth to list every session (free or payware) available. The offer is there, but like other offers I've made to list Routes and Screenshot of the Month winners, I expect this one to also be totally ignored. Please prove me wrong guys!

However, should you think it's a good idea to have your session listed in the Directory, you are more than welcome to write to me with:

The session name
A decent description of 100 words or more. (I will edit grammar etc.)
A screenshot
Version of Trainz (If applicable)
Name and link to the route on the DLS (if applicable)
A link to the session itself on the DLS or a web site..

If the session isn't being hosted, please let me know and I'll host it for you so that people can download it.

Please do not PM me on this one. My PM folder is always full!

Rush your details to me via this link. Please do not send attachments at this stage.

Here is an example of what to expect. This is a route because nobody has sent me any sessions yet.

Go on, be game, be the first. I'll do all the layout work and it's all free.

Phil - If you're out there, can I use your sessions as examples please?
 
I'm requesting these because my sessions end up being devoid of life and hence boring. I also have a lot of trouble for some reason putting together consists in a session that will actually be worth using in driver (ie I'll make a 40 car oil train when there isn't enough oil to fill all of the cars...), and I will still forget to put some specific type of cars on the map so I can't keep an industry going without restarting the whole session. Even worse, after I've built up some sort of session, I realize that I haven't really included all that much to do in it, so I'll run it end to end once or twice and get bored again...

Basically I'm asking for someone else who's shown their creativity with sessions on these routes to let the rest of us (me included) benefit from your talents... That and, aside from some notable exceptions, there are very few sessions / scenarios available on the DLS compared to the number of routes to be found. Unless, of course, I'm just missing them all and someone just needs to point me in the right direction to find all of the hidden sessions...

Thanks,
Greg

I don't know much about the business of railroading anyplace in the world but in the US, but I have to say that the way transportation of freight is implemented in TRS bears only the most superficial resemblance to the way rail freight transportation occurs in the US. Real railroads in North America do not assign a driver a set of railcars, and tell him to run around, picking up assorted assets which fit in those cars to deliver to customers. Rather, the driver is given a more circumscribed assignment: given a particular set, or sets, of cars, take those cars from where they are to where they need to go. On a more particular level, the detail of the assignment may be quite like the session "474 Local Goods" for the "Wadalbavale Line" distributed with TRS 2006 and 2009, or the reverse, where you are given a list of cars to distribute to various industries, or a combination of the two, where you have both a list of cars to pick up, and a list of cars to distribute, and you are expected to do both. The other extreme is taking a train, perhaps the 40 oil cars you mentioned, from one end of the route to the other (a type of traffic known in the world of prototype railroading as "overhead traffic"), without doing any intermediate switching of the traffic.

One thing that does not happen in real railroading is "live loading", where you take some quantity of some type of car, go to a shipper, and wait while the product is loaded. In the real world, labor costs too much for this to be a profitable operation. Instead, freight is handled in the real world in a manner for which TS is not optimized. Because railroads can't afford to pay labor costs for a driver to sit doing nothing while a grain car is loaded or unloaded, the railroad delivers empty cars to the shipper or loaded cars to the receiver, leaves them, and says to the shipper "call us when they are loaded", and to the receiver, "call us when they're empty". When the shipper or receiver calls, the railroad puts them on the list, and has them picked up by the next available train.

I am creating some routes with the specific intent of creating sessions to illustrate this exact type of railroading, but they're not done yet. Best way to understand how some of this works in US railroading is to use the built-in "Marias Pass Approach" approach route. Set up a session where at the beginning of the session each of the elevators on the route has a quantity of loaded covered hoppers (say 40 total), and your train has a similar quantity of empty covered hoppers to be distributed among the elevators. (Cue "mission impossible" music) "Your Job, Greg, should you choose to accept it, is to take the train from the origin, stop at each of the elevators on the route, drop off the empties, and pick up the loads, and get back to the starting point within the allotted amount of time, and without interfering with other trains pulling overhead traffic." (Fade out "Mission impossible" music) It's not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, the empties generally will have to be on the opposite end of the siding from the loads. You will, of course, know when the other trains whose way you have to stay out of will be coming, but if you have 12 minutes to get from A to B, and an opposing train will be at B in 15 minutes, you can't make the run, because you have to clear the opposing train by 5 minutes, so you have to wait for that train to pass before you can go. You have to get back by the assigned time, because 2 hours after you get back, the cars you pick up, and the cars picked up by four other locals just like yours are to leave town in a train of overhead traffic going to Seattle for Export. Transit time to Seattle will be three days, and it will take two days to unload the cars into the export elevator,and two days to load the bulk grain transport ship. The ship sails in seven days, and if the grain you are picking up does not go out tonight, it won't make the connections, your customers won't get paid, and next time, you'll only get the short haul.

ns
 
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Phil - Thanks.
mjolnir - I'm exhausted!

What say we do the Kuranda Tourist Railway in Cairns?

Arrive at yard at 8am. Jump on pre-assembled train and drive to station (2km).
Wait 40 minutes while tourists wander in and find seats.
Drive 10km at 30kph to Barron River Falls, stopping along the way at Freshwater (4km) for another batch of disinterested tourists.
Stop at falls for 15 minutes while photos are taken.
Move on to Kuranda (6km approx) 40 minutes after leaving Cairns.
Dump train at station and head for smoko shed.
Sit there for around five hours.
Walk back to station, place loco at front of train and wait while tourists wander back.
Head back to Cairns, stopping again at Barron Falls and Freshwater.
Return to yard, dump train and go home.
All done in a single shift. Thirty km and around two hours driving without a single passing loop. Who said working for the railroad is hard work?

The route is in the DLS as far as I know.
 
I don't know much about the business of railroading anyplace in the world but in the US, but I have to say that the way transportation of freight is implemented in TRS bears only the most superficial resemblance to the way rail freight transportation occurs in the US. Real railroads in North America do not assign a driver a set of railcars, and tell him to run around, picking up assorted assets which fit in those cars to deliver to customers. Rather, the driver is given a more circumscribed assignment: given a particular set, or sets, of cars, take those cars from where they are to where they need to go. . . .
ns

Your comments are right on, which is what inspired me to create the Car Movement and Traffic Management System (CMTM). This System gives every freight car on the route a series of destinations. A car's destination is displayed in a small pop-up window whenever you mouse click on that car. Once this system is adapted to a route, one session can yield multiple activities. Also, each session includes a choice of seven different days to run, each day having different traffic patterns and different industries requiring service.

I would like to assemble a group of creators that understand prototype operations, to adapt appropriate routes to this system or create routes that would make full use of this system. Any interest?
 

Phil, you were the person I had in mind when I was referring to "notable exceptions." I have a good portion of your sessions and routes already, and I enjoy them immensely, but I'm looking for sessions on those huge routes like UMR and Clovis, for which, aside from the one or maybe two setup / sightseeing sessions offered by the creator, there are none...
 
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Your comments are right on, which is what inspired me to create the Car Movement and Traffic Management System (CMTM). This System gives every freight car on the route a series of destinations. A car's destination is displayed in a small pop-up window whenever you mouse click on that car. Once this system is adapted to a route, one session can yield multiple activities. Also, each session includes a choice of seven different days to run, each day having different traffic patterns and different industries requiring service.

I would like to assemble a group of creators that understand prototype operations, to adapt appropriate routes to this system or create routes that would make full use of this system. Any interest?

I remember reading about this idea a few days ago, and it sounds great, but I don't remember finding any sort of download link....

I do think that there are some flaws in the way Trainz handles cargo movement mjolnir, but I think they can be easily overcome by proper session design. What I mean by this, and which is a problem I'm still coming to grips with, is that sessions need to be built on a modular work basis... Instead of the player/driver needing to fulfill every part of the labor, or having whole other AI drivers to fulfill all of the labor, each component of the process should be compartmentalized. ie: You show up with a train of empty grain cars to trade out for full ones which were loaded by an AI driver at each pickup point, who would then proceed to fill the empty ones after you've left (he's AI, he'll keep doing his job even after you are gone), then, when you've picked up your cars, you take them back to the staging area, where other AI trains are also bringing theirs, and then they are combined to form the larger train which will depart from there under your control or someone elses. Basically each component of labor can be done either by the AI or by the player, so the player could just pick up the overhead traffic if thats what they wanted, or they could take part in every step of the process. If any of that makes sense?

PS: I know it would probably turn into a nightmare trying to get all of the AI's to work together correctly, but it was a spur of the moment thought...
 
I remember reading about this idea a few days ago, and it sounds great, but I don't remember finding any sort of download link....

The system has not been officially release, as I am still tweaking it. However, the user's manual is now available at CMTM User's Manual September 09 release .

Edit - there is a new release now available that outlines new features. CMTM User's Manual 10-27-09 release

I do think that there are some flaws in the way Trainz handles cargo movement . . . .

Boy, is that the under statement of the year :D

PS: I know it would probably turn into a nightmare trying to get all of the AI's to work together correctly, but it was a spur of the moment thought...

Have you ever tried to get a train to arrive via a portal, drop of a string of cars, pick up another and then leave? After many attempts, I gave up. The CMTM System uses a modified portal that will emit and consume a string of cars without a locomotive. These are the most reliable interchange tracks I have found. By using the Portal Schedule rule, specific cars will arrive on an interchange track at specific times. The portal itself can be hidden behind scenery so it looks like the foriegn road has delivered the string of cars.

David
 
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Why is it so difficult to command a driver to do such a simple thing? What do they do instead?

I guess its probably a moot point to even ask if there is a way to get an AI driver to detect if there are empty, uncommanded cars within a certain distance of their location, or at a specific location, so that if you were to drop of some cars on a siding, they would wait until you uncoupled to try to do something with them...
 
There is a session on the MidWest Central that has an AI exit a portal (BNSF Portal South) moves down the track to a trackmark stops and uncouple some of the cars in the consist and proceeds to another portal(BNSF Portal North). The player train then picks up the cars left behind and takes them to the East Shelton Yard. I've never seen the AI fail to do its job.

MountE
 
There is a session on the MidWest Central that has an AI exit a portal (BNSF Portal South) moves down the track to a trackmark stops and uncouple some of the cars in the consist and proceeds to another portal(BNSF Portal North). The player train then picks up the cars left behind and takes them to the East Shelton Yard. I've never seen the AI fail to do its job.

MountE

Yes, that is the easy part, but have you ever seen a session where in addition, the emitted train also picks up a string of cars that the player has left at a specific location? Prototype interchange operations have to work both ways, - pick-up and drop off.

trebelsum81,

In you opinion, what makes a great session? How long should it last?
 
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In you opinion, what makes a great session? How long should it last?

This is probably going to end up sounding unreasonable, but I'll give it a try anyway...

The criteria that I try to build my sessions to (though I've never been able to get it right...) are:

1) You should be able to play for 30min or for 5hrs without sacrificing quality of play (one of my big issues with this sim is that there is very little "start and go" in it, aside from some notable exceptions (phil...), you've got to spend hours setting up before you can even run your first train.

2) The session should have a variety of guided activities (switching, overhead, sweeper, etc.... think scenarios) available, but still allow for open ended work. I.E. Once you've gotten bored switching, you can pick up the overhead train you just put together to run the long haul off of the map...

3) The session should have multiple AI drivers / trains to interact with, either on a passive level (express freight passing through that you need to avoid), or on an active level (switcher building consists for you, or vis versa...). This goes back to what mjolnir said about one driver not doing everything. I feel like even in some of the best sessions I've played that I have zero interaction with the AI's except to get out of their way.

I guess the biggest problem I have with my sessions, as well as quite a few others is that I get into it and then I don't really feel like there is a purpose other than driving trains around. This is what ends up destroying my interest in a session to the point that I trash it and try to build something better myself. I think if there was a perfect session, it would have every possible industry interaction on the route fleshed out with directed activities, and many / most of them would be of the continuous operation variety so that you wouldn't be stuck running only one type of operation if you were to play for a long sitting.

I know its probably too much to fit into a single session, but I can hope can't I?

Thanks,
Greg
 
An AI train can be made to pick up cars placed at a location. There is a rule such as couple to car at trackmark. If the cars are on the map when the session begins then you can use a couple to car with its name, "Flatcar up 1" as an example. The car must be the placed where the AI expects it to be.

Continuous operation is far more difficult. I don't think there's enough variabilty built into most of the industries to not have them shutting down for lack of either products in or out. You end up needing to be at too many places at once.

There is an emit train now rule which can bring cars in as you need them, empty or loaded, but each car will only load with the first product in its list. You can clone cars and change the clone's product list.
I still think you would need a small map with just a few industies to keep it running.

MountE
 
I actually think that continuous operation would be easier on a large scale.

Take grain production, for example. Each silo fills with grain over time, so once you've pulled the grain from it, you have to wait a while before you can fill more cars from it. So if you've got a small map with only a couple of silos, you can't keep pulling grain from them over and over again, even with only 1-2 AIs with the responsibility to fill cars there. If on the other hand you had a large area with many silos, you could keep a smaller number of AIs running between the silos to get empty cars, bring them to the silos for filling, then drop them off at a central (or at least nearby) collection siding. This would allow for each silo to refill in turn before the AI assigned to it would get back again to pick up more grain.

Now, I know that in real life, once the grain is gone for a season, its gone, so its not really a good example, but you can see the model I'm thinking of here. By setting up an AI to basically do what the cut-wheat campaign does for Marias Pass Approach, you've already got several possible activities. You could take over the AI's job and collect the grain, you could collect the consists filled by the AI into a larger train and deliver it to a receiver industry or two, or you could even go through all of the assembly areas to pick up the consists and then leave the area as an overhead train. Basically, with this sort of model, the larger the map and the more of each type of industry that is placed there, then the more sustainable the operations.

That all being said, I guess it isn't so important that the whole thing be continuous, but you should not be able to exhaust the possible activities in a session in the time you want to play. What I mean by this is that if you want to play for 10-15 hours on a route by saving it over and over again, you should be able to do so without having to start over from scratch at the beginning. If its not possible to do continuous, perhaps it would be better to build the route so that each activity tree would follow one at a time. Perhaps this could be accomplished by inserting some sort of "wait for event" command into the order structure of the AI trains. I.E. have the grain campaign complete, but then after the silos are drained and the consists are assembled, the AIs would wait until the completed overhead train reached a certain track mark before starting to work on another product. I know this wouldn't be very realistic, as each activity in real life would happen concurrently, but at least it would extend the session time frame out a huge amount.
 
I think for realistic, on-going operations, we need to think outside the box of Trainz waybill system. It in no way simulates real world operations and creating sessions that DO simulate real world operations need to either ignore the way bill system or work around it. Also, prototype operations do not have one train going around picking up only the grain cars from all the local grain elevators. A local way freight would serve all the industries along the line, dropping off and picking up cars as needed and bring the pick-ups to the yard where they would be sorted and put into through trains on their way to a final destination.

(As an aside, local grain elevators are also used for storing the local grain until the grain's owner decides the market timing is right for sale, so grain shipments can realistically take place through out the year.)

I know there are AI commands for coupling and that a car needs to be where AI expects to find it, however, I have never been able to make this happen reliably. It must be a car that the user places there in the session and not one placed in Surveyor. If you know of a specific route and session that does this successfully, I'd like to know about it. My experience has been the AI driver just sits there, looking at the car, but is unable to get clearence to proceed. I have played aroud with switch placement, signal placement and no signals at all. Some times it would work, but never twice in a row. I was using the "CoupleToVehicle Near Signal" command.

How much work are you willing to put into making a session conform to your likes? I am working on a session that can be significanly modified by simply changing the emit times of trains from their portals using the Portal Timetable Rule. If you like classifiy freight cars in the yard, then set the schedule to bring the through freights in early. With a little bit of luck, several hours later you will be able to send those through freights on their way and get around to making up a local freight and service the local industies. If you like to run local freights, then schedule the through freights to arrrive after lunch and run the local way freight first thing in the session.

And there are fast freights and passenger trains to contend with.

As the session begins, you can select which day of the week you want to run. Each day has different traffic patterns, servicing different industries. Every industry on the route gets serviced at least one a week. Most of the industries are not interactive, but they do not need to be as every car has a destination and a specific time to load/unload. Once loaded/unloaded they will have a new destination. A car's destination is displayed in a small pop-up window in the upper left corner of your screen. . . Prototye operations as best as can be simulated in Trainz.
 
I really like your idea, I think it has a lot of merit within the current construct of Trainz. That being said, I think that the problem is that we (and by we I mean the people who are really good at this and not me) seem to be trying to put too much front end into the system. To get something like what I've described in my last couple of posts done, you'd end up spending some multiple of hours more setting it up, than you'd ever really get enjoyment out of it.

This I think is one of my biggest troubles with Trainz. With my other sims (Silent Hunter, Sim City, Flight Simulator to name a few), I can be in the game within an hour on a completely custom map / scenario and get a multiple of play time back out of it. With TS2009, on the other hand, if I want to make a custom scenario (and I don't mean plopping a pre-made train down just to drive it across the map), even if its on an existing route, it takes several hours of placing rolling stock and setting up driver commands. The end result for me in this is that by the time I've gotten a session of any sort really set up and rolling, I'm out of time for the day, or even the week, and I've got to put the session on hold until I've got more time again, often leaving me doing nothing but setting up for several weeks and only getting to drive to test some industry out.

The other big problem for me, and a major part of the reason that I wish there were many more public use sessions to be had, no matter the quality, is that after days / weeks of setting up a session, I find that there isn't much draw for me to run it. I don't know if this is just my ADD showing through a little or not, but after I've scripted every last action of every last train, I don't really have a desire to spend a lot of time running the session. Yeah, I'll do it a couple of times, but when you already know everything that is going to happen, its not that interesting.

This is where the point I made earlier comes in... I think that rather than having everything focus on how detailed the scripting can be before the session starts, focus should be placed on some sort of dynamic command of the AI, allowing you to place a train with a driver, give it a few conditional commands, and then let it go. Maybe this is what you are working on Dap, or at least something similar, and maybe not, but I think that it would dramatically improve the quality of custom built sessions.

My reasoning is that it would allow you to build up sessions quickly, it would allow each run of a session to be a new experience, and it would also allow a finished session to be flexible which is not possible currently. I.E. If you have a simple session set up so that you depart at say 4pm with an overhead train from a major yard and you've got 2-3 AI drivers set up to deliver you your rolling stock, if they were scripted before the session, you'd always get the same results, but if they had this sort of flexibility, each consist you leave with would be different as each AI would probably plot some different path with each run of the session. You could also mix it up a little by changing the rolling stock which the session starts or gains along the way (great place to fit in CMTM), to which the AI drivers would adjust and allow for their logic to kick in...

I also understand that it may not be possible, mostly because it would mean a whole mess of command / rule programming that may not function properly (or at all) within Trainz. And I'm definitely not the one to try it.. I do have programming experience, but I don't have the time or energy to really create something on this scale, so I imagine its really just a pipe dream.

Just some thoughts,
Greg
 
I really like your idea, I think it has a lot of merit within the current construct of Trainz. . . . To get something like what I've described in my last couple of posts done, you'd end up spending some multiple of hours more setting it up, than you'd ever really get enjoyment out of it.

Greg,

Some of use take great pleasure in planning and creating operating sessions as well as running the sessions. I'Ve never found a session on the DSL that I liked, so I created a tool that will allow me to make sessions that I like. Not sure how many other will like them, but I get much please creating them as well as running them.

This I think is one of my biggest troubles with Trainz. With my other sims (Silent Hunter, Sim City, Flight Simulator to name a few), I can be in the game within an hour on a completely custom map / scenario and get a multiple of play time back out of it. . .

I think you expect too much from a $39 piece of software. My perspective on Trainz is much different. I am a life long Model Railroader and I view Trainz as a modeling medium that allows me to model prototype railroads in detail that is not possible in any other medium. I don't approach it as a game, rather a challenge to recreate realistic prototype operations. I do not get bored with sitting at a red signal for 20 minutes waiting for that fast passenger train to clear the main so I can get on with my freight run. That is how the prototype works, so it works for me.

. . .
I also understand that it may not be possible, mostly because it would mean a whole mess of command / rule programming that may not function properly (or at all) within Trainz. And I'm definitely not the one to try it.. I do have programming experience, but I don't have the time or energy to really create something on this scale, so I imagine its really just a pipe dream.

Just some thoughts,
Greg

Yes, I think it is just a dream, but it is OK to dream, that is what starts the innovation process. Maybe someday . . .

David
 
David,

I understand where you are coming from here, I really do. I'm not that far from you in the sense that I like to create the space in which I play, so to say, both by modeling the terrain, and by building the session. That being said, I really don't have the time to model and script for hours/days/weeks, only to really partake of the simulation for a few hours. Its one of the main reasons I don't release any of my routes, as I throw them together in a matter of hours just so I have something to run the train on, and they just wouldn't pass muster as public offerings without many more hours of refinement. In addition, I don't like just watching things happen after I've done the creation portion, which is why I place a heavy priority on interactivity in my wish list for the perfect session.

Either way, the problem isn't that I don't like to create, or even takes too long to create, but rather that there really isn't any back end variation to be had. I could spend hours and hours putting together a well populated and scripted session, but in the end, I get the same thing every time you run it, at least as far as I've been able to tell. If there were just a few ways to get things really interactive and variable, I would be ecstatic, but as of yet, I've not found a way to do this... though your CMTM sounds like it will at least provide some variation after you've gotten it up and running.

On the other point you mentioned, just don't for get that those are also $40 games (at least when I bought them) which can produce the results I'm talking about. That being said, I'm also the first one to recognize that their producers have a much larger staff and much more money to work with to make things happen than just about anyone else in the business. On the other hand, TS2009 is open source enough that we as a community should be able to make up the difference in some way. Driver commands, for example, that force better routing logic onto the AI trains, or even allow them to get some sort of critical thinking into the mix (IE: player just dropped off a full oil car for an AI to pick up, so the AI gets the car and then decides to take it to a gasoline refinery rather than a diesel refinery because the input stock levels were lower at the former...). While these are just ideas, I'm sure there are ways to do them if enough work is put into the process, as in all of my other game examples, even hard coded game limitations were overcome by clever developers.

Whatever the case, I'll just keep plugging along, trying to work some worthwhile fun for myself out of the game and maybe in the process stumble upon some of these ideas.

Greg
 
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