Steam tender failing at spawn?

[sniper297]

This is a new one, I could swear this worked flawlessly back when I uploaded it.

Chicago Metro 3,<kuid:522774:100015> - the route.
chimet 3 40th 3020,<kuid:522774:100014> - the session.

PON C-41 #1315,<kuid2:522774:1034:1> - the loco.
PON C-41 #1315 Tender,<kuid2:522774:1031:1> - the tender.

The way I have this set up, there are three freight trains spawning in random order from SPAWN PROVISO FREIGHT which is a built in Auran portal KUID -3:10192. Something changed since at the time I uploaded this almost a year ago I had tested the session for over a month, leaving it running overnight in some cases to check for traffic jams and interruptions in the AI pattern. There were none at the time, but having made some changes to the route I started testing again and saw a break in the pattern. Investigating the portal I found this;

The loco spawned at the correct time, but then stopped, almost like it got stuck trying to pull the tender into this dimension or something. Sometimes that's it, stuck is stuck forevermore, sometimes after several minutes of puffing it gets unstuck;

That one is 19 minutes after spawning, just pulling out of the portal. It drives normally after that.

So I saved the current route to CDP and deleted it, deleted the session, and downloaded both again to see if it was my changes or in the original. It's in the original, the portal spawns the two different diesel freights normally, but the first time it spawns a steam freight it gets stuck like that. Tested in American Flyer, couldn't duplicate there, but it does it more often than not in Chicago Metro.

 

[sniper297]

Still running tests, but this is a very strange glitch.

Started a virgin copy of TS2010, downloaded route, session, and dependencies fresh. Ran the session, same problem, whenever a train with a C-41 and tender on the head spawns it gets stuck in the portal.
Created a new session with nothing but steam spawning from that portal, got stuck more often than it didn't, sometimes would start moving after several minutes but most of the time just sat there.
Cloned the original session and deleted all steam services leaving only diesel, runs perfectly.
Made a new session in American Flyer with nothing but C-41 freights spawning from the portals, that runs perfectly.

So apparently it's some combination of that particular portal and the C-41 tender, still running an all diesel test at the moment but the next step is to delete and replace that portal, maybe it "went stale" somehow in a way that doesn't affect diesels. I did try deleting and relaying all the connecting track and adding more signals, no effect on the C-41 problem. Can't duplicate the problem in other routes using the same portal type.

 

[SharkNose]

Still a newbie at portals, but I'll agree they're finicky! I placed a new consist with the end car on the portal track and wondered if that mattered. It certainly did! As soon as I started the train forward, it got sucked backward into the portal!

They look innocent enough, but I think Trainz portals are doorways into the 8th dimension. Good luck with your testing. I look forward to your results.

Andrew

 

[sniper297]

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter a Portal. I originally ran a few way freights, one or two cars ahead of the loco with several more coupled behind. Spawned from the portal okay like that, ran along the belt line and disappeared into the destination portal, looked like it worked fine. Did the same with the bi-level push-pull commuters, spawn downtown, run out to the suburbs, reverse and run backwards downtown again, back up into the downtown destination portal.

Then I got TS12. Script errors all over creation, I never noticed in TS2010 but if you have the message window open you see that if a train enters a consuming portal it has to have an engine in the lead, and it has to be the engine that was at the front when it originally spawned from a portal. Derailment inside the consuming portal is no problem since the clean up rule gets rid of it, but the script bug in TS12 is too annoying so I eliminated the way freights and changed the commuter pattern so it reversed a second time downtown and ran forward on a different line to a different destination portal.

What I find strange about this new bug is it didn't exist a year ago, because I tested the session over several weeks for many hours, leaving it run while I was away from the computer and usually overnight. Doing that now with the diesel only clone, it's been running for 7 hours and hasn't had any of the diesel AI freights get stuck.