There are days when you want to sack all the drivers!

[JCitron]

Why is it when you think things are running well, there's always someone that comes along and wrecks everything? Or better yet, I had a 'wonderful' driving session last night - all the drivers, including Dave, Cafe, Andrew and the others decided to go off and get drunk on the New Year before returning to work yesterday!

Here's what happened... I've used the same session for ages. No problems thus far even with the transfer of everything to a new computer (more on that another time), and even expanded the route. In fact a few nights ago, the route ran like clock-work even with the portal drivers actually doing what they are supposed to do. Last night, well that was a different story. I decided to drive instead of Survey for the evening so intead I climbed in with Scott on a run from Eastport Track 1 to Plymouth on the newly expanded Northern Main.

All of the drivers started their respective routes as they should, and then the messages started about acessing junctions, etc. Okay I climbed out of the train and went for a look. Low and behold, Cafe decided that he wouldn't wait the 1/2 second for the signal to go from red to green, and backed up only to tie up the throat to the passenger terminal!

In doing so, he snarffed everyone else, and caused a complete lock-up! Why??? I get him along with the others squared away, and everything appears fine. Scott is scheduled to leave a few minutes later, so I jump into the cab and waited a minute or two to leave. No problems, I thought as we pulled out of the terminal on time and headed to the throat. There was Eric doing a backup and reverse move instead of heading straight out toward Radford! Why??? I let him go, and continue with Scott on the northern main towards Plymouth.

I get up near Salisbury Station where we take the wye to Wingersheek (GFisher's Wingersheek and Wisacasset added-on). No problems before, but this time Cafe who is far ahead of my train, is heading in reverse towards me instead of towards Wingersheek station! What the???
I stop him, and have him wait 1/2 second manually. There is no other traffic on the line what-so-ever except him up in front of me. I then start him up, and he moves along fine. Scott in the mean time decides to randomly take a siding, and gets caught up in a wood mill yard! Why???

Now everthing is working like it should. I go off and check Alistair and the others to find them where they should be going where they should be going. I jump back into the cab with Scott and receive a message from Andrew. "waiting for access" Huh? I go off to see him, and of all the stupid things, he's brain dead or lazy and can't seem to set any junctions for him self. It's not like there were other drivers on this line. He has the next 14 miles of completely free track, and none of the junctions were locked because I went a long and set the route for him all the way to Amesbury without a hitch.

Back in with Scott, and we're driving along just out of Wingersheek, he decides again to pull into a siding. There's a yellow ahead from Cafe, but the line is clear all the way ahead after that. I stop him before he changes tracks, and I wait a minute before changing directions to manually pull him out of the switch. I then set him up to drive again, and he moves along fine until he reaches a red light. He's only going about 20 mph, and decides to gun it through the red light only to SPAD!

It was at this point that I decided to call it quits for the night, and went off to do something else. Why would this happen? This incident is like the Trainz nightmare from bloody hell. I've driven this route before with Scott and the others without any problems before. If they decide to do this type of thing again, they'll all be sacked!

John

 

[stagecoach]

Its not always the poor driver thats at fault. I also use the same session each time and ive found that adding something extra like a lever or a signal can cause problems on what used to work ok. It is down to the computer and the speed and order it does its calculations and passes the info back to the driver. With the extra item it is just a spec of time which another drive may sneek into first thus train A leaves after train B instead of before it.

 

[JCitron]

Hmmm... Good point Stagecoach. I never thought of that one. It sure makes sense to me. I've added a ton of extra miles to the route, and other stuff since the session was first created. You've got me thinking that perhaps the route is at it's limit, and perhaps I should split it up with IPortals to connect to together.

I wonder too if I shouldn't add a second or two more to each of the drivers to spread them out a little bit so they don't have an excuse to jumble up on each other. I've done this in the past, and it helps a lot.

This route now resides on a new computer I built around Christmas time, and is well beyond what I've ever had before...

Intel Duo-2 2.5 Ghz
EVGA Mobo with 2.0 Gb of RAM capable of 4Gb
8800GTS Video Card - EVGA/NVIDIA
Sound Blast Audigy
250 Mb HD.
Dual Nics with teaming support on the MOBO.

This pretty slick system that never crashes, unlike my old P4 system did, when in or exiting from Trainz, however, it looks like I've found the limits already. This is a case of, from "The Meaning of Life"... "It's only a mint that's wafer thin..."

John

 

[Mike10]

Nothing to do with the current full moon ?

Mike.

 

[stagecoach]

John i dont think its the limit its just the time taken to do all the calculations. Its like you answering 10 questions then being given a few more to work out.

 

[seward]

It seems to me that as fast as we upgrade our systems, Trainz finds yet another loophole that we have to address.
I have never ever known any other programme/sim, that requires so much extra.
It's still worth it, though!

 

[JCitron]

It seems to me that as fast as we upgrade our systems, Trainz finds yet another loophole that we have to address.
I have never ever known any other programme/sim, that requires so much extra.
It's still worth it, though!

Hi Seward,

The program sure is worth the upgrades and does bring a lot of enjoyment. It goes to show that no matter how loud these hardware companies toot their horns about how their hardware is the fastest and greatest, us Trainzers can show them that it isn't so. We can find the right buttons (routes to run) that will stress the latest piece of hardware right to the ground. Perhaps these companies should use Trainz as a system tester instead of Quake or Battlefield, which I don't think cause as much of a load on the processor and graphics card. Imagine an advertising or marketing line that reads. "Runs Auran Trainz 200x better than before", or has the Trainz running mark (like a SpeedMark Test) of 6500 compared to so and so brand, which only has 6000.

Anyway I did notice that the drives do behave better if the system has been freshly rebooted before going directly into Driver. So having said that, I don't run CMP and launch Trainz from there and I don't launch a driver session from Surveyor. I also kill my network connection, disable the anti-virus, anti-spyware program and other misc things like Acrobat-Reader before launching Trainz. I figured that every little bit of memory and system resourses help no matter how small they may be.

Last nights run was better. It looks as though the drivers got over their holiday hangover and got back to work!

John

 

[JCitron]

This weekend's run was just like nothing happend!

Okay so they must've been out drinking just like I thought. The past weekend had two of the best driving times of my life. Nothing has changed except for the calendar!

@Mike10 - This could be the full moon!

John

 

[Capt_Haddock]

I also agree with Stagecoach that minor alterations to the route can affect driver behaviour. There might also be a slightly random element in all the calculations that are made so that a session will never run exactly the same each time.

Very occasionally one of the Portals produces a ghost train with no driver, you can see it moving along but, with no driver, can’t change its schedule in any way.

It is easy to be caught out by missing point levers; the slightest change to the track, or even to the surrounding scenery can make these disappear. Using the copy and paste function in Surveyor also eliminates all point levers in the area copied to.

Chris

 

[Capt_Haddock]

Does anyone know why the font sizes vary in posts? The above post was written in 12-point Century Gothic but that’s not what can out, as you can see.

Chris

 

[BidMod]

Very occasionally one of the Portals produces a ghost train with no driver, you can see it moving along but, with no driver, can’t change its schedule in any way.[/quote]

I noticed that as well - I found it was common with the "short portal", so I removed them and now this bug is rare.

They do obay the signals (mostly) though, so you can direct them to a siding by changing the points and bring them to a halt - it's like selecting "drive" or "change direction" from the menu. Just be careful in case you need the siding later.

you can change the style of the text by selecting from the menus above.

 

[JCitron]

Very occasionally one of the Portals produces a ghost train with no driver, you can see it moving along but, with no driver, can’t change its schedule in any way.[/quote]

I noticed that as well - I found it was common with the "short portal", so I removed them and now this bug is rare.

They do obay the signals (mostly) though, so you can direct them to a siding by changing the points and bring them to a halt - it's like selecting "drive" or "change direction" from the menu. Just be careful in case you need the siding later.

you can change the style of the text by selecting from the menus above.

One of the things that I found that helps with the portal drivers is to make the portal leads as long as possible. This gives the drivers a chance to come up or down to the appropriate track speed in most cases. I have never had invisible trains (never used the short portals I suppose), but I've had them randomly derail in the portal! When this happens, I end up quitting the session because there's nothing more than can be done.

I too have redirected my portal drivers to sidings, or in some cases to yard tracks so I can take over the train later on for some local switching.

I do have one portal train that always runs the reds no matter what I do. I'm wondering if this particular train may have a poor engine config file setting that makes the engines too fast or powerful for the load, therefore, over running the signals no matter what. I'm going to fiddle around with this particular consist, change locos, etc. and see what happens. It is of course fun to blame the driver, so poor Moira gets carded every time she runs the lights!

Anyway, the driver experience is a bit interesting because I spend most of my time in Surveyor. The only minor changes I've made, since the route has been running fine, is some more buildings, trees, and landscaping up in Plymouth, which is quite a distance from where I've been driving. Knowing now how much these little changes can affect the session makes me plan on making changes to driver schedules when I update or make additions to the scenery somewhere on my route.

John

 

[nysvrwx]

I do have one portal train that always runs the reds no matter what I do. I'm wondering if this particular train may have a poor engine config file setting that makes the engines too fast or powerful for the load, therefore, over running the signals no matter what. I'm going to fiddle around with this particular consist, change locos, etc. and see what happens. It is of course fun to blame the driver, so poor Moira gets carded every time she runs the lights!


John

Might be too much tonnage for the amount of braking effort from the engine somehow. I've solved SPAD problems by adding one or more engines. Your milage varies depending on engines, but I have found a single SD40 is comfortable up to 750 tons on mostly level runs, less on hills.

 

[JCitron]

Might be too much tonnage for the amount of braking effort from the engine somehow. I've solved SPAD problems by adding one or more engines. Your milage varies depending on engines, but I have found a single SD40 is comfortable up to 750 tons on mostly level runs, less on hills.

This one consist has 4 locomotives for the train. A similar train going the opposite direction does not have this issue. The route in question is pretty flat with some slightly rolling terrain with relatively smooth grades. Weird I guess. I'm almost tempted to delete and recreate the portal consist again to see what happens. It'll be a good excuse to sack the driver!

John