TRC Gates stuck closed near industry

[Andrew608]

I'm having an issue with the TRC gates sticking closed when there's a nearby industry and I leave a car there.

I've read through the documentation and configured the names of the TRC4 triggers and crossing gates. They do work as expected if I don't leave the tank car parked near the crossing to the left of the crossing.
I've tried many variations using 1 tirgger and settled on two (one on each side) since I saw other routes use this sort of setup. I've also played with settings for front/rear radii and played with moving the triggers closer/farther as well as toying with the "Stay open" option, but nothing seems to help.

Below is what the setup looks like.
The track does end on the left shortly outside the view of the screen shot. Maybe that's an issue?

Interestingly, I can spot the car on the opposite side of the crossing and the gates do open as expected once clear:

 

[JCitron]

It looks like you're setting this up properly. It could be that the radius-settings aren't sticking. I'm not sure if you only need one trigger or two for the TRC4 because I've set up using only one or two triggers without problems.

 

[Andrew608]

Thanks John,
Yeah that could very well have been. It seems to be working now. Actually, it may have always been working, but I noticed I had to pull pretty far away from the crossing for the gates to open again when the car was left there. I ended up putting temporary rulers down along with some random signs so I could see where 50m Front/Rear from each trigger actually was.

I ended up modifying the script slightly to allow distances for less than 50 meters and adjusting both triggers to 50 front and 10 rear seems to work reasonably well for this case.

 

[JCitron]

I'm glad that's working for you. Hopefully the settings will stick in your config. That's been an issue with TRS22.

 

[vincentrh]

The case you mention Andrew, is a particuliar situation I haven't considered. Here is a new version of the TRC trigger that fixes this case : TRC 4 trigger version 22 (soon on the DLS)
Please note that, according to the tests I did, the distances of detection don't interfer with the functionning. In fact, in your case, there are two trains: one stationary and the other moving away from the crossing. So I had to make the script distinguish between these two trains, so that it would only be interested in the moving one. Three extra lines of code, and you're done! (line 479 to 491).

Also note that you shoudn't use more than one trigger per crossing. And this is because a single trigger 'looks ahead' and 'looks back' to detect any train movement. So you don't need two triggers. And two triggers at once can be confusing.
I also recommend the 'automated detection' mode, which is highly effective in most cases and so much easier to use!
Vincent

 

[Andrew608]

Thanks for the new version so quickly! I pulled the new version 22 down from your OneDrive link and tried it out. It does seem to work well now.

Thanks for the tip on using one trigger per crossing. I tried two triggers because I saw other routes use that technique.
I went ahead and tried deleting one of the triggers, but I found that the gates seemed to begin to open too soon.
In the pic below the train is moving to the left slowly (~3/4mph) and the gates started to open while the train was still well within the crossing area. There's 1 trigger roughly where the red "T" is located with "Automatic detection" mode enabled.

Adding the 2nd trigger with the same settings on the left does seem to help and the gates do stay closed a bit longer in that configuration, but indeed, I'd prefer to use a one trigger setup for simplicity alone. If you have any thoughts on that I'm curious to hear them.
Thanks,

 

[mtldrm38]

I have noticed a issue also with the gates opening too soon when the train clears the trigger but not the entire crossing? May have to switch back to adding that fixed track section?

 

[Andrew608]

I have noticed a issue also with the gates opening too soon when the train clears the trigger but not the entire crossing? May have to switch back to adding that fixed track section?

Hmm that's an interesting point. Perhaps not using any actual crossing is the issue?

I imagine that because these are painted / "hand-laid" roads with stand-alone gates, the TRC system has no idea where the crossing starts and ends relative to the position of the trigger.

 

[vincentrh]

To solve the problem, simply move the trigger back a few metres. Normally, it should be between 10 and 20 meters from the level crossing. See this page on my website
If your train is moving too slowly (less than 3 mph), please consider the 'four tools for your session' : clik here

 

[Andrew608]

Thanks for the tip. I'm not actually using any level crossing assets at the moment. Does that present any issues or require alternative configurations?