Capstan Shunting in Trainz

Good evening

I've always been a person who's favoured freight operations and dirty work on railways, compared to the pristine, posh high-speed express trains found in Britain. This includes shunting, which has always been one of my favourite operations to observe. There are many types, but one of the most unique ones is capstan shunting. The video features a powered capstan, most in run-down industrial branches would have the rope connected to a shunter on a perpendicular line, which is otherwise un-shuntable.

I want to be able to see this in Trainz, but this is one of those apects where the simulator fails ultimately. The simulator is not programmed to adhere to physics for non-traincar assets.

My idea: an animated rope coiling upon a capstan, while an invisible power pushes the wagons onto respective turntables, simulating the wound effect of the rope. There could be easier ways to do this, e.g. a (special-use) track that automatically pushes wagons into precise locations after receiving a script call from a locomotive driver. a.couple0/1 must line up at the precise locations on the track. Similarly, scripted animations for the ropes could operate in any given direction about the capstan. The hard parts here are lining up the wagons to their precise locations, and scripting the rope to move at the same speed/consistency as the locomotive.

This is all a concept, but hopefully a genius can consider taking it up, I'm lost but I believe there are some animated winch cables or inclined rail wagon lifts on the DLS that work in a similar manner.

Hi Ron,
Well you have set (yourself ?) quite a challenge !

Actually it should be possible to do using an invisible loco on the same track and animated ropes and capstans for effect, but as a generic set of assets no simple task !

For invisible loco substitute horse ?

https://youtu.be/xq2cvkW0Mok

Me? Heavens, no, I was just thinking of a cconcept, and whether it's possible and practical. But using AI to shunt the trucks would require exact placement, for it to look right.

'Exact' and 'AI' adon't exactly fit snug, yet(?).

That's the most environmentally-friendly way of shunting I've seen.

jordon412 said:

...That's the most environmentally-friendly way of shunting I've seen....

Click to expand...

And you get free fertiliser for your Roses !

I'm not sure if this will help, but Peter Pardue Mathews, aka Narrow Gauge, worked on something for another Trainz user who is interested in the early coalmine cable tramways that were once found in eastern Pennsylvania. They operated similar to what you are asking for and maybe he can assist you with this. You might want to PM him and ask.

John

I gave up on the coal line incline for a very simple reason that was not evident until I solved all the other problems. The three inclines consisted of parallel pairs of tracks, cars were pushed up by a cable hauled, four wheeled car. At the top of each there was a downward sloped 'landing' which the cars rolled down to the next inline base. The pusher would return empty to the low end. It all went sour because too many things had to happen at the same time and my carefully adjusted process failed when things happened out of sequence, the code could not cope with the overlapping commands.

If you have a single incline it is quite probable that it would work. Send me a sketch of your track layout and a description of the process, and I will see if a more simple version would work. If it is possible, I would be glad to help you with it.

Peter