Enhanced Interlocking Tower stops play.

Benge10

New member
EIT brilliant up to now but I think I might have found its limit.
My tower has 46 paths, so far so good. Tried to input path number 47 and it refuses to save.
Tried another two times to save and TANE crashes. Can anyone comment or provide help with this.
Thanks in advance.
Running version 94916.
 
Your best option is to split the paths between towers, 46 is a lot for a single tower to work through. The towers should work like signal boxes covering a certain area. An example would be tower 1 controls at the north end of a station and tower 2 the south end. Tower 3 would control the yard area.
 
Ya exactly too many paths causes crashes I keep mine no more than 15-20 after that hang ups @ CTD...also if you don't like so many towers visible along a route you can adjust heights to below ground level...
Dave =)
 
Hi.

There is no specific reason why either an IT or a EIT would be limited to 46 paths only. I have just tried on my test route cloning many times a path in a tower, and I had no problems having 60 paths and more in a tower, saving the session and reloading it.
If you have a crash it is probably due to another cause …

The first thing I would suggest is to check that you are using the last release of Enhanced Interlocking Tower library and of its dependencies libraries. Just check under CM that you have these assets release installed :

Enhanced Interlocking Tower Library : <kuid2:61392:8190:50>
Global locks library : <kuid2:61392:4054:4>
Named Objects Library : <kuid2:61392:4053:8>
Extended Session Variables library : <kuid2:61392:4052:6>
Common Data Library : <kuid2:61392:4050:51>

if for any reason some of these assets are outdated in your configuration, just reload the last version from DLS.
Named Objects Library needs particurarly to be at last release level 8 as the previous release level 7 is known to have a bug that may cause some CTDs under some specific configuration conditions.

If you have still CTDs when editing your 47th path in your tower with all these assets up to date, then if you can package your route and session in a cdp (with all dependencies not available on DLS) and send me the package I will have a look to try to find why you get a CTD …

After all this being said, I confirm what Stagecoach has said : Interlocking Towers either standard or enhanced are local objects and you should not have the need to have so many paths in a unique tower. If you have a lot of paths in a tower, for performance reason it will be better to split your tower paths between two or more towers covering each one a small local area. On my routes, my towers have often between 5 to 25 paths rarely more.
Remember also that you don't need to set all the possible paths in a tower, but only the paths that you will use under your current session.

But from only script programming aspect, there should be no limit on the number of paths supported inside a tower. The only risk with too many paths inside a unique tower would be to have some script timeout errors using functions that need to scan all the available paths in a tower, but that is not the case when you add a new path or edit an existing path under surveyor.

Regards.
Pierre.
 
thnx pierre will look into that on my end that could be the problem but I split them up as I seen you mentioning before and that has worked well for me....

The TRC towers are invisible in driver the ITE are not., in which I have 49 ITE towers along a 112 mile path...
So the towers that are basically along heavy industrial areas and yards.,
I set as 3 towers to a section (north, mid, south) and just leave one visible....

Dave =)
 
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Hi

I have seen this issue of towers refusing to accept more than 45 (in my case) paths on an intermittent basis. At Belen Yard on the Clovis Sub route I use 2 towers, one to control each end, and I have seen this problem occasionally in the West tower. Both towers are in the session layer and the problem occurs in some sessions and not others. In other sessions the West tower will allow more than 45 paths to be set. I've never had the issue with the East tower. I got round it by rationalizing the paths which allowed me to have the same functionality but with fewer paths.

This problem seems to have started when SP2 came out so I don't know if it is the SP2 EIT or some change in SP2 itself that introduced it. In SP1 I had one tower (Kings Cross on the ECML route) that had 76 paths and it functioned perfectly. I couldn't find any way to use two towers there with it being a terminus and all approach or departure tracks allowing access to or from multiple platforms.

Regards

Brian
 
Hi everyone,
Thanks for your prompt replies.
My route contains a terminus station with 15 platforms and requires about 60 paths to cover train movements. I originally started with 2 towers, one to handle arrivals and the other departures, but I quickly discovered that the two towers were in conflict; the departures tower worked fine but arriving trains got stuck outside the station because track further in was controlled by the departures tower. I concluded that two towers cannot operate where path sections overlap, I think this agrees with Brian's findings. So, back to one tower.

Regarding Pierre's comments; I have checked under CM and all the assets are up to date. I have also re-installed TANE with the latest public release and done a repairdatabase extended. Thank you Pierre for offering to look at my route, I will get it packaged and sent to you in due course.
Regards
DaveP
 
Hi.

After looking to Benge10's route and session and having reproduced his problem not being able to save a 47th path inside his tower, I can confirm that it is due to a script timeout while saving the tower data, timeout due to too many datas in the tower to be saved before reaching the script timeout threshold.

It appears that both standard ITs and EITs (EITs reuse the same routines as ITs to save/restore the IT internal data) have a usage limit which is more the total number of path objects definition for all paths in tower than the number of paths inside the tower.
From several tests, a total number of 600 path objects (60 paths with an average of 10 path objects for each path, or 30 paths with an average of 20 path objects for each path, … ) seems safe for save/restore operation of a tower. Above you may encounter some script timeouts that will break your tower data. In case you encounter such problem, the better is to quit your session without saving anything and reload your last session saved data loosing all the modifications done since this last save operation.

Next EIT version (v52 that should be delivered to DLS mid August or begining of September) will include in the enhanced IT manager tower pages a display of the current total number of path objects for each tower, with a warning message if this number exceeds the advised value of 600 path objects for all paths in a tower.

It is much more performant and safe to have multiple towers with short paths with not too many path objects objects than to have only one tower with some very long paths with a lot of path objects in each path.

Remember also that with EITs a path exit signal can be a path entry signal inside another tower, so that you can have successive paths belonging to adjacent distinct towers (no overlaps between tower).

Hope this helps.
Regards.

Pierre.
 
Hi.

After looking to Benge10's route and session and having reproduced his problem not being able to save a 47th path inside his tower, I can confirm that it is due to a script timeout while saving the tower data, timeout due to too many datas in the tower to be saved before reaching the script timeout threshold.

It appears that both standard ITs and EITs (EITs reuse the same routines as ITs to save/restore the IT internal data) have a usage limit which is more the total number of path objects definition for all paths in tower than the number of paths inside the tower.
From several tests, a total number of 600 path objects (60 paths with an average of 10 path objects for each path, or 30 paths with an average of 20 path objects for each path, … ) seems safe for save/restore operation of a tower. Above you may encounter some script timeouts that will break your tower data. In case you encounter such problem, the better is to quit your session without saving anything and reload your last session saved data loosing all the modifications done since this last save operation.

Next EIT version (v52 that should be delivered to DLS mid August or begining of September) will include in the enhanced IT manager tower pages a display of the current total number of path objects for each tower, with a warning message if this number exceeds the advised value of 600 path objects for all paths in a tower.

It is much more performant and safe to have multiple towers with short paths with not too many path objects objects than to have only one tower with some very long paths with a lot of path objects in each path.

Remember also that with EITs a path exit signal can be a path entry signal inside another tower, so that you can have successive paths belonging to adjacent distinct towers (no overlaps between tower).

Hope this helps.
Regards.

Pierre.

Thanks for all your work,Pierre! ITs and EITs are a magnificent addition to Trainz.
 
I've updated to SP3 and I'm using the 'Enhanced TRC3 Invisible Interlocking Tower (SP2 and later)', <kuid2:61392:8101:50> on derrmy's EK3 and all of them, except one, keep 'losing' the paths. What I mean is I set them up, save the route and exit, and then when I come back, the paths are gone. Here's the tower with the most paths, which is Hazard East, which is one end of the yard at Hazard and the beginning of the Carrs Fork Branch. At the bottom, the track with the signal going to the left is the Carrs Fork Branch, while the track on the right is the mainline. The yard lead is the other track on the left, which ends just outside the picture. The four blue things are itareus' 'C+ SO Note (Track) Blue Nameable' and notes crossings, which is also double slip switches. The mainline goes from single-track to double-track as there's a tunnel just outside the picture at the bottom. There's a signal gantry at the top of the screen; the signal on the gantry on the left is for the yard tracks while the one on the right is for the westbound mainline. The signal next to the track next to the gantry is for the eastbound mainline. The signal at the three-way switch is for the yard tracks and for the bypass track around the yard, which is the track that swings out to the right. There's a dwarf signal on the yard lead at about where the signal box is. All the other signal boxes are a lot less complex than this one. I've checked and all the libraries and the other stuff needed to make the interlocking tower to work are up to date.
My-Trainz-Screenshot-Image.jpg
 
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Hi Jordon.

For such problem, the easiest way to find a solution is that you package in a cdp your route and session (with all dependencies not available for download on DLS) and you send it to me (I will post you my email address via PM) with a short description of the tower concerned, the new paths you try to add (I need only the entry signal name) so that I can try to repro your problem.

Just another question, do you have the show script exceptions option ticked in the dev tab of your trainz settings ? If not, just tick the option and retry to save your session with the added paths. You need to have this option ticked to be sure to be notified of errors while saving your session and route. If you have not this option, you may miss some errors while saving your route and session data, have the saved data incomplete or corrupted, which may lead to some incomplete configuration reloaded later …
Better to have the option ticked to be warned there are problems during a save operation.

That's all I can propose to you from your problem description.
Regards.

Pierre.
 
Hi

In SP1 I had one tower (Kings Cross on the ECML route) that had 76 paths and it functioned perfectly. I couldn't find any way to use two towers there with it being a terminus and all approach or departure tracks allowing access to or from multiple platforms.

Regards

Brian

How come you can do that (Kings Cross), whereas I could not get an EIT to successfully control a simple bi-directional ramp, even with a lot of help from pGuy??

Mick:)
 
Hi Mick

I have used EITs ever since Pierre first introduced them so I've been able to keep up with their features as they've evolved.

Single line sections can be difficult to control depending on their length and situation. If they can be controlled by one tower then it is fairly straightforward but I have had problems when each end is controlled by a different tower. In such situations I sometimes have to resort to using a variable to act as a token indicating whether the section is occupied or not before allowing either tower to set the path through.

Regards

Brian
 
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