Paging C & O Hinton fans

I really like the looks of the " C & O Hinton Division " and I am a big fan of AI traffic keeping me company on my routes while I'm doing my work.


I just made another attempt to get some traffic on the Hinton but my AI says it can't find the track marks.


I see just out of the Clifton Forge Portal the bridge crossing the river has no blue line on it in the map view which I think is a break in the path that the AI can look at but even when I go into " edit trains " and drag the consist to the other side of the river the train still can't find a track mark further on down.


The train comming from the other end of the main line can not seem to see through some of the large yards to find the next track mark.

I think the way the author depicted the rapids and white-water is ingenious and a beutiful sight but I won't be enjoying this much till I can get AI traffic to work on this route.


Some thoughts, please!

Thanks Willy
 
Haven't had a chance to look yet, but if you suspect missing track, lay some to fill the gap. This worked for me on another route. Also with the AI if the trackmarks are too far apart or it's complicated (ie lots of junctions and choices) add additional trackmarks.
 
Are you sure you're at the right end of the route? There's no bridge near Clifton Forge on my version.

Place trackmarks either side of the bridge, place a loco and issue the drive to TM x command. If that works, add another TM further away. Rinse and repeat.

In TRS19 you can also edit the track and save as a clone to relay any track you like.
 
I placed a single loco at Clifton Forge and it navigated to Beckley with no problem at all.
 
Last edited:
I can now confirm, Tony is right. There is NO bridge anywhere near Clifton Forge, so there is no way to check this problem with incorrect information.
 
I can now confirm, Tony is right. There is NO bridge anywhere near Clifton Forge, so there is no way to check this problem with incorrect information.

I'm sorry, don't know why my brain slipped a cog there, I'm on the other end comming out of the South Main Line portal and at the bridge over the river I see a track mark at both ends of the bridge but no blue line on the bridge itself.

I thought I had noticed that maybe someone made updates to this route because I see a lot of track marks that I don't remember being there before but my train says it can't see them.

I noticed another driver command other than " Navigate To Tracmark ", should I have used " Navigate To Trackmark EX " ?

Willy
 
Unless you want it to stop there, you should use "navigate via". If the bridge is the close one heading south, those are not normal trackmarks and are not numbered. Not sure what that is made of. No, there are no blue lines for a bridge in map view, that's normal as far as I know. I have just put an AI train there and told it to drive across the bridge. As per all the sessions I've made, no problems there or with AI drivers.
 
I do find problems. I placed a loco at the portal (South Main Line) and set it to Navigate to Trackmark 180634 (next to bridge). Driver msg was "unable to find Trackmark 629252. I then moved loco across bridge just past 181064 and set to "Navigate to tm629252" (the next mark a short distance away and received "unable to find" error. There is a short truss bridge at that location (tm629525) and I tried navigating to it from either side and from close distance. Received error. Moved loco to other line. Set it to Navigate to TM631868. Loco was only about 6 loco lengths away but returned "unable to find" error.
 
These 2 trackmarks are not really trackmarks, they are the abutments (<kuid:101046:100851> Abutment, Darker Wood DES). In the config.txt this asset is declared as trackmark and trigger, but don't have any script assigned.
The original trackmarks have the following entries for scripting in the config.txt
script "/TrackMark.gs"
class "TrackMark"

Peter
 
Last edited:
-snip- In the config.txt this asset is declared as trackmark and trigger, but don't have any script assigned. -snip-
Peter

Thanks for that! So I learned that things are not always as they appear. A listed Trackmark may not be a navigable trademark! So much to learn....
 
I do find problems. I placed a loco at the portal (South Main Line) and set it to Navigate to Trackmark 180634 (next to bridge). Driver msg was "unable to find Trackmark 629252. I then moved loco across bridge just past 181064 and set to "Navigate to tm629252" (the next mark a short distance away and received "unable to find" error. There is a short truss bridge at that location (tm629525) and I tried navigating to it from either side and from close distance. Received error. Moved loco to other line. Set it to Navigate to TM631868. Loco was only about 6 loco lengths away but returned "unable to find" error.

OK, this seems to be about what happened to me. ( maybe I'm not a total idiot ? )

From what others have contributed:

If I want to use trackmarks to help direct AI traffic, I have to figure out how to identify real trackmarks and make my own list to use during traffic creating.

I understand that a bridge normally does not have a blue line over it? In asking about this, I was hoping to hear that the missing blue line was a problem but the only such occurence on this route.

I would have to go back and see how far Beckley is but I tried to send traffic in both directions on the main lines and I had a little success but eventually my train could not find the next station.

One of my favorite routes has a lot of directional markers and when I started working on this I placed a lot of them on the Hinton with the idea of avoiding cornfield meets by AI that seem to want to take the shortest route and will cross over to be on the inside of any curves that they can. It, however gets really tricky navigating through some of the large yards and that is why I tried using stations and trackmarks to get back on the right track after passing through them.

Thanks

Willy
 
"Shakes head." Let me say it again, those "trackmarks" the original poster was referring to are NOT trackmarks in the normal sense. As I also said they have no numbers, and they have no trackmark icon itself, only the red shaded area. (there are hundreds of posts on this subject). What I see is that for some odd reason, someone has ignored the route in normal view, and gone into the mini map where (and only) a number is given for these abutment connections. DO NOT DO THIS!

As per many posts/comments, if you want the AI to go from point A to point B you MUST show it how you want it to achieve that. Hence you must place actual trackmarks from the surveyor tool in making a session. Yes, as documented, an AI will always take the shortest route, and cut corners and use the wrong track. That's why you must place trackmarks to guide it. Oddly the AI isn't a mind reader and also if the trackmarks are too far apart (like on a long run) it will come to a halt and sit there.

Most routes already have trackmarks placed, but you will always find you need more and sometimes the radius is set too high. Go into "Track add trackmarks" so you can see the name of any existing trackmarks and also to be able to see/set the radius. Note, in most routes you can't change the radius of build-in trackmarks, another reason you may need to add your own.
 
There would be no problem with the false trackmarks, if the creator of the abutments didn't add the entries trackmark 1 and trigger 1 to the config.txt. These entries are not required for a trackside scenery assets. With these entries the abutments are listed as trackmarks, but without the script they don't have the functionality of trackmarks.

Peter
 
Sorry for causing an uproar! AND, Pease be With You!

I think I noticed a lot of strange things about this route.


If I drive my passenger train, passengers do not get off and on at stations.


If I set-up AI, I usually put in the commands drive to station, unload, wait 2 min., load, drive to (next station) and the AI will go so slow at the beginning of a platform one would swear that the engine and tender stop but then the whole train kind of oozes through the station and stops beyound the platform and though the command to drive to that station is dropped from the list as if it has been accomplished, the other commands do not get processed and the train sits there beyond the station like it doesn't know what to do next. It can't go to the next station because it's current command is to unload but it is not in a place to unload.


I wonder if this route is a generation or more too old to work with the newer Trainz? I'm running "Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019".


About a year ago I tried setting up a session for this route and I thought I had run into a situation where I started putting my own trackmarks in but after putting in a fraction of what I thought I needed, the game would not let me place any more and if I can put enough in now there is this problem where there are many trackmark looking things in it already but some are supposed to be fake ones and it will be really confusing to me cause I can't remember from one day to the next what the heck I'm doing.


BUT, here's a question for you:


Is it true that Portals should be far enough away from signals and turnouts to allow your whole train to exit and maybe also enter ??


I ask this for two reasons:


On the Hinton there are portals a very short distance from a turnout and even though the commands would have the train throw the switch and take the diverging route, that switch never gets thrown and my train goes the wrong way. I thought I should be able to set that switch to diverging path in the session creation process but that doesn't seem to work. I can, if I remember, throw that switch manually at the beginning of driving the session and I assume it will stay that way for subsequent AI traffic but I don't know since I haven't established my AI traffic pattern yet.


On my current favorite route, " Rocky Mountains Montana Track " there is a similar situation where the Portals are extremely close to signals and turnouts but it just so happens that I want the traffic to use the NON-divergent path. The problem there is that the trains that are suposed to be gobbled-up by the Portals almost never get totally sucked into the Portal. Do you think this could possibly be caused by being way too close to a turnout that has a signal at it?


It really buggs me to have such a tiny little flaw ruin a great game and a otherwise fantastic route. Every once in a while I'll notice my driver list is really long and when I look I see "stuck" trains and I have to open " edit trains " and delete several that are waiting because there are a few of a three passenger car train at the entrance of the portal. Good thing is that I have Portals I use to produce trains and ones to gobble them.

At least we have the edit trains option avaliable to us now!!!


Thanks


Willy
 
First try the load command instead of unload with the passenger stations. This will load and unload the people from the trains.

Second. This is correct regarding portals.You always want enough room and then some to handle the longest train that exits from a portal. The reason is any train that comes out of a portal is not aware of any signals, speed limits, switches, etc. These things only matter once the full train comes out of the portal and a driver gets assigned.

On my route setups, I will place the portals on an attached baseboard or two attached to the route with no signals, or other intervening obstacles. This gives the consist plenty of time to come up to speed and initialize with an AI driver, commands to load and so on.

For those routes where I want to have the AI driver arrive with loaded freight and passenger cars, I will use a Wait 20 sec., followed by an instant load then the rest of the commands. (There's one where you can choose what asset you want to load, but I can't remember what it's called). What the wait command does is give things to settle down, followed by the other commands that follow.
 
Back
Top