Interlocking Towers, Session Only?

Once more I've run into the usual problem of AI and single track, versus passing loops. So I bit the bullet and read up on interlocking towers. However when I tried to make a session using them, they simple don't work. Specifically when trying to set up the actual tower, there is no option to add a new path. I have the suspicion that the towers must be added at the route level, and can't be added via a session? Can anyone confirm that? If so, that writes off the BN route and East Kentucky and I'll just have to fine tune the timing as usual. Thanks either way.

It took me a little while to find the relevant thread but there is a bug in the Interlocking Towers that also affects the EITs which use the code in the ITs.

Basically, ITs and EITs can go into either the Route or the Session but a bug has been identified in the Interlocking Towers (and the Enhanced Interlocking Towers) where the path and settings are initially saved in the Route but any later edits and changes are then saved in the Session. The workaround for this is to always load the Session when working with ITs and EITs. This was discovered in 2018 in TANE and reported, via the bug reporting system. Pguy, the creator of EITs has acknowledged the bug but as it is caused by the code in ITs, which the EITs call, then it has to be fixed by N3V.

I have yet to test ITs in TRS19 to see if the issue has been resolved.

The relevant conversation can be found from here onwards - https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...ible-Interlocking-Tower&p=1696283#post1696283

I do not know if this is related to your issue or is something completely new.

EDIT: To add another point, pguy recommends that ITs and EITs be added to a Session layer and subsequently you always load the Session. This was back in TANE in 2018.

Yer, not looking good. I tried to add to new sessions in the 2 routes I tried. But when you select edit properties (?) for the tower, it looks like plain building info, no option to add 'new path' or anything else. I'll try it elsewhere in other routes and see what I find, but not holding my breath. Thanks for the info.

Alikiwi said:

But when you select edit properties (?) for the tower, it looks like plain building info, no option to add 'new path' or anything else. I'll try it elsewhere in other routes and see what I find, but not holding my breath. Thanks for the info.

Click to expand...

I do recall that happening a few times in TANE. It turned out that the IT/EIT was within the "properties range" (for want of a better description) of a nearby scenery object - on one occasion I was attempting to open an EITs properties window through a tree which was so close to the POV camera that the tree was invisible to me.

My solution. Place all EITs/ITs in their own layer and lock the other scenery object layers. Access was then not a problem.

I'm on TANE SP4, but have always added EITs to the session rather than route, and have never had an issue. I use the invisible TRC Interlocking Tower since it can be placed anywhere you like.

I noticed pguy updated a few EIT / MissionCodeManager related assets a couple of days ago, so perhaps there was an issue on TRS19.

In creating Daily Logger for Avery-Drexel I tried to install first an invisible EIT and, when I couldn't get that to work, the N3V interlocking tower. I could not get either to work; it failed to acknowledge the train leaving the path. When I exitted Driver into Surveyor I observed that the junctions set by the path remained set per the path and would not change in Surveyor until the tower was deleted. So I gave up on them although I have successfully set up an IT on a session in my test route.

:B~(

Junctions do get locked when an EIT is in charge of them after you return to surveyor. You can replace the lever with a new one and give it the same number. This can then be changed until you next reload surveyor. I have 25 EIT's set up for many various paths. If you install the IT monitor into the session rules you can check if any tower is faulty and see what paths are doing.

Well this is a case of operator error, ops! It worked when I used the invisible Enhanced Interlocking Tower, not the ordinary Interlocking tower. I did notice the problem of a junction being locked after I passed, stopping the AI completely. I shall dabble further with this.

Alikiwi said:

. . . there is no option to add a new path. . . .

Click to expand...

Hi.

The only situation I know where the IT (and EIT) editor do not show an option to add a new path is when you are under surveyor mode after running a session in driver mode and switching back to surveyor using the unified driver/surveyor toggle link and the tower you are trying to edit has currently a path active (or activating or canceling). With the new unified driver/surveyor toggle link, only towers with no active path can be edited ; tower with some active paths are no longer editable under surveyor.

This situation can be confirmed by looking at the bottom of the list of paths window for the tower where in such situation there is a line displaying : note : this interlocking tower is currently not editable one or more paths are not clear.

If you have added to your session rules the IT enhanced manager rule, you can also edit the IT enhanced manager rule and in the towers list page, the rule will display for each tower if the tower is currently editable or not.

With the unified driver/surveyor toggle feature, things are now more tricky for towers edition as you can have under surveyor mode some towers with already some active paths (was not possible before in versions anterior to the unified driver/surveyor toggle feature) for which tower edition is no longer authorized to avoid breaking currently active paths using the tower paths editor. This protection is needed to be sure to be able to continue running the current underlying driver session by reusing again the unified driver/surveyor toggle feature to return to driver mode ...

What can you do if however you need to edit the tower and its paths : nothing possible using only the standard N3V tools ...

However if you have added the IT enhanced manager to your rule session and you are using EITs (not possible with standard ITs), you can edit the rule and display the selected tower details page with the list of all its paths. This list will show you which path is active in the tower and for which train. And the rule is smart enough to display also a specific link : make tower editable. If you click on this link, the rule will save all paths current state and then will enforce all active paths to path not set state making this way the tower editable again ... You can now edit the tower and add new paths, ... but avoid breaking any of the initially active paths by modifying any of its paths objects ... Avoid also deleting initially active paths as it will leave some ressources locked with no paths still owning them ... If you only edit the tower to add new paths or modify only paths initially not active it should be fine. When you have finished editing your tower, return to the IT enhanced manager rule to display again the selected tower details page and this time click on the link : restore active paths. The rule will restore the initially active state for all initially active paths in the tower. And if you have not altered any of the initially active paths ressources (essentially path objects) the rule should be able to restore correctly their active state, enabling to continue the underlying driver session using again the unified driver/surveyor mode. If you have altered during the tower edition any of the ressources needed by the active paths, ... anything may happen to the restored active path that may not behave correctly after restoration ... But again if you use this IT enhanced rule advanced feature only to add new paths or to edit paths initially inactive without altering any active paths ressources, you should be able to continue running your underlying driver session with no problems ... But clearly, N3V will never support this feature included only to the IT enhanced manager rule to help edit your uneditable locked towers if you are totally blocked in your session and needs absolutly to edit your locked uneditable tower ... using this feature may have some side effects on your session and you need to know what you are doing ...

It is better after tower edition to go again to the IT enhanced manager rule to explicitly restore the initially active paths as it may show some error information if there are some errors encountered while restoring the active paths. But if you forget to do this restoration, the system will detect you forgot to restore initially active paths when restarting driver mode and will be smart enough to enforce this restoration before restarting driver mode ...
It is also possible using the IT enhanced manager rule while in surveyor mode to cancel initially active paths (and also to cancel path activation delayed requests). And of course explicitly cancelled active paths in surveyor mode, will not be restored when returning to driver mode. Take care that this probably means that a train initially protected on an initially active path by the tower, will now continue its way without any protection from the tower as the path has been canceled during the surveyor mod ...

Again this feature has been designed to only help in some blocked situations where you absolutly need to edit a tower currently not editable, but take care of what you do as you can easily break the logic of your session using this advanced feature ...

Hope my explanations were clear and you understand why by default towers with active paths are protected and not editable. If you need any more explanations or advices on tower edition in such situation, just post a message on this forum or send me a private message for further explanations ...

Regards.
Pierre.

As I said, WRONG tower, pure and simple.