Deleting an interlocking tower causes route to become corrupted upon saving

exton32

New member
This has been a source of frustration over the last few days, several database rebuilds, several backup restores, and a lot of wasted time and work (technically I've only lost a days work but I've had to rebuild the same section of my route four times now), but I believe I've located the problem.

Deleting this interlocking tower causes my route to become corrupted when saving. To clarify, when I say my route is "corrupt", I mean that the game crashes when loading it. I've checked my dependencies and the only issues are with three faulty ground textures which have been replaced but for some reason are still being referenced by the config file.
2020-09-20-003209.jpg


It appears to be malfunctioning which is why I want to remove it. initially I thought it was the game as I'd had issues with interlocking towers not working correctly until testing the route in driver to find that other towers do work properly (i.e. the user is presented with a route selection on approach and when a route is selected it is set and the protecting signal reverts to automatic) with this one being the only one that doesn't work at all. I've checked the settings on all of them, they're all set identically, all the same asset too so other than the specific route elements there's no reason I should be having issues.


Does anyone know why this is happening or if it's fixable (preferably without a reinstall)? The KUID in question is <kuid2:61392:8101:52>, it's not a built-in asset but it works elsewhere in my route. This isn't even a new placement, I placed this months ago if not over a year ago. In its broken state I can't change the junction just behind it (standard for junctions controlled by an IT), nor can the AI trains. I gave a train instructions to take a route that would diverge to the right (left relative to camera) requiring the points to be changed but it reached the preceding signal, stopped and waited there infinitely because the signal didn't clear. In manual mode I should've got options for which route I wanted to take as I approached but didn't. I've used this specific interlocking tower elsewhere on my route and it works without issues. It's also named if that could've affected it. I've resorted to removing all its paths to I can change the junction but the IT was placed there to stop the signalling option allowing trains to "collide" at the diamond on the junction.
 
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Hi

Is the EIT in the route layer or Session layer? If it is in the route layer try moving it to the session layer and then save it and see if it crashes. If it doesn't crash then reopen the route and session and delete it from the session layer and save again. There have been issues in the past with EITs being in the route layer because they save their settings in the session layer. I've never had a problem with them since always adding them to the session layer only.

The only other thing I can suggest is to run a full database rebuild and see if that helps. Last week I had a problem where lots of my locos were error free in content manager but showed as red on the rolling stock panel in Surveyor. A full database rebuild solved the problem.

Regards

Brian
 
First the texture. When you use another texture to cover another the base one is not erased so will still show in kuid table. You would need to delete the texture from CM and then delete missing assets from the route.
EIT I notice you have C+notes on the track. Are these used in the EIT paths as exclusive?
 
Thanks for the responses.

First the texture. When you use another texture to cover another the base one is not erased so will still show in kuid table. You would need to delete the texture from CM and then delete missing assets from the route.

That'll explain it. I've followed those steps and my route is now free of faulty dependencies, thank you. Now onto the Tower.

Is the EIT in the route layer or Session layer?

It's in route-layer, but so are the other working ones due to me having to merge large amounts of work back into the route as I routinely forget to switch them before starting. I tried moving it to the session-layer and that also corrupted the route. I assume it's being corrupted as what else would cause the route to crash on loading other than a faulty asset, which I think I can rule out because the only faulty assets were those textures which weren't causing an issue and have now been removed from the route. The backup files from five saves after I deleted the tower were also all corrupt.

I've just tried moving it to the session-layer but even that appears to corrupt the route.

I notice you have C+notes on the track. Are these used in the EIT paths as exclusive?

With how old that part of the route is, I can't remember what got put in first, the notes or the IT, but I do know for certain the paths in the IT didn't include the track notes. I was able to edit the properties of the tower without corruption, so for now I've removed all paths so that the junction is usable but that does leave me with having a risk of trains clipping through one another if two trains meet on the intersecting lines. When editing I was able to get it to display the yellow line which shows the path over the track and there were no errors with any of the paths, so I don't think there's an issue there, either.

Additionally I've rebuilt the database at least four times, one of which was an extended database repair to see if I could repair the route itself without having to restore a backup and lose the work, I was hoping for a quicker solution to restoring backups than having to find the backup tzarc_xxxxxx files, renaming them, copying them to editing and running the database repair for a good 250GB of content
 
Hi Exton32.

Sorry but from your description the most probable is that your route and session is already corrupted and deleting the IT only shows the latent and underlying route or session corruption problem and do not relate to any underlying asset problem ...

In such case one other thing you can try is to remove the offending assets instances using the delete missing dependencies menu command facility. To try this :

1 - save under surveyor your route and session with a new route name to work on a copy of your initial route and session. Quit your surveyor session.
2 - write somewhere on a paper all your paths definition in all towers, as you will need at a later step to recreate all your paths in all your towers
2 - Under content manager, delete asset <kuid2:61392:8101:52> Enhanced TRC3 invisible interlocking tower (SP2 and later) from your configuration
3 - now your new route and session should be flagged as containing missing dependencies. The initial route and session also.
4 - open your new route and session under surveyor and use the Delete Missing Assets menu item in the surveyor action menu. This should suppress all instances of
asset <kuid2:61392:8101:52> Enhanced TRC3 invisible interlocking tower (SP2 and later) in your new route and session as the asset is currently missing in your content manager configuration. Quit your surveyor session.
5 - reinstall from DLS the
asset <kuid2:61392:8101:52> Enhanced TRC3 invisible interlocking tower (SP2 and later).
6 - re open under surveyor your new route and session. All instances of invisible EITs should have been suppressed. Check your route and session is fine with no other corruption.
7 - You can now re create under surveyor all the ITs that were supressed, one by one, re creating them in the session layer (not in the route layer) and recreating all their paths definition and checking each time this does not corrupt your route
8 - when finished and if everything works fine, you can the delete your initial corrupted route and session, and re save your new fixed route and session under the initial route name

Hope this will work and help you recover your route and session uncorrupted ... Sorry for not having any other thing more easy to try.

Regards.
Pierre.
 
Hi Pierre,

Thanks for the suggestion. I've followed your steps above, and using your method I am finally rid of the pesky tower (and the rest but there's only two others so it's not going to take too long to put them back) and my route didn't corrupt itself this time. Also, it took me way too long to realise that you are the asset's creator.

Does the tower specifically have to be on session-layer or can it be on any layer in the session? I know I'll keep forgetting to switch to the route layers when first loading in, so if I put it in a second layer on the session file I can merge the stuff I accidentally put on the session without taking the interlocking towers with them.
 
I had this same problem a few months ago, and I only way I managed to fix it was pguy's method above, then of course had to readd all the towers and paths again.
 
I have spent weeks trying to get my towers to work correct. Finally found my problem, a tcb was blocking all tower tcb settings. It was a small spur into a siding that did not have the insulator on it. The siding had links to other parts of the route which caused the problem. The tower is sensitive to any wrong entry with tcb, exclusives and signals named wrongly.
 
Hi Pierre,

Thanks for the suggestion. I've followed your steps above, and using your method I am finally rid of the pesky tower (and the rest but there's only two others so it's not going to take too long to put them back) and my route didn't corrupt itself this time. Also, it took me way too long to realise that you are the asset's creator.

Does the tower specifically have to be on session-layer or can it be on any layer in the session? I know I'll keep forgetting to switch to the route layers when first loading in, so if I put it in a second layer on the session file I can merge the stuff I accidentally put on the session without taking the interlocking towers with them.

Hi Exton32.
Good news to know that you have succeeded to get rid of the offending tower using the missing dependencies menu item technique.
About tower layer location, my recommandation is to use session layer instead of route layer ; why ? Because I have occasionally (not too often) seen some misfunctionning with tower inside route level that I have never seen with tower inside session layer. So I find session layer tower more reliable than route layer tower. This may change in the future as it is certainly caused by some remaining bugs in N3V internal code, which will be updated and fixed with some future build ... but for thé current present moment, using only session layer tower makes your route and session more reliable with more time spent running railway operations than tracking some bugs ...
regards.
Pierre.
 
I have spent weeks trying to get my towers to work correct. Finally found my problem, a tcb was blocking all tower tcb settings. It was a small spur into a siding that did not have the insulator on it. The siding had links to other parts of the route which caused the problem. The tower is sensitive to any wrong entry with tcb, exclusives and signals named wrongly.

hi stagecoach. TCBs are very powerful assets to use, but are always a bit touchy as any missing or misplaced insulator may extend the tcb to the full route clogging everything. And sometimes the missing or misplaced insulator may be difficult to find ... exclusive sets are less touchy, but needs to be very rigorous on how you name your exclusive sets to be sure conflicting paths use the same exclusive set name.
regards.
pierre.
 
Hi Pierre I have noticed something which might be N3V related. I launch TRS19 select route and session for edit. If I go straight to driver the EIT's are not working and wont set the path, even with the set path command. For it to work I have to go into edit session and in the EIT manager set the integrity check first. Then I go to driver and it all works even the set path. I exit TRS19 and come back later and the edit session doe's not show the integrity check and in driver paths fail. Exit and do a DBR, launch and after a crash re launch go to edit session and the integrity check is back. This is in both 106618 & 109170. As I said it might be N3V related in it saving or reading information and failing to do it. The DBR always causes a CTD when I reload the route first time.
 
Hi Exton32.
About tower layer location, my recommandation is to use session layer instead of route layer
regards.
Pierre.

Now this is an interesting suggestion. One which I have never before taken any notice of. I say this mainly b/c a problem has never arisen with EIT path configuration in the route creation layer with any route I have made. Mainly I place all paths within the EIT on the route layer in surveyor as when creating session from the same route I do not have to keep re-making the same paths for each session made. Or am I missing something that I have not understood properly? Should I now change my MO by creating EIT paths in the route creation [session] layer, or keep the status quo?

Cheers,
Val.
 
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