Portals - Session or Route?

Should a portal be installed as a route or session component?

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boleyd said:

Should a portal be installed as a route or session component?

115985

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Considering the widespread confusion (not necessarily you) over sessions, probably better to place them in the route. Also, they are or have track, so a connection to route track from session track may not work. I used to do this with non-procedural track, but procedural balks.

Put the portal in the Route. You can use portal session rules to change what is emitted in Sessions. (Central Portal Control, CPC trigger, etc.)

In my view all physical track infrastructure should be placed in the route. Track marks and triggers are the exceptions as they can, if needed, go into session layers.

Some creators do place some track assets, such as signals, in sessions so that they can run a modern era session with LED light signals and an historic session with semaphore signals. That is not an option that would appeal to me because there would be a lot of other structural differences that you would also have to split between sessions. Some of my early experiments in doing this when layers were first introduced did not end well.

But that is my view and experiences.

pware said:

In my view all physical track infrastructure should be placed in the route. Track marks and triggers are the exceptions as they can, if needed, go into session layers.

Some creators do place some track assets, such as signals, in sessions so that they can run a modern era session with LED light signals and an historic session with semaphore signals. That is not an option that would appeal to me because there would be a lot of other structural differences that you would also have to split between sessions. Some of my early experiments in doing this when layers were first introduced did not end well.

But that is my view and experiences.

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Exactly. Tracks, textures signals, except for the exception above, which is rare, is how I view things as well.

For portals, I place them in the Route-editor and name them. I then set them up in the session.

The portals, now populated, will end up with the consists in them in the route-layer as well. What is interesting is UDS. When unpausing while editing the route, the portals will send out their consists along the route. This caught me by surprise not too long ago as I was setting up some junctions and placing signals and wanted to ensure they lit properly by placing a locomotive and unpausing to watch the various aspects change while flipping the junction levers. As I was testing, I heard gates go down and some train horns because I use an invisible horn trigger. The nearby portal, not on the line I was editing, had released one of its consists at the specified interval for that portal.

JCitron said:

What is interesting is UDS. When unpausing while editing the route, the portals will send out their consists along the route.

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Yes, portals will emit their consists in the same layer as the portal. This has probably always been the case but was not noticed until the UDS arrived.

So if you place your portals in a session layer then any consist they produce, even ones that were consumed by other portals, will emerge into the same session layer as the portal. If you have your consists in a session layer (which is recommended for TRS19PE and Trainz Plus) but have the portals in a route layer then the consists emitted by the portal will be in a route layer. No clear solution to this as yet.

pware said:

Yes, portals will emit their consists in the same layer as the portal. This has probably always been the case but was not noticed until the UDS arrived.

So if you place your portals in a session layer then any consist they produce, even ones that were consumed by other portals, will emerge into the same session layer as the portal. If you have your consists in a session layer (which is recommended for TRS19PE and Trainz Plus) but have the portals in a route layer then the consists emitted by the portal will be in a route layer. No clear solution to this as yet.

Click to expand...

I never had this occur prior to UDS even with everything active at all times. To me this means that UDS is basically driver-paused with nothing setup because we're in the route-editing mode.

I have my setup as is recommended for TRS19PE and Plus. I have always set things up that way even way back in the early days. For me it's the logical thing to do.

RE: Portals on Route, emitted consists are also Route

Yes, and frustrating it is. Last night I i setup (CPC) an additional consist to emit from an existing "Portal" on a DLC route. Being late, I forgot to add the Driver Commands. (Duh!) So I run the session, the consist emits and then stops, clogging up the works. I go to delete it and I can't (without a clone) because the consist is on the Route layer. Of course I had added a bunch of Track Marks also..... drop back and punt....