Forgive me if this is common knowledge as i am very new to these parts and the whole Railworks thing. I have just about finished my first scenario and hope to release it soon. It has been written from the ground up 3 times already as i got stuck, broke the ai could not figure why T was blocking B while E was not even on the line so to speak. Frustrating times but feel i have learnt so much already. Probably my fault for picking a shunting story crossing main lines at Carlisle with its 3 main lines in with 1 out on 2 tracks. Talk about a bottleneck !
If i had known from the off (i'm sure its not written in the manual or maybe not true at all), that an ai Signalman/Dispatcher only exists in the editor, i had of saved myself many hours of fails. I set up the ai which ran fine, but came a point where my slow 08 needs the main line from Carlilse to Kingmoor. What baffled me was that trains stopped everywhere before i needed the line causing ai meltdown. I tried allsorts to make the ai move but they remained sat still. So i adjusted the time in one of the 08s' orders to last 50 mins. The ai ran superb, my 08 remained at a red light from the begining. It was not his time to move. I adjusted times and it ran fine.....
Well until another service needed to cross a mainline. He wanted my line after me, but i was a little late. This prevented all other traffic moving on that section until i had cleared, then he had cleared. Even though other trains had clear routes, they don't move until the stuck trains have moved over certain lines in the pre arranged sequence. As far as i can tell, in the editor you set up a sequence in which trains are allowed to access a certain piece of line. If many trains need one section of line, they will pass it in the seqence arranged and not becuase the route is clear. Therefore if it works in the editor, and the player can keep on time, everything will work in game. If the player is early, he will probably get a red light to wait at until his time to cross a path is ready if another train uses it. If he is late at a point which many ai trains will follow, every movement by an ai train effected by that location or locations stuck ai need to share with other trains halt. This is regardless of how clear a route is.
Basically, if your player crosses ai many times but remains on time, all will be fine. If hes late, it will be a mess. One way to counter this i believe is giving the player more time to complete tasks especially in shunting moves across busy lines at strategic times. If hes early, he will wait at red for his pre arranged slot to path across ai. The two things that has a huge effect on this are % and duration. These in effect tell the editor in the ai how long your going to be. It then sets up ai around you. If your on track A at 15:20 in the scenario, another train will not be allowed to be and will be re-routed or blocked. You now have to be clever in ai routing to insure the player can not break anything by being human.
Would love to hear what you guys think, am i right or way off. I just wish i known some of this before i started. I should also have a very busy main line crossing shunting scenario in Carlisle station with ai everywhere coming for your scrutiny very soon
steve
Thanks for taking the time to confirm this. 
