First post and a couple of questions about scenario building

[ade72]

Evening all - as mentioned above this is my first post on this forum, though I've lurked for a good while. Having bought the rather brilliant Western Mainlines from JT recently, I was inspired to have a go at making some scenarios after owning various incarnations of TS16 going back to Railworks 2. Much to my amazement, I've produced one that mostly works. It's based on the Night Riviera sleeper that goes from Paddington to Penzance, though it only gets as far as Reading - I picked this as there don't seem to be a lot of sleeper scenarios around. My plan is to do a mini-series with the next scenarios covering Reading-Taunton, Taunton-Exeter and (using the Riviera Line) Exeter-Newton Abbot and upload them to UKTS once everything is working properly. I've used Real Time Trains to set up the AI, which works nicely, albeit I've left out a couple of services that seemed to confuse the dispatcher.

You may have noticed that I said it "mostly works" - it is indeed playable. However, there are a couple of signals - for those who know the route - about 1.8 miles and 1 mile east of Twyford, and another one about 1.3 miles before Reading that are stuck on red and have to be tabbed past. Whilst this isn't a show stopper, it's a bit frustrating given I've got everything else working as intended. Is there anything that I can do to avoid or work around this? I don't think they're permissive signals as they don't have junction indicators that I can see, otherwise I could use the JTMS tab trigger. The signalling in TS has me a little baffled at the moment so any help would be much appreciated.

The other question was, any suggestions as to suitable static consists to dress the yards around Southall with? I've looked for photos online, but the ones I've seen are during the day when the sidings tend to be a bit bare. If anyone has any idea what might be parked there around midnight, I'd love to know!

Ade

[Timex]

Ade- what's the train priority?
Set it as an express passenger or special and give that a go.
Special can cause havoc with signalling so try the former first!
Also, set AI stuff at a low priority

[ade72]

@Timex thanks! The player train is an express passenger. Thinking about it there are two AI trains that go through the same signals, one is a stopping passenger and the other one is an express which might be the issue. I'll have a play around and see what happens. Luckily most of the AI is heading towards Paddington with it being night time so I can isolate it to just those two (I hope). I'm still trying to figure out priorities and percentage effort - all the variables you can play with seem to interact. Just playing the game I had no idea quite how much was going on under the bonnet, luckily I'm finding it all good fun at the moment!

[ade72]

Quick update. I played around with priorities as Timex suggested and this worked to some extent - the player train gets routed ahead of two stopping services that were previously getting to Twyford first. The player train is now the first one to be routed through Twyford, and the first of the troublesome signals is now clear, however the second signal (one mile outside Twyford) did something a bit odd. It was showing green right up until I was about 300m from it, and then just before I went over the AWS magnet, it went from green straight to red. There were no preceding yellow signals, and no AI trains on the route in front of the player train. The same signal outside Reading also needed to be tabbed past. Is this a bug in the signalling? Or am I just missing something due to inexperience?

[jp92214]

ade72.
Just a thought. When you run a test on your scenario, where do run it from? Straight from the editor (click arrow btm right then play when it loads). If so then this may be causing your signal faults.

When you finish editing close the editor down completely and then test from Drive, Standard (or whatever type it is).

Hope this helps.

[ade72]

jp, thanks for the thought - I've been launching the scenario from the Drive menu to test it (it's just a standard one) as I'd read previously on the forum about that.

I may try re-routing the train to a different platform at Reading, and sticking some engineering works in. I'm using the Oovee class 57 with a GWR reskin from here (the one by Superalbs, who does some great stuff) and it comes packaged with some temporary speed limit signs and triggers so that could make the drive a little more interesting anyway. The way the signal behaved seemed really odd though, so at this point I'm just really curious to figure out what's happening. I don't think it can be anything to do with AI, because I've now set the scenario up so that the player's train is the first through that bit of track - though I do have a couple of AI trains that head out of Reading towards Paddington - maybe there's something about how they're routed out of Reading that is causing issues. I could clone the scenario a couple of times and selectively deleting them to see what happens.

[INTERCITY]

Ade, interesting you mention the signalling issues with Western Mainlines, I have been creating 1A06 for the past few days which those in the know will be aware it is the 06;20 Weston Super Mare to London Paddington service, as you mention the two signals are one at Ruscombe, which is 1 mile east of Twyford, the other problem signal is at Maidenhead on the up main, you can TAB past both but interesting, there are three trains that are booked to run ahead of 1A06(1L14,1A73 and 1L16) and I guess this causes the signal to fail for want of a better word, in scenario form I guess you can use this as a minor delay, indeed I have created two 1A06's one booked to arrive in London on time, the other has around 10 minutes delay as a result of signal failures, I seem to recall when testing with no ai trains ahead not getting checked at any signal so I should imagine this is a bug from within Western Mainlines, that being said I have to say for someone who has lived on the GWML and these days works on it, it is the most unbelievable creation in Train Sim history, I have waited 16 years for something like this basically it has brought me back to train simulator.

[ade72]

Hi Intercity - I have the scenario pretty much working now, as Just Trains recently released a service pack for Western Mainlines, which added a couple of extra stations, a load of new portals and seems to have fixed the signalling glitch I was having. If you haven't yet got the service pack it's worth a try, though a bit of a faff, as you have to re-download, uninstall the old version and install the new one. It'll probably break the scenario as well, it did mine, but I was able to reconstruct it without much difficulty. I added the AI trains back in 3 or 4 at a time and tested each step So far I've had none of the problems I reported earlier, with just a couple of freight services to add in. I do love the effort that's gone into WM, I've travelled the route many times as I have relations in the West Country and used to shuttle between London and Bristol for work quite often a few years back, so I nabbed the route as soon as I found out about it - Train Sim gets a tad heavy on the wallet at times. Anyway, I'll keep beavering away and I might even finish this little project

[INTERCITY]

Haha I am a Train Manager for GWR so obviously get to travel the route most days, as I mentioned, I can't believe how accurate the route actually is, with the service pack I still get those troublesome signals around Reading/Twyford/Tilehurst, they all seem to not clear after ai trains pass them ahead of me, I tend to put the trains ahead of me in upto around 15 minutes earlier, e.g I have created 1D23(09;50 Padd-Oxford0 and have the 09;45 Swansea ahead, the ai trains do seem to get ahead quite well, just is taking some testing as to how far I can push the sim with regards to creating real timetables, in most cases its fine, you just have to be careful around Paddington, the real life 0950 departs platform 9 with 1K41 from Bedwyn arriving at 09;53, I put that in but when I departed the 166 was also cleared along line 3 at the same time resulting in a head on collision, so I've had to move to platform 1, looks like I will have to use lines 1 and 2 as outbound lines with 3 and 4 as inbounds for express arrivals.

Anyhow neither is spoiling the route in anyway