Route will not start

[mikesimpson]

Yesterday, I finished re-signalling the Blue-Mountains route with the NSW signals. I did a lot of test runs on it last night, and everything appeared to work OK.

This morning, I opened the route in RE and added a lot of Siding names, cleaned up a bit of terrain, and added two more car-spawners.

Now, when I try to run the route in MSTS, the startup screen appears, the progress line gets about one quarter of the way across the screen and the whole thing locks up.

All other routes work OK, Conbuilder gives no errors in any rolling-stock, and a TDB rebuild in the RE completed OK.

Any ideas? I have a back-up only 4 days old, so no big deal, but it does mean setting all those signals again

Thanks.

[bigvern]

Seems strange - sunds like a corrupted track or road database. Try it without the car spawners - those things are a pain in the bum!

[bigvern]

Sorry duplicate post due to BT Openworld dropping the &*^%$£ line as I was posting!

[davec]

wouldn't be something silly like a missing shape file would it?

[bigvern]

Or a missing texture?

I've also come across problems with sd files where errors occur if the Alternative Texture is set to 256, you need to alter this to 257 and put a texture for the object in both the night and snow folders.

Worth remembering if MTS freezes, you can usually display the error message by Alt-Tab as it's hidden under the frozen screen.

[mikesimpson]

OK, fixed it. Although I had done a 'TDB rebuild' this was just a quick one. When I did it again properly, removing all the old tdb.bk rdb.bk etc files and removing the old .tdb and .rdb files it worked fine.

For Vern,
This was a total lock up, you could not even get back to the desktop by using Alt-Tab to see if there was an error message. Only an Alt-Ctrl-Del to bring up the taskmanager worked.

Panic over, thanks for all the help - Fortunately I now zip the whole route as a backup every few days, so I can always go back to a reasonably up to date version.

[bigvern]

Having wasted 40 mins of 3D placement time on the WH last night solving a vector error (after a TDB rebuild for a missing piece of road "adjacent piece not loaded" fault) the new and hopefully improved trouble free editor for MTS2 can't come too soon.

Almost enough to send you scurrying into Trainz Surveyor!

[qzdcg8]

I now zip the whole route as a backup every few days, so I can always go back to a reasonably up to date version.

I zip up Woodhead on EVERY day of work - you have to remember that every change since a zip up is at risk of being trashed by the RE and I personally have never been prepared to lose more than an evenings work (and I have lost an evenings work along the way!)

[mikesimpson]

Hi Steve,

Yes, I agree, daily zips would be better, but this is a value judgement, I have never actually lost anything on this route. This weeks episode was the worst, but in the end I managed to recover the whole lot.

[bigvern]

I was in the habit of doing a HD back up every day with a CD back up about once a week. However since switching route production to the laptop I've become a bit lazy, with a tendency to write the files to CD every 3 or 4 days and transfer that copy to the main PC then taking a further HD backup.

It's very easy to forget and silly really as I've been there, lost work and there's nothing more tediously frustrating than having to start over!

[ohmygawdwotsausername]

Mike that lock up you had can also be caused by...thinks hard to remember...there's a signal bug. If you have a non standard 'normal' signal at the route start it'll hang the game when you try to run it in drive a train mode. The yellow bar gets about 1/3 across then it all locks up but all seems ok in RE.

Tony Formosa dealt with this with his add on kit, clack boxes and route indicators to the gentry. He has a dummy route start signal that is invisible 'in game' and sits unobtrusively inside the average UK Buffer.

Anyhow its another cause for that lock up for future reference.

Cheers

[pepsipowell]

Hi everybody, I have just discovered a similar problem on my route, with a slightly strange twist. For some reason if you start in Southampton, the loading bar gets about halfway across, before freezing completely (no error message, even with Alt+Tab, but Ctrl+Alt+Del does work). If you start anywhere else, it is fine and even if you start elsewhere and run through Southampton it is still fine. The route editor all loads ok, so I tried a track database rebuild. After this the route now freezes on loading wherever you start. I'm not sure why this happens at Southampton as I have only been editing the London end of the route recently. Any ideas?

Jonathan

PS I don't know whether it is relevant, but the game and route editor now only display a maximum of five tiles at a time, rather than all visible tiles, although objects on those tiles load fine, so you see objects in the distance resting on white nothingness...

[ohmygawdwotsausername]

The first part I can suggest that its a sound region or source having 'dropped off' the route, or a signal thats gone screwy.

This does sound like its a case of restoring a backup.

I've worked on big routes too and it seems to me that when you're up one end working MSTS is down the other end kicking the track markers into the ditch.

I reckon its something that was on the track, like a marker thats gone and bleedin well 'opped' it to never never land. The TDB rebuild seems to confirm this because it can go crazy ape bonkers deleting markers yanno.

However, I'm now thinking that you shouldnt be twiddling with track when you have markers on it. Basically the rule I stick to is, do all the track, you can use TDB at any time. But once you start putting markers in thats the end of TDB rebuilds and no more track twiddling.

I know how you feel though when it starts sodding about my sympathies.

Colz

[cribbo]

I hope it wasn't those signals of mine that caused it! In the course of experimenting and building them I noticed a few things to be careful of (this also applies to most other signals as well) :-

Junction signals sometimes behave badly if there aren't any signals on the paths that they are facing.

A Junction Signal followed by another Junction Signal sometimes gets a bit weird. (Best if you have a interval signal/s between them.)

Signals ( and/or speedposts ) to close to each other. The sim sometimes does not have enough time to update the next signal before you get to it.

I've noticed with some of the add-on tracks X-Tracks/UKFS if you add and delete Xings or scissor Xings, a crossover item is sometimes left behind in TrItemTable. (For each track item with a cross-over point there should be two entries.) This can cause lockups at various times.

Cheers Cribbo

[ohmygawdwotsausername]

I hope it wasn't those signals of mine that caused it! In the course of experimenting and building them I noticed a few things to be careful of (this also applies to most other signals as well) :-

Nah Cribbo, in my case it was always 'in the hands of the operator' namely me...before I got into the habit of placing the dummy starts in all buffers I'd be sat here calling it some choice names.

Colz

PS I've just had a thought, you guys do know that Southampton is the mystical land of odd socks dont you....no seriously...ask the ladies, you put pairs of socks in the washing machine and sometimes one vanishes when its fallen out with its partner never to be seen again...well thats where they go, Southampton.

Just a thought.