maxand wrote:
OK by me- but maybe Clive, or someone else, has a photo of Royston panel which would be more relevant.

Peter

Peter Bennet wrote: Not unblurred.

Max

Just to hopefully make something clearer in your mind and therefore in the mind of any new players who are reading your guide

"Train Location Reporting, select Only when 5 minutes late or more, as we don't want to be distracted by too many telephone calls just yet."

The choice contained in this tick box will NOT affect the phone calls, it will purely affect the information messages that appear in the main message window to show the lateness of any train that is delayed at certain locations defined by the developer of that sim. You can still get a large number of phone calls if you delay the trains at your signals.

Paul

Max

Yet another helpful change for the tutorial. As an ex driver this would not be permitted to happen.....

all you might see is the next TC temporarily occupied until it slowly reverses and “squares up” with the signal.

The driver would never reverse in this situation, he would contact the signaller immediately and advise him of the cat B spad and then await the signallers authority to proceed in accordance with the instructions given by Network Rail Controllers on behalf of his TOC train service managers.

Paul

This was somewhat helpful thank you. What I would like to know is how to successfully signal when trains divide. Because what I have seen when doing the tutorial scenario, is when trains divide, I manually interpose the timetable to change the TD. But the 2nd part left behind then becomes blank, and then this moves as Uniditified train on the signal dispatcher?

I have not seen a clear method how to do this part yet? Can someone kindly help?

gwr3850 wrote:
Which train is it that divides?

If there are two track circuit berths then interpose the first trains TD into the first and the second trains TD into the second.

If there is only one berth then you will have to use a sticky note or piece of paper to note down the second TD and interpose It once the first train has departed.

gwr3850 wrote:
You must mean the extra "tutorial" timetable, since no trains divide in the original Royston timetable; only joining takes place.

Let's check. Fire up the Royston sim with Royston Tutorial V1.0 selected and select MNU > Timetable > Export/Import. Using its built-in ConvData (Convert Data) facility, export this wtt as a text file; maybe to make it easier, rename the extension to .txt instead of .wtt before conversion. Open it in Notepad or similar plain text editor, and do a search for "ACT=D" (without quotes); this will list all the trains that divide (the "ACT" indicates the nature of the act they perform).

It turns out there are only two:
5C28
(ROYSTON ARR=08:05; DEP=08:13; PLT=1; ACT=DR:2C30,N:1C28)
5C29
(ROYSTON ARR=08:22; DEP=08:28; PLT=2; ACT=DR:2C32,N:2C29)

(The "5" in their descriptions tell us they are empty passenger trains (Empty Coaching Stock or ECS) which terminate at Royston to take on passengers and become Class 1 or 2 passenger trains.)

Let's look at 5C28. Start a new simulation with the same timetable (with Perfect scenario), but this time edit the starting time to 08:00, the entry time for 5C28 (from Timetable List). 5C28 dutifully appears from stage right (Shepreth) so set a route for it to Royston P1, but no further. Here it has arrived and completed dividing as soon as it stopped, but unlike an amoeba, all we see at the end of it is still one train.

Both trains that divide in this scenario use DR (Divide Rear) rather than DF (Divide Front). This means that the rear of the train divides off from the rest of it and assumes the description listed after the "DR:", while the remainder (front) of the train assumes the New working description listed after "N:". Since 5C28 was travelling Up (right to left) when it terminated at P1, the front (left part) of the train will become 1C28, while the rear (right part) of the train will become 2C30.

Pressing F8 to bring up the Simplifier, filtering for Royston (the station) and turning the time back to 08:05 gives us the departure times of each segment:

Happily, the timetable has been arranged so that 1C28, which is in front of 2C30, departs first.

We have two choices now. We can interpose 1C28 at K980, wait for 1C28 to depart, then interpose 2C30 at K980; or we can interpose 1C28 at K980 and 2C30 at K983 (not K984) and hope that the latter description will be collected by 2C30 when it departs, instead of seeing an anonymous red stripe take off.

Seeing that the latter is not entirely certain as the berth lies to the rear of the train (red stripe), let's adopt the former course. Now we see 1C28 departing. The red stripe left behind must be 2C30:

Interpose 2C30 at K980, set a route for it and away it will go.

If we try the second option by interposing 2C30 at K983, we find it also works.

(This will be added to the Wiki in due course)

(added) Just a suggestion - try the Liverpool Lime Street sim. You will get plenty of practice managing divided trains there!

maxand wrote:
Personally, I find it easier to Interpose 2C30 at K983 when you interpose 1C28 at K980, in case you forget. When you set the route later for 2C30, the TD will move from K983's berth to K980's berth automatically, and then move along as normal.