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Quickly restroking signals keeps stick locking

You are here: Home > Forum > General > General questions, comments, and issues > Quickly restroking signals keeps stick locking

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Quickly restroking signals keeps stick locking 08/12/2014 at 05:18 #66328
Hawk777
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386 posts
Hello all,
I was poking around and discovered something rather interesting. Play in a layout with TORR disabled (I tested this in Exeter and NWC, so it’s not sim-specific). Set a route and let a train drive through it. Once the train is out the other end of the route, the entry signal stays red even though all TCs are clear. As I understand it, this is the stick locking mechanism doing its job, and is expected behaviour. Now cancel and restroke the route, but do it very, very, very fast—the instant the signal stem goes grey after cancelling, commit the restroke. A few people might be able to do this at normal speed. I can do it with a bit of luck at half speed. It’s quite easy to do if you run at half speed and hover a finger over P to pause the game the instant the stem goes grey, then restroke while paused.

What happens? The entry signal doesn’t clear! Even though the route was cancelled and restroked, it still acts like stick locking is holding it at red!

It seems that, when cancelling a route, the TCs lose their white highlight first, then the points lose their white highlight a moment later. The signal stem seems to go grey along with the first TC unlocking. Restroking after some TCs have started unlocking but before the points have unlocked seems to trigger this behaviour. Restroking after the points have also unlocked seems to clear the entry signal in the normal manner.

So, I was wondering: is this a tiny simulation bug, or is this actually prototypical? If it’s prototypical, is there any chance someone could point me at some reading on what causes this odd effect, or perhaps a quick explanation?

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Quickly restroking signals keeps stick locking 08/12/2014 at 05:23 #66329
kaiwhara
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584 posts
Certainly with locking arrangements in New Zealand, it was possible to "beat the relays" and restroke giving a red aspect...
Sorry guys, I am in the business of making people wait!
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The following user said thank you: Hawk777
Quickly restroking signals keeps stick locking 08/12/2014 at 08:15 #66334
Firefly
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521 posts
As said above even in the real word it's always possible to mess thing up playing around trying to break it. The important thing is that it's only possible to cause a "right side" safe failure and not a "wrong side" dangerous failure.

As an example on some relay interlockings if you set a route and then immediately key a set of points in that route to the wrong position the route will still set. The route lights will then be set the wrong way across the points. All is well because the signal will not clear as one of its sets of points are set incorrectly.

I don't think this particular failure would occur in exactly the same way in the real world. This is because the relay that clears the "stick" is the same relay that initiates the route locking release. Therefore you couldn't get the route locking release before the route stick energises. And on SSI the Stick bit is set when during the route setting process so I guess this particular problem is Simsig specific.

FF

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The following user said thank you: Hawk777