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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early?

You are here: Home > Forum > General > General questions, comments, and issues > Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early?

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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early? 18/01/2015 at 04:33 #68037
Soton_Speed
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282 posts
I know this has probably been asked before so sorry but here goes;

One of the neat features about Swindon A&B is the fringe boxes ringing in to ask if you want to accept an early runner or make it wait right time. How easy would this be to implement into the core code? - I'm guessing situations like sending stuff Main or Relief are sim specific.

Similarly how easy would it be to have fringe boxes calling to complain about that freight that you sent 20 early and now they don't have space to deal with it. Maybe, anything more than 10 early you have to ring ahead and there is a % chance that it may be refused (possibly depending if it is during the peaks). Something I seem to remember happens on the Paged NLL for freight trains waiting to join the GEML at Stratford (though without the phone calls).

TIA.

In Zone 6, no one can hear you scream...
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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early? 18/01/2015 at 08:19 #68039
Late Turn
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696 posts
" said:
I know this has probably been asked before so sorry but here goes;

One of the neat features about Swindon A&B is the fringe boxes ringing in to ask if you want to accept an early runner or make it wait right time. How easy would this be to implement into the core code? - I'm guessing situations like sending stuff Main or Relief are sim specific.

Similarly how easy would it be to have fringe boxes calling to complain about that freight that you sent 20 early and now they don't have space to deal with it. Maybe, anything more than 10 early you have to ring ahead and there is a % chance that it may be refused (possibly depending if it is during the peaks). Something I seem to remember happens on the Paged NLL for freight trains waiting to join the GEML at Stratford (though without the phone calls).

TIA.

That's a good point - and yes, an important part of running a train early is ensuring that the box that controls the next regulating point can deal with it, being able to regulate it back to booked path if necessary or making sure that it can be run on to the next regulating point, and so on. I think that a better measure than simply the amount of time that the train's running early is whether they're coming in the wrong order as a result - a freight running thirty or more minutes ahead of time but in its proper path (that is, nothing following until after its booked time) is no problem at all, as it can be regulated simply by holding it at the first signal, yet a freight nine minutes early, in front of a passenger that it should follow, has the potential to really stuff the job up!

Perhaps the 'punishment' for running one early and out-of-path to the next box should be the chance that it'll simply be held at the edge of the simulated area, delaying whatever's behind it. That's certainly how the NLL sim worked, albeit with predetermined 'acceptable' time slots rather than phone calls.

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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early? 18/01/2015 at 19:37 #68058
Hawk777
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386 posts
Is this not already core? At least, it happens on current loader Exeter as well as Swindon. Could be bespoke logic for both though.
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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early? 18/01/2015 at 23:32 #68064
Muzer
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" said:
Is this not already core? At least, it happens on current loader Exeter as well as Swindon. Could be bespoke logic for both though.
Late Turn is referring to the opposite — ie you as a player have to phone the adjacent signalbox if sending a train early. That doesn't currently exist, and it could be interesting.

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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early? 19/01/2015 at 07:35 #68068
kbarber
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" said:

Now if an evil TT writer had access to things like crew rosters, he could start writing rules that train B must not depart from X until Z minutes after train A arrives to simulate the fact that train B could not leave until the driver had arrived on his inward working of train A, taken whatever break is required then joined train B . . . . .

But of course the Control can get involved to mess that up too.

So in that situation the Brains rings the Train Crew Supervisor at X and finds out he has a spare set (or perhaps a set who got in early and wouldn't mind a bit of overtime). In which case B could leave before A even gets to X.

Of course the crews get to know which trains that might happen for, so a certain train might tend to run early when B runs. (But some crews won't want the overtime anyway... not too many in that category though).

So perhaps we need a feature for random application of rules, with a suitable % chosen by the TT writer. But in that case we also most certainly need advice when crews are ready (or, at the least, advice that a rule won't be applying today.)

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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early? 19/01/2015 at 11:28 #68074
slatteryc
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I was thinking about this. For example on Swindon does the current timetables accurately reflect real traffic levels and the critical need to regulate ... I keep hearing of Reading being a huge network bottleneck but on Swindon it seems to swallow without hassle all the trains I send at it ( Yes I know its designed that way but can the point above (ringing fringes re earlies ) be a thing ?)
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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early? 19/01/2015 at 12:02 #68077
Late Turn
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696 posts
" said:
" said:
Is this not already core? At least, it happens on current loader Exeter as well as Swindon. Could be bespoke logic for both though.
Late Turn is referring to the opposite — ie you as a player have to phone the adjacent signalbox if sending a train early. That doesn't currently exist, and it could be interesting.

Exactly correct! The post above this one highlights one of the ways in which this could perhaps be made more realistic - at present, when Oxford phones to ask whether a class 4 can be run early towards Didcot, the only consideration really is whether there will be a margin on the Up Relief to run it onwards. In reality, of course, you'd have to check with Reading to ensure that they can deal with it - and, if not, refuse it from Oxford unless there's somewhere that it can be refuged until booked time.

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Any real advantage in allowing trains to run early? 20/01/2015 at 04:25 #68137
Hawk777
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386 posts
Ah, my mistake, I was intending to reply to the first half of Soton_Speed’s message, not Late Turn’s—that message was about fringe boxes ringing the player, not vice versa.
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