EMUs in a diesel route?

I know this might have occured quite frequently, that too accidentally.

I noticed, that when I accidentally chose a 323 EMU set for the NWM Maybank-Ludgate Hill route, the 323 ran through the unelectrified loop line of Salford Bridge and even after Hobbs cross!

Could this be a phenomenon due to the fact that EMU trains/poles/gantries/catenaries are necessarily only 'objects'?

Yes. Neither the route nor the train specification are designed to carry this sort of information.

pittiraghu wrote:I know this might have occured quite frequently, that too accidentally.

I noticed, that when I accidentally chose a 323 EMU set for the NWM Maybank-Ludgate Hill route, the 323 ran through the unelectrified loop line of Salford Bridge and even after Hobbs cross!

Could this be a phenomenon due to the fact that EMU trains/poles/gantries/catenaries are necessarily only 'objects'?

This is completely normal because there is nothing coded into the route that says that EMUs can be run or they cannot be ran on this route and there is also nothing in the train that says that this is an EMU and can only be run on EMU routes. If that was added, you couldn't do that because the program wouldn't let you. But the wires are just objects and they serve no purpose but are just for looks to make the route more realistic.

Quork wrote:Yes. Neither the route nor the train specification are designed to carry this sort of information.

That's not actually totally true
The OS_ATS plugin provides an interface through which you can do this if you're so inclined (It uses a set of custom beacons, similar to those used to trigger rain effects). I'm not sure that any route or train was actually coded to take advantage of this, although I may be mistaken.

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

There are .beacon commands in the route, so I can code in something like:

At track position 500m, send the train a "beacon" signal that the neutral section starts here and ends 50m away.

Code:

With Track,
500, .Beacon 20;0;;50

These commands are placed to signal to electric trains about power gaps.

Since the route was written for diesel trains, the route author might have seen no use in including these commands.

There is also no command for reliably signalling the end of a electrified section. The closest there is, is this:

Code:

With Track,
500, .Beacon 20;0;;10000000

where 10000000 is the length of a neutral section.

joeyfjj wrote:There are .beacon commands in the route, so I can code in something like:

At track position 500m, send the train a "beacon" signal that the neutral section starts here and ends 50m away.

Code:

With Track,
500, .Beacon 20;0;;50

These commands are placed to signal to electric trains about power gaps.

Since the route was written for diesel trains, the route author might have seen no use in including these commands.

There is also no command for reliably signalling the end of a electrified section. The closest there is, is this:

Code:

With Track,
500, .Beacon 20;0;;10000000

where 10000000 is the length of a neutral section.

I honestly don't get what this means. Nor what you are saying. Please simplify a bit.

Edit: Oh wait... I think I get it now. This is used on routes with an neutral section of electrified track. But in real life why do they make certain sections neutral?

Because you need to separate electricaly independent sections from each other.

Quork wrote:Because you need to separate electricaly independent sections from each other.

Oh, right. It's done at large junctions where the wires are separated to keep the wires from crossing each other.

Buckysam - have a look at this:

http://www.railway-technical.com/etracp.shtml

Should make it clear

Well no, not exactly at junctions. There's always the risk of a train getting to a stop in such an isolated section, you wouldn't want this to happen while it's standing across a junction. Depending on the country, you either have a specific railway electricity network (like in Germany), or you use the public electricity network (like in France). In the latter case you need to change phases every now and then (about 30km in France) so as to have symmetrical load. Wherever phase changes you need to isolate the sections, otherwise you'd short the two phases out.

The same goes for DC networks, where you need to separate quite short sections from each other because big voltage differences occur and you'd have strong currents flowing along the line.

Sorry if my previous post was unclear - I was trying to explain the technical difficulties in trying to properly simulate electrification on a route with un-electrified sections.

Ignore my post if you're not interested in why developers don't code it in, it is slightly hard to comprehend!

You could therefore make an unfeasiblely long neutral section to stop electric trains going onto an unelectrified section?

Mind it's a plugin thing, so it wouldn't work for all EMU anyway.

rick1984 wrote:You could therefore make an unfeasiblely long neutral section to stop electric trains going onto an unelectrified section?

Correct. That's the only workaround I can think of, and also we don't actually know if the train plugin will actually handle such large numbers correctly.