What happened to my signals?

Since a couple of days I have a strange problem with signals on my route: some of them show red light all the time even in explore-mode. (Most of the others behave as they should.)I get green light when I ask for permission to pass. Behind those "misbehaving" signals I have speed-limits where I never placed one. Always the same: 15mph. Passing the following signal it's gone.What happened? What should I do?Is it maybe because I added signals (and removed them later)?Easy-to-understand help highly appreciated!!WoelferlDogskill County

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

RE: What happened to my signals???, Vince, Feb-12-03, 04:59 PM, (1) RE: What happened to my signals???, Woelferl, Feb-12-03, 05:16 PM, (2) RE: What happened to my signals???, Vince, Feb-13-03, 00:00 AM, (3) RE: What happened to my signals???, Woelferl, Feb-13-03, 02:57 AM, (4) RE: What happened to my signals???, mauried, Feb-13-03, 04:23 AM, (5) RE: What happened to my signals???, Woelferl, Feb-13-03, 07:26 AM, (6) RE: What happened to my signals???, robertreedy, Feb-13-03, 10:52 AM, (7) RE: What happened to my signals???, Vince, Feb-13-03, 11:59 AM, (8) RE: What happened to my signals???, Woelferl, Feb-16-03, 03:41 AM, (9) RE: What happened to my signals???, CPR_Malice_96th, Feb-16-03, 10:52 AM, (10)

Conferences | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic

If you placed any signals before completing ALL track and roads you just may be in a very deep ditch.
Ditto if you placed ANY interactive track OR road objects. Speed limits, mile posts, crossings, sound regions.The only fix for this that I know is to delete every interactive track object, rebuild the track database then complete all track and roads.
Only then is it safe to install the interactive stuff.

Regards,
Vince Cockeram
NEC Track Team
http://hometown.aol.com/nectrackteam/main.html
E-Mail me at vcockeram@lvcm.com

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Sounds bad.But tell me, how to build on a route's "second edition" when I can't put interactive objects onto the first part? Or no more onto the second edition???Woelferl

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

If you are extending a route (adding track) you would delete all interactive objects from the tile where your construction work starts and then install track and roads.If you are breaking into say, the middle of a route to add yards, sidings and such it gets dicey... I never tried this but if I did I would delete all interactive object from the tile where modification was planned and then proceed with track/road installation. If your track or roads would entend into another populated tile I would get rid of interactive objects there also.

Modifying an existing route is fraught with danger. Some have advocated removing ALL interactive objects from an existing route before ANY track or road modifications are begun. That would be the safest way. That's what I did when modifying the Northeast Corridor Route. Thousands of objects and I deleted them all. I ended up (at the start) with just the world files and the track database. The .TIT and .RIT were empty and that is goodness. Nothing to go wrong with an empty file.
Reason being that interactive objects are stored in three different files; The world files (.W), The Track Database (.TDB), and either the Track Item Table (.TIT) or the Road Item Table (.RIT), and all these associated files must be in sync. One bit in one file wrong and the route could very well be toast. Since these files are in the megabyte size range I am talking about billions of bits here. Any ONE wrong and poof, there goes the route. If you already don't have it I would lay out the $20 bucks for Michael Vone's Guide to Route Building.Good luck.

Regards,
Vince Cockeram
NEC Track Team
http://hometown.aol.com/nectrackteam/main.html
E-Mail me at vcockeram@lvcm.com

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Hey Vince,thanks for your reply (even if there's not much of good news in it)!So it seems I have to delete a LOT of stuff in Dogskill County.Just to be shure: what interactiv objects are to be deleted?I suppose (so far): signals, speed-limits, crossings, (but NOT the road-parts itself, I guess) sound-regions.Did I forget something? How about pickup objects?Waiting (and wiping my tears):Woelferl

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

For what its worth Ive been building a very large route (its up to 300 miles currently) and I regularily add track after adding track objects without any major probs .
I do have a minor prob which is that sometimes signals move slightly along the track on the tile that Im working on.Originally, when I first started Route building some 12 months ago, I did experiance the problems that have been described , ie the route frequently being trashed, but after upgrading my PCs memory from 256 Megs to 1024 Megs all such problems have vanished.
The RE stability has improved dramatically.
I can now go a full day route editing without the RE crashing.cheers
MD

MD

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

>For what its worth Ive been building a very large route (its
>up to 300 miles currently) and I regularily add track after
>adding track objects without any major probs .I did the same without any problems until I published Dogskill's first edition and went back to work. A few weeks later trouble began.>I do have a minor prob which is that sometimes signals move
>slightly along the track on the tile that Im working on.
>
>Originally, when I first started Route building some 12
>months ago, I did experiance the problems that have been
>described , ie the route frequently being trashed, but after
>upgrading my PCs memory from 256 Megs to 1024 Megs all such
>problems have vanished. That's one thing I'm going to do next. And replacing grapics card.>The RE stability has improved dramatically.
>I can now go a full day route editing without the RE
>crashing. For those who don't want to spend money for that: I downloaded (somewhere I can't remember unfortunately) a small program called "RAM-Idle". That can help a lot!!!>
>cheers
>MD Woelferl

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

>If you are breaking into say, the middle of a route to add
>yards, sidings and such it gets dicey... I never tried this
>but if I did I would delete all interactive object from the
>tile where modification was planned and then proceed with
>track/road installation. If your track or roads would entend
>into another populated tile I would get rid of interactive
>objects there also. Vince, I've always thought you were a bit over-cautious in your approach to the RE, but in this case (working in the middle of the route) I would go even one step further. It is not only dicey, but is almost plain 'route suicide'. It's not only the objects in the surrounding tiles, but objects 300 miles away that can shift and even end up 'off the track' causing a complete meltdown of that tile. I've had this happen to a siding marker and it was literally 280 miles away from where I was working. That tile is now defunct. I had a backup, but wouldn't have even caught it had I not been cleaning it up for distribution and testing the entire run.

RobertR .. ADF-M&RM at http://www.adfrr.com

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Woelferl,Interactive track and road objects are any object that places a marker on the track or road. When placing these objects the RE requires you position the 'X' right on the track or road. Open up the .TIT file with Wordpad, you will see a table of objects.
These are all track objects.Robert,It's true I am over cautious but once burned, twice shy.
Sometimes you MAY get away with mixing up placement but sooner or later it WILL crash...no matter how much memory your system has. Good luck to anyone who thinks different. Since adopting the very strict protocall I use I have not had a route editor crash in over a year.
One exception, overloading a tile, where the world file goes over ~750K. Had several of those.
This does no damage though and I can recover in about 3 minutes.

Regards,
Vince Cockeram
NEC Track Team
http://hometown.aol.com/nectrackteam/main.html
E-Mail me at vcockeram@lvcm.com

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Hi Vince,thanks for your advice. I'll do what you suggested. Even if it breaks my heart. (sniff!)So it'll take a little more time for Dogskill County's second edition.BUT IT SHURE WILL COME!Woelferl

Alert | IP

Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

>So it'll take a little more time for Dogskill County's
>second edition.
>
>BUT IT SHURE WILL COME!
>
>Woelferl PHEW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!** As Tim takes a BIG breath of releif **As I read further I kept expecting to see that Dogskill 2 would be abandoned !!!!!!K now I can get the tight grip off my mouse and go back to drinking coffee and proceed with the rest of the forums this morning !!LaterTim Kent
Winnipeg Canada
" Power for You "

Alert | IP

[ Home | MSTS Forum | MSTS FAQ | File Library ] Copyright © 2002 by Nels Anderson. All Rights Reserved.