Southwest Chief #3 for Marceline Sub Problem?

[Don6218]

Hello all, I just downloaded this new activity to continue my trek with Amtrak #3. Now I have a few questions;

I went to Con-Builder to adjust some of the consists, I do not have all the required files but I have substitutes. It only shows Three Consists! and NO Loose Consists. All the consists are in the route file but only 3 show up. In TSRE5 Consist editor I can access them all separately and do the changes. One quick question here, how do I "Insert" a car into the consist? I can add to either end, and using the random command does not put it into the proper place.

Ok, now the previous Activity File was 93KB, this one is very short, only 4KB. Am I missing something? I downloaded it twice and it came out the same way both times. I installed into the Marceline Route folders as needed. The rest of the folders seem to be correct, Paths, Services, etc.

Ok, I started the Activity and the first problem came up immediately, Station Timing! See pic:
Amtrk #3 Marceline Station Times.jpg

[amtrak115]

I don't have con-builder. I used TSRE5's consist builder. To insert a car into a consist using TSRE5's consist builder select in the consist at the bottom of the screen where you want the car inserted. click on that car...it should highlight (red-box around it). then select car you want to insert. then click on "Add Cur" and that will insert the car AFTER the one you highlighted. The question about file sizes are correct. Seg1 is 93/94K Seg 2 is about 4K. The reason is how many static consists are in the activity. In Seg 1 there were a number of yards near intermodal facilities that I stuck a bunch of empty well's and empty flats. In Seg2 there are not too many yards except at the ends of the route...most of the yards are "out of sight especially at night" so I didn't fill up the yards. TSRE5 doesn't use "loose consists" it uses a "static consist" in the download you should see consists for "str1", "str2".several carstrings....etc. these are the "static consists" Amtrak's river runner in KC is also defined as a static consist as it has no service or path defined for it.

Hope this answers your questions...thanks for downloading it...

I notice this morning that forgot to put in a briefing in the activity screen. if you want that drop me and email at amtrak115@gmail.com and I'll send you an updated activity file. Basically I would take a paragraph out of the readme file and stick it in the activity file...

anyway.

if something comes up...let me know

Amtrak115

OUT

[crstagg]

TSRE-CE insert procedure.
1. In the Consist view select the eng/wag in the consist that is before the point you want to insert at,
2. In the ENG/WAG list select the item to insert.
3. At the top of the ENG/WAG list click "Add Cur" (add current)

[Don6218]

Hey, thank you for the prompt reply. Now I know what I have to do, thanks to you and Charles I will get this done. The empty yards at the start of the activity gave me reason to wonder, but nothing unusual yet.
Oh, what about the timing in the activity? I have only a few minutes to travel 73 miles! ;-)


It is a decent route to run, thanks for this activity.

[amtrak115]

Not sure what you mean about the timing in the activity.....One of the issues I had with this activity is that it crosses Midnight. Open rails has, in my opinion, an issue with activities that cross midnight. Example, if I had a train start at 1:00am on day 2 and the activity started at 11:00pm on Day 1. The activity editor in TSRE5 creates the right offsets however, the 1:00 am departure is assumed to be Day 1 not Day 2, However if you manually change the time as a "continuation" of Day 1, everything works. So if you try to edit the start times in the activity editor of TSRE5, you will see that the start times of the traffic is "blank". it's not really its just that TSRE5 doesn't understand the time of 13:00 pm which is what the start time for the 1:00 am departure. Took me a while to wrap my brain around that one.....

[Don6218]

Yes, I thought maybe the People at OR had maybe corrected that by now. It makes my brain act up because I am not "On Time", or in this case not even close! LOL

After all it is Amtrak Service so being 1-3 hours late is really not an issue, right?

[amtrak115]

no, probably more realistic....however, I believe and I haven't researched this yet, is that the speed limits imposed by the route, may not be realistic for the timeframe. When I was working on Seg 1. trying to match timetable arrivals and departures were virtually impossible, so I assumed that the railroad had higher speed limits than what the "default" route speeds are....it's on my list to investigate...just haven't got there yet

[spoony1999]

no, probably more realistic....however, I believe and I haven't researched this yet, is that the speed limits imposed by the route, may not be realistic for the timeframe. When I was working on Seg 1. trying to match timetable arrivals and departures were virtually impossible, so I assumed that the railroad had higher speed limits than what the "default" route speeds are....it's on my list to investigate...just haven't got there yet

When I ran your first segment I was a little early to Joliet from CUS. After that the speed limit never got over 60 I think and I was way late to Streator. After that I said screw the speed limit and ran 79 the rest of the way LOL.

I have the 2nd segment downloaded and ready to go but I haven't had a chance to run it yet. Not sure what the speed limits are in the route but Amtrak runs 90mph across Missouri

[Don6218]

"Not sure what the speed limits are in the route but Amtrak runs 90mph across Missouri

Last edited by spoony1999; Today at 02:51 PM."

That sounds about right to me.

[amtrak115]

I figured out the speed issue with the activities. I'm in the process of "patching" both Seg 1 and Seg 2. I found a couple of issues in Seg 1, and with updated speeds in Seg 2. None of the traffic is seen by the player since they all spawn after the player had past certain point on the route. The patch should be out sometime next week. I'm testing Seg 2 now. With the Patch, speeds across Missouri for the most part are between 79 and 90 mph. There are several segment of 90 mph in Seg 1 as well. Will update when I submit the patch to the file library.

Amtrak115 Out