Green signal/Red signal issue

[landnrailroader]

Colleagues,

I am putting the finishing touches on my Corbin-Knoxville route and was adding signals.
I am using pretty much the default signal scripts with searchlight signals which would
have been more or less correct for this line until the late 1970s.

At the end of a controlled siding, the exit signal is a 2-head SL with the top head set to
fixed red.

When I start an activity a few yard prior to this signal, which is on the diverging side of
the exit turnout, it is green in the F4 window until the engine is even with the signal at
which point it switches to red & I get an activity ended message.

It has been a few years since I worked on a route with signals, so does anyone have
any idea what might cause this. The test train is 7 passenger cars & 2 E-6 units and
I do not believe any signal is overlapped by the rear of the train.

And yes I could probably use newer signal scripts & signals but all of those done by
Travis are ORTS only and I prefer my routes to be MSTS compatible.

Jerry Sullivan
(landnrailroader)

[landnrailroader]

I think I found the problem. I was starting the activity about a car length prior to the
offending signal which would display green until I got to it, and then switch to red.

I moved the start point back about 1.5 miles and before a permissive signal which was
distant to the above absolute signal.

Activity started fine, proceeded past the offending signal & out into single track, so
I guess that was the issue.

J. H. Sullivan

[simonss22]

I think I found the problem. I was starting the activity about a car length prior to the
offending signal which would display green until I got to it, and then switch to red.

I moved the start point back about 1.5 miles and before a permissive signal which was
distant to the above absolute signal.

Activity started fine, proceeded past the offending signal & out into single track, so
I guess that was the issue.

J. H. Sullivan

So the solution was to backtrack and restart the activity
am I right?

[landnrailroader]

It turned out to not be quite the solution. Whether or not the end activity occurred depended on the speed at which the
train approached the signal which was at clear, or literally diverging clear. I then realized that the signals might be
too close to the trailing points and on close examination they were right at the fouling point. So I moved the exit
signals further back from the trailing points and have experienced no issues. I had used this same scheme on my
Hook & Eye route that I issued several years ago, with no problems. I plan a version 2 of this route with additional
track & coal mine access, and possibly a version 3. Right now, I want to use Travis Ebner's CSX Rules on future
versions instead of these considerably less than correct signal scripts.

J. H. Sullivan
(landnrailroader)

[landnrailroader]

I continued to have the problem which in most cases was cleared by moving the exit
signals further from the fouling point. Then I looked this issue up again in the
Route Design forum and there are many references to it, mostly prior to 2017 or so.

Turns out that the definitive fix lies in the build of tsection.dat. I was using
build 45-beta, but the recommendation is to use either build 38 or build 44.
A value related to this signal-POINTS distance was changed in 39-43 and
evidently in 45-beta. I have a 44B build, and I had a 38 build, so I changed
my tsection.dat file and for the most part this fixed the issue.

It was also mentioned that whacking the Tab key helped also. The issue
seems to not be an issue with ORTS so I am going to include a Global folder
in the release of my route, with a build 38 file in it, and the recommendation
that MSTS users use the build 38 file, or else use ORTS.

J. H. Sullivan