Boston MTA/MBTA Cambridge Dorchester Line

[Don6218]

Hello, first I would like to thank Jonathan Dandridge for a really engaging route and activities. He states that he realizes some issues have cropped up with it, like almost all new routes.
I have a couple of issues that I have with this route, not big ones by any means. First is a problem with adding vehicles to the Carspawner, it does not seem to like adding any, I have added some from my files but I can only see the ones supplied with his route. The second one is with the Park Street Station when using the Football Stadium Activity, the actual station stop is way ahead of where it is defined to be, therefore the train wants to be stopped while still in the tunnel instead of at the platform. I tried to correct this using TSRE5 but could not get a reading on the appropriate triangles to move them.

Like I said, Great Route/Activities, just a couple of things I found. Thank you for this.

[Don6218]

Just to add, I did a reset of sorts, I made sure that the "Files" were changed in my MSTS1 File to Read & Write instead of Read-Only and now the cars/trucks/busses I added are showing up now. Just another issue cropped up, the "Freight-Test" activity would not open, it says that the "Starting Position could not be determined".
Again, I want to say a "Great Route"!

[jonpd]

Thanks Don6218 for your kind words. I will take a look at the issue with the football stadium activity. Other activities seem to be stopping at Park Street OK so I'm not sure why this one would act up.

Note that the route uses the multiple car spawner feature of Open Rails which will not work under MSTS as it only recognizes the single car spawner located in the top level "BosRedLine" folder, not the one in the "openrails" subfolder which has the 1950s era vehicles.

The freight test activity was just created to debug a track issue I was having with the trackage at Baker Chocolate and I probably should have deleted it, it wasn't intended for public consumption.

[Don6218]

You are welcome. Yes, other activities seem to stop at the correct spots, I only use Open Rails, no MSTS for years, that is my convenient name for my Installation. I kinda figured that you had installed multiple CarSpawners. I am on to something else right now, I will check that out later. You have shown that Progress can be made in Open Rails.
Now we just need some more activities, that freight one would have been good. I am no good at crating activities, I have tried, but alas, I failed.

[jonpd]

I tried the football special today, I ran it in autopilot mode and it went through Park St. OK but I ran into that problem when I got to Harvard. It stopped at a signal due to the train ahead pulling out of the station into the yard, but then stopped short and never made it into the station. I had seen this once before with a train ahead and me in autopilot, but at Andrew.

I wonder, were you running in autopilot mode when this happened to you and was there a train ahead? Perhaps this is a bug with OR autopilot mode.

I'll try it again but in manual mode and see if that makes a difference.

[Don6218]

Hello again, yes I was in Autopilot Mode, and that is what happened, a train was just leaving and when stopped for the Red Signal, the passenger unloading took place in the Tunnel. I have not had that happen anywhere else, I guess the preceding train was far enough ahead.
Never-the-less, great route and thanks for making it.

[jonpd]

I have been working on some updates to the route. One thing that bothered me is when I first did the track back in 2009 I took the lazy way out with island platform stations and had only one track have the reverse curve to make space for the platform. I have been working on correcting that which unfortunately breaks all the activities as removing and replacing the platform markers changes their ID's in the activity and service files, as well as breaking some paths. Paths fixed easily enough in the Track Viewer. I found the easiest way to correct activities was to look up the new TrItemId for each platform in the TDB and manually update the activity and service files. Easier than re creating the services and having to re-enter all of the timetables again.

I have also been bothered by the fact that when I created the route I wanted it to be set pre 1963 with the older 0600/0700 stock and the classic tiled station designs, but also wanted the South Shore branch so I compromised and have both which is not realistic. I have considered making the route into 2 routes, one with just the Ashmont Branch, the Mattapan line and the Old Colony trackage, and the other with both branches but with stations modernized with the MBTA Cambridge Seven designs. It would be a lot of work especially updating the stations so I'll have to think about it, especially since I have other routes I want to work on.

[Don6218]

You are certainly keeping busy! Shortcuts are not always the best way, but at least it expedites a working-functioning route. I, for one, would look forward to what you have planned. Good luck!