Dispatchers stopping trains for being early

[Blo0dyMustard]

On 2/26/2023 at 7:50 PM, ekto said:

I personally like when something happens, a stop, there's some traffic ahead, and so on. Today there was some bot train that drove trough a red ABS, so he was doing 20 kph. Then something else happened and it stopped. This piled all the trains next to Psary. Dispatcher went to deal with it but it took like 10 to 15 minutes to fix the issue. And the rest of the trip, there ware planty of yellow and reds along the way.

It was much more pleasing compared to just running all greens and just trying to keep top speed. I also like when they put the train on a siding, since then there is something to do.

Heyy that's me! I'm sorry for the delay.

The 2 trains that are blocking were doing 20 km/h because there's no player at GW station, so the trains didn't get a signal and just get a blank signal. If a trains get a blank signal (no light) the train must stop and wait for a bit before passing the signal at danger, so that's why the 2 blocking trains were so slow.

If there was a player there, the trains will do their usual speed because the dispatcher, in real life, will give permission for them to pass the signal blocks or just give them a regular signal

So if I knew this at that moment, I should've handled GW station instead so the solving can be faster. But I think handling Psary was better for you guy, so that I can inform what happen 😄

[Blo0dyMustard]

6 hours ago, Thistle Whistle said:

The way I do it is to keep the red until the train has stopped, but always try to ensure I've switched to proceed about 30 secs before departure, then it's the driver's responsibility to leave on time.  If you hold the red until actual departure time, you're leaving the driver unsure as to whether they will be leaving on time.  Give a clear indication that they'll be clear to go on schedule and they can begin preparations for departure.  And as mentioned, it can pay to not open the route earlier.

As for priority for Pendos, some people are taking it too far.  The other day I was driving a regional into Bedzin, and the entry signal was at 40kph.  I didn't realise straight away why that was, but I obviously crawled into Bedzin to find myself routed onto the left track.

Moments later a Pendo came by on the right track.  The problem is, that Pendo was scheduled AFTER me.  And to make matters worse, it has a stop at Sosnowiec Glowny.  The dispatcher at SG had the foresight to route the Pendo onto the currently unused line, and my now delayed service (which was bang on time before Bedzin) at least managed to get back in front.  But unfortunately it doesn't look like the Bedzin dispatcher learned anything from the resulting radio chat sorting out the problem they caused, because the very next night I saw the same dispatcher pull exactly the same move.  Only the SG dispatcher seemed similarly useless because after holding the now delayed regional behind the Pendo that was sitting at the platform, they must have got bored because they eventually just sent the regional into the sidings! It ended up being over 10 minutes late and didn't stop at SG.

🤔

Yes early Pendos can be a dilemma. The rules says you must prioritize lower numbered trains, but sometimes doing it can cause delays to some trains

My solution is to see the early train's schedule. If it's more than 6 mins early it can hold at the entrance signal, no need to let it pass first

[Valkyrien]

12 hours ago, darryl0768healy said:

I hold departure signals at red for stopping trains until they're due to go. It just shows that there's a stop too incase their HUD is off. Keeps the signal interlocking available for anything else that may happen.

its much less about doing the drivers job for them and much more about "I might need this track to handle a curveball before you leave."

Also you may get signaled into the platform a few minutes before you actually get there, I've usually got the EDR open and anything I route to a platform I set the departure reminder and then leave it red. I've had times at Z where not routing a train straight through saves my skin.

[Valkyrien]

5 hours ago, Blo0dyMustard said:

Yes early Pendos can be a dilemma. The rules says you must prioritize lower numbered trains, but sometimes doing it can cause delays to some trains

My solution is to see the early train's schedule. If it's more than 6 mins early it can hold at the entrance signal, no need to let it pass first

I don't know about holding them, but If trains are over 6 minutes early they definitely drop to the bottom of my priority stack.

[0x8000ffff]

12 godzin temu, Schyrsivochter napisał(a):

People told me a while ago that it’s Polish regulation saying signals behind platforms should be kept on until the train has come to a standstill. Don’t know if that’s correct, but when playing as dispatcher I try to follow it anyway. Especially seeing as there’s not generally any train protection forcing drivers to brake early and/or drive slowly when approaching a danger signal.

Indeed, the regulations require a train with a planned stop to give a signal allowing departure only after the train has stopped. Similarly, if the entry is to take place on a different track than usual, a good and safe practice is to stop the train in front of the entry semaphore (S1 signal), and only after the train has stopped or slowed down to the expected speed, displaying the permission signal for a non-standard route.
I would also like to add that the traffic dispatcher is obliged to inform the train driver about it in advance by radio.

Edited February 28, 2023 by 0x8000ffff

[Thistle Whistle]

7 hours ago, Blo0dyMustard said:

Yes early Pendos can be a dilemma. The rules says you must prioritize lower numbered trains, but sometimes doing it can cause delays to some trains

My solution is to see the early train's schedule. If it's more than 6 mins early it can hold at the entrance signal, no need to let it pass first

But there is no dilemma here. You don't decide a train goes before another train when it's scheduled AFTER it. The only thing to have any influence on priority in this case is the schedule and not the train number.

In my example above, the Bedzin dispatcher caused a significant problem by deciding they knew better than the schedule.  If the Sosnowiec Glowny dispatcher hadn't been on the ball, or the currently unused platform was actually in use, which we'll hopefully get trains for one day, then Bedzin's decision would have caused major problems, which it did the very next day because the dispatcher at SG on that day didn't know how to deal with it.

If a train is early, it doesn't matter what priority it has, it doesn't have priority to jump in front of trains scheduled ahead of it.  It simply starts running into reds at some point.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Thistle Whistle
added more info

[Blo0dyMustard]

55 minutes ago, Thistle Whistle said:

But there is no dilemma here. You don't decide a train goes before another train when it's scheduled AFTER it. The only thing to have any influence on priority in this case is the schedule and not the train number.

In my example above, the Bedzin dispatcher caused a significant problem by deciding they knew better than the schedule.  If the Sosnowiec Glowny dispatcher hadn't been on the ball, or the currently unused platform was actually in use, which we'll hopefully get trains for one day, then Bedzin's decision would have caused major problems, which it did the very next day because the dispatcher at SG on that day didn't know how to deal with it.

If a train is early, it doesn't matter what priority it has, it doesn't have priority to jump in front of trains scheduled ahead of it.  It simply starts running into reds at some point.

Yes I agree. But maybe the dispatcher is still a newbie. They still hold "lesser number trains goes first" rule when they should know better

[ekto]

Yesterday I was doing signaling for the first time. I also worked on the "old school" tables like in Bedzin and so fort. Was able to learn how to send trains using the left track. My only issue was that sometimes the AI would ask if it could send someone using the left track, but when I then repplied that the coast is clear (using the chat option menu), after couple of minutes the AI canceled that request. Is there some trick on this?

[Blo0dyMustard]

42 minutes ago, ekto said:

Yesterday I was doing signaling for the first time. I also worked on the "old school" tables like in Bedzin and so fort. Was able to learn how to send trains using the left track. My only issue was that sometimes the AI would ask if it could send someone using the left track, but when I then repplied that the coast is clear (using the chat option menu), after couple of minutes the AI canceled that request. Is there some trick on this?

If the AI cancelled the request to send a train on the left track it means the AI decided to just hold both trains, and send them one-by-one like the usual

[Graubart]

Drivers who want to break speed records shall drive on Single Player. Those who drive in Multi Player environments keep the schedule or live with the consequences.
As signalmen we are not the drivers' slaves but have a job to do, and that is to ensure that all trains can keep their schedule.

• For freight trains that means they can run through control points early if there is room for them.
• For fast passenger trains that means they can pass some minutes early (if not scheduled for a stop), not *many minutes'.
• For regional trains it means: On Schedule.

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Graubart

[Gazz292]

the one thing that i wonder about, 
i will often take over a EC 141xx train and it's running 10+ minutes early by the Ai before i took over( i once took one over that was almost half an hour early!)
These are the trains that run the 350 Km length of the route but have only 4 or 5 stops, 
 

Where i am timetabled to run at 125 Km/h, should i run at line speed, or should i run at say 60 Km/h to try and lose time? 

I often run at 100 Km/h in this situation, but as i drive with the live map showing on a tablet, i will see other players trains behind me being held up if i run too slowly to try and bleed off early time, and sometime hear on the radio or see a text from the train behind me complaining that they are running against yellow signals due to a slow train in front. 

 

A real drivers timetable shows the times allowed to run between sections :

The last column, (i believe) it's telling you that you have 4 minutes to run the 3 Km from Zawiercie to Łazy Ła, or 3 and a half minutes if running late. 

But we don't have that info available in SimRail yet, hopefully when the official drivers timetables are released they will have all this info to help us. 

[Schyrsivochter]

If you have information how far it is to the next post and when you’re supposed to pass it/stop there, you can calculate how fast you have to go. In case I’m very early, I generally accelerate to a decent speed and then just coast. If a dispatcher takes issue with that because I’m in front of a train that’s not as early as I am, then they can tell me and/or put me in the loop to let others pass.

[Gazz292]

i'm wondering to myself about the above timetable now... it's showing there's about 3Km between Zawiercie and Łazy Ła, 
The speed limit is 120 Km/h,  if doing that speed i should cover those 3Km in 1 minute 30 seconds, 
So, how come it shows 4 minutes allowed, and the lower time (for when running late) is 3 minutes 30 seconds,  (3 minutes 6 seconds for the Łazy Ła to Łazy ~3 Km) 

 

Am i reading the timetables wrong here? 

[0x8000ffff]

17 godzin temu, Schyrsivochter napisał(a):

If you have information how far it is to the next post and when you’re supposed to pass it/stop there, you can calculate how fast you have to go

In this situation, I use a table that I made in Excel. 

Tabela prędkości --> Speed Table.

The only thing I have to calculate myself is the number of minutes I have left to cover a certain distance. I read the speed from the table and I go. It works, I arrive on time, not ahead of time 😉

Edited March 1, 2023 by 0x8000ffff

[Skully]

On 2/26/2023 at 1:55 PM, 0x8000ffff said:

The Polish simulator Train Drviver 2. The Dispatchers there are very strict about the rules and realism of the simulation. I got my habits from there 😉

Train Driver 2 with its teleporting gates can hardly be described as a proper traffic dispatching simulation. The timetable generating algorithm uses those teleports to add every new train to the end of the timetable leaving no gaps. So there is no choice in the matter. (You can even get two trains coming and going to the same stations but from opposite directions...) I was hoping there was some gem out there which I had missed.

As for the topic at hand rule § 48.1 would apply here:

Quote

Pociąg, który w wewnętrznym rozkładzie jazdy ma przewidziany przejazd bez zatrzymania, należy zatrzymać na posterunku ruchu, jeżeli
wymagają tego względy techniczno-ruchowe.

Which Google will translate as:

Quote

A train which is scheduled to run without stopping in the internal timetable shall be stopped at the traffic control post if required by
technical and operational considerations.

Now the 14s catching up to the 401s at Sosnowiec Główny is always the interesting one to watch. Technically (and probably) your best option is to hold the 14 at entry while you deal with the 401. Alternatively you can bring the 401 to the opposite track on the same platform. If they had crowd modelled you would really want to bring the 401 to platform 1 and watch the crowd run from platform 2. 😁

So that would be a good example of an operational consideration.

As for the OP, what would be the operational consideration to hold any train running in sequence early for whatever time?

[1814]

Desde mi punto de vista, me parece injusto detener un tren o trenes sin causa justificada. Intento seguir el horario lo mejor posible, pero lo que no estoy dispuesto a tolerar es que 1 o varios jugadores bloqueen algunas estaciones porque han decidido celebrar un evento entre ellos, perjudicando a otros jugadores que no participan en él. 

 

 

[1814]

It seems good to me that they want to organize events, but that they players the rest of the players who do not want to participate. And there are at least two options, eighter you do the event on an empty server, or if you do it on one where there are players, at least leave a free path for those players who do not want to participate, or ask the player what about the event and if you want to participate or not. I has happened to me a few times on the spanish server, but the other day 2 youtubers came up with the idea of stopping all the trains in opozno and idlowize and i was help up for alost 20 minutes and why did i tell them to let me through. I have it clear or the ask me if i want to participate or not, or next time i will send reports. An image of that retention

[0x8000ffff]

Godzinę temu, Skully napisał(a):

Train Driver 2 with its teleporting gates can hardly be described as a proper traffic dispatching simulation. The timetable generating algorithm uses those teleports to add every new train to the end of the timetable leaving no gaps. So there is no choice in the matter. (You can even get two trains coming and going to the same stations but from opposite directions...) I was hoping there was some gem out there which I had missed.

I meant rather the behavior of train dispatchers and mechanics, aiming at imitating the situation in the real railway world. For example, dictating the content of the written command "S" by radio instead of telling the driver "You can omit this S1 signal on the semaphore". This is, at least by some players, strictly guarded and punished in case of deviations from the rules. Because there must be order 😉
A dynamically created timetable has its advantages and disadvantages. Each time you drive a different, unknown route, which can be an advantage, although it has little to do with the realism of the train drivers covering the same, well-known routes.

I haven't found any other gems, there are a lot of flaws, but this is not the place for such discussions. Everyone chooses what he likes, I prefer here 🙂

[Angelo]

21 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

Where i am timetabled to run at 125 Km/h, should i run at line speed, or should i run at say 60 Km/h to try and lose time? 

Never forget that you're not the only train on the line: if you slow down, everyone after you will slow down too.

Just depart on time if you have a ph (passenger commercial stop), and let the dispatchers take the global decisions, since they know the situation on the line better than the drivers.

[Schyrsivochter]

5 minutes ago, Angelo said:

Never forget that you're not the only train on the line: if you slow down, everyone after you will slow down too.

But you can’t fault me for driving according to my timetable, can you? If I have ten minutes and fifteen kilometres left till the next stop, then 90 km/h is the speed I need to go, and 100–110 is the speed I will be going, even if my train can do 140 or 160 or even 200. If a train is behind me that was scheduled to leave after me, it will, by nature, be scheduled to arrive at the next post after I do, so there’s no problem there. And if a dispatcher wrongly sends me before a train that should actually have departed before me, I can’t know that. The burden in that case is on them to tell me to go faster so the other train can pass.

[Angelo]

But what if behind you there's a delayed freight which will go on a branch line? On paper you should have been behind it, but in practice it had some problems and now it's following you. Sure, it could recover some delay, but since you're running incredibly slow it will now get a huge delay, and will delay other trains too on its branch line.

Let the dispatcher do their job, don't forget that you're not the only one on the line, and also remember that things never play out as planned. That's why we have human dispatchers.

[Schyrsivochter]

34 minutes ago, Angelo said:

But what if behind you there's a delayed freight which will go on a branch line? On paper you should have been behind it, but in practice it had some problems and now it's following you. Sure, it could recover some delay, but since you're running incredibly slow it will now get a huge delay, and will delay other trains too on its branch line.

Let the dispatcher do their job, don't forget that you're not the only one on the line, and also remember that things never play out as planned. That's why we have human dispatchers.

As I said, it’s the dispatcher’s job in that case to call me and tell me about that circumstance.

[Angelo]

But the dispatcher has no way to know if you're running deliberately slowly - he can only assume that you will take a normal time to free the tracks. Also, as a dispatcher, if a train is early and won't have commercial stops I will use this to my advantage when planning.

[Schyrsivochter]

22 hours ago, Angelo said:

But the dispatcher has no way to know if you're running deliberately slowly - he can only assume that you will take a normal time to free the tracks.

No, a dispatcher should assume that I (try to) keep to my timetable.

[Graubart]

When in multiplayer you have the radio to communicate with the dispatcher(s). That's what MP is all about! So if you are early and in doubt whether you should drive line speed and be sidelined in the next station or drive slow you should just pass that question to the next dispatcher in line.

As a general rule: You drive line speed or signaled speed between stations (unless instructed otherwise), and slower (but never faster) than that when specifically instructed by a dispatcher.

It is all about communication and not really that difficult, right?
 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Graubart