Trains...possible improvements?

[O L Leigh]

Oh yes, I'm still tinkering. I've got a little something I'm slowly developing, but it's a long way off being even remotely ready.

So, does the neutral section doo-dah cut traction power and operate the line and breaker lights in the cab also? How are these placed in the route file to trigger their operation?

one TN

 

[Simon_G]

It cuts power and operates the line, but not a breaker light - there doesn't seem to be one on the 323 which was the model for the plugin. The start of a neutral section is marked with beacon 20:

.beacon 20;i;0;L

i = index of beacon object (usually a null object in this case)
L = length of neutral section

 

[O L Leigh]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for that.

I expect that the Cl323's do have a breaker light somewhere, as the breaker light coming on when the line light goes off has a different meaning for the driver than if the line light goes off without the breaker light coming on. In fact, the various combinations of line and breaker lights at various times and in various places are very important to the driver.

At the risk of undermining your fine work, the risk of causing an arc of any size at a neutral section is almost nil. The automatic operation of the breaker sees to it that the train is not drawing power even if the power controller has been left wide open. There is a small risk of arcing if the breaker or it's control relays fail to operate properly but as each electrification section is kept well away from it's neighbour by 5 feet of dead wire with 5 feet of insulating "beads" or rods at both ends, the chances of causing an arc are limited.

However, if things were against you at a neutral and you did manage to drag an arc across, what tends to happen is that you would cause damage to the feeder station which would in turn cause the OLE main supply breakers to trip and stranding everyone in the affected section. As for arcing causing pan damage, well it is at least theoretically possible but again is incredibly rare. You'd need a seriously big arc for one thing. In any case, any chance that the pan is damaged in some way usually means the train is a failure there and then.

But then, your way keeps those BVE drivers on their toes if they think there's any chance of destroying their pan every time they get to a neutral.

one TN

 

[Simon_G]

Hi one TN

I seem to recall being told that the risks were low when I put the code in, but as you say it keeps folk on their toes and I was hoping the nasty noise would get a reaction from users who hadn't bothered to read the driver's guide. You can always turn the probabilities right down to create a more realistic situation.

As you say, the most likely outcome of an arc is to trip the breakers at the feeder station (presumably for the section you've just left?), but the fallout from that is either irrelevant or not reproducible in BVE. The possibility of pantograph damage was introduced as better than nothing, even though in real life the result would almost certainly be a complete failure (I'm not really inclined to introduce "game over" type faults into BVE ).

Isn't the neutral section itself permanently earthed, BTW? I assumed that if an arc was drawn it would be an earth fault rather than an interaction between the adjacent sections.

Just had another look at the plugin docs and there is a breaker lamp - use panel variable ats33.