The WebRailRoader

In CTC Release 3.11 we will add the possibility to give an order to a train to pass a red signal.

It will be possible to do it in two ways: (1) by giving an order while in contact with your virtual train engineer via phone conversation [this is considered to be like a written train order], and (2) by setting a special indicator at the signal to be passed.

In Germany, the special signal indicator is called “Ersatzsignal”. We will implement the functionality in a similar fashion, which is: the permission will be active for about two minutes, after which the permission is withdrawn, and the permission is valid only for the next approaching train – if there this another train behind it, the permission is not valid for the 2nd train, even if the signal still indicates this (in order for the 2nd train to pass a red signal, you need to reactivate the permission again).

The signal symbol will flash in yellow, if the signal has the indicator on.

For hidden signals there is only the option via phone authorization.

Now, as you know, passing a red signal is a dangerous operation. The system will not check if the switches are aligned properly or if the next track section is actually free – that is YOUR job. Of course, allow to enter a block with a train already in it is what you actually want to do, therefore your train engineer will do his part and pass a red signal with restricted speed, prepared to stop at any obstruction.

Part of the enhancements for 3.11 is to deal with the consequences if something goes wrong. In preliminary testing I already caused a head-on collision, which the program does not handle very well – yet. It does detect that, but I tended to terminate the program instead of waiting for hours until the system deletes the involved trains, so that part is not very well tested and has bugs as I found out. But thanks to the save/load feature in introduced 3.10 we can now dig deeper into these scenarios.

As always, enjoy the game.

The WebRailRoader Team

Just to keep you posted what is coming for CTC release 3.10:

The biggest change is the capability to save the current game status in a file, and load this some other time to continue. Since there is no end time in CTC, you just can play forever so to speak.

We got it working with the current set up in the available territories. There is some more things to do like how to integrate it re-load into the existing scheme, and we do some testing to make sure everything works as it it supposed to be.

Since the saved status needs to match with the base data of the territory itself, a special code will be added into the territory data, so that there won’t be any mixup. Because there was some substantial work into implementing this, and to create an incentive to purchase the general registration code, we have decided to add the save option only to the STD and FULL version of the territory files, and maybe in the FREE version of small demo territories.

Other changes include the possibility to zoom in and out using the mouse wheel, a correction affecting customers where the comma is standard to separate integer and fraction in floating point numbers, and some correction handling scheduling when midnight passes.

As always, enjoy the game.

The WebRailRoader Team

Hello –

For those who got into during the Easter Special promotion: congratulations.

In the meantime, we have been busy. We have upgraded CTC to expand the support of switches. which now can be placed in all different ways (TDP allowed only 4 variants), and added the support of slip switches, both single and double slip switches. These slip switches operate like most in reality, having two switch motors (there is a TDP clone out there that support slip switches with just one motor, they do exist in reality also, but are very rare). TDP never supported slip switches.

The latest addition to CTC is the support of what we call “superblocks”. They represent stretches of consecutive smaller blocks, where each of them have their own attribute, like speed limits, but which can be occupied by only one train. We have noticed some TDP territories where there is a stretch of track as a combination of several blocks. Since TDP places automatic signals between those sections, you can send a train into that stretch even though the previous train hasn’t left the last section yet. You usually find a hint saying please don’t do this, but nothing is really stopping you. In CTC you can define such sequence of blocks as a collection for a superblock. The occupancy status shows the status for the whole stretch, and you can begin or terminate a route only on the while thing, while the train will still run through the individual blocks as usual. You can also have several platforms located in whole stretch.

Finally – Toledo Terminal is back. We have done some research, and found that must of the crossings in the TDP version are shown as overpasses, when in fact there area really diamonds. Don’t blame the author of original the territory for it – diamonds were not supported by TDP at that time. We converted all crossing to diamonds (except one, which appears to have been really an overpass). This variant is available in the FULL version. The FREE and STD version still have the overpasses – and less trains in the schedule.

As always, enjoy the game.

The WebRailRoader Team

On April 30, 2012, Softrail announced that it would stop selling the simulation program “Train Dispatcher” and any associated territories with that.

TDP, as you may know, is a game that shows the diagram of the tracks of a particular territory, and your job is to route the trains to their proper destination as set per schedule.

Webrailroader’s CTC is our own version of the TDP. While it was certainly inspired by TDP, it is not a clone. The general task is the same – the routing of the trains according the schedule, but we put a different spin to it. For instance, you can communicate with the (virtual) engineers running the trains on you territory.

This project was started quite some time ago, Continue reading →