Broken station

I have just laid the track for a huge ride (over 11,000ft in length) and have yet to tweak it a lot before it become comfortable etc, but added transport sections brakes and a station just to get a feel of where its going.

But - for some strange reason the station does not work in that the returning train is braked and always stops not aligned with the entry gates, and as such the harness does not release, nor barriers work. The train just stops and nothing further happens.

I have deleted the station and reinserted it, no change. The approach speed is about 31mph, it was higher (at first) then the train shot through and carried on - not unexpected.

I have to add this is an off-the-shelf station no mods except for the wait time.

In desperation I altered the braking g force and reduced it, effect is to slow the train slower and it stops well past the gates.

What seems to be missing (watching other stations in other tracks I have made) is that the braking system does not exhibit that feedback that ensures a wide variety of entry speeds all result in the train coming to rest aligned exactly with the gates. The station I have shows no sign of that feedback.

Any ideas? I've tried all I can. All other tracks perform as expected so its got to be something peculiar to this track. Length? is the only major difference I can think of.

How do you have the approach to the station? It sounds like you just have trains running up and stopping in the station. My suggestion is add a brake right before the station. Bring the train to a complete stop, and then use transports to hand it off to the station.

EDIT: Removed comment about potential bug. I misread your post initially. 31 MPH is way too fast to come into the station even if you can get it stopped in time, and why would you reduce braking force?

Increase braking force, or add more braking zones.

So it enters the station at 31mph? That's your problem.

Ok - thanks for your replies.

Maybe I did not make it clear in my earlier post - the problem is not failing to stop a train thats running too fast - it's the station brake system failing to stop the train exactly adjacent to the gates and thus halting the stop/harness/gates sequence. The station stops the train prematurely!!!!

Ok so I added another brake section just before the station and reduced the train speed to 24mph and now the station brakes stop the train so hard, half of it hasn't even entered the platform. ie its stopping it even sooner. And remember these are stock stations unmodified, that have worked perfectly for me in the past.

My mention earlier of reducing the stations braking g was to see if lowering the stations brake power I could get the train nearer its target stopping position but all I achieved was a train that ran PAST its target stopping position!!!!!

The brake system seems to have lost its feedback I mentioned earlier and just exerts full power once the train enters the station, which is more than enough to stop a 24mph train even before its all entered the platform. Watching other stations braking trains there is a pulsing on-off-on-off of the brakes as the train is slowed and then released until it nears the target stopping position at such a slow speed that the final brake action stops it dead in the right place. None of this pulsing is evident on my rogue station.

[TTD03]

Not sure but, is there a brake trigger for the station?
Most likely not but figure I would ask.
At this point, I would suggest you post a link for us to download here so we can take a look at it and see if we can figure out what is wrong.

Very interesting

Its all down to length of track travelled.

Full length of track >11,000 ft.

Split and joined to create a short circle, and the station works!!!

New length <500 ft. All the original track is still in the park but now not part of the live route.

I can now say with confidence that all brakes are affected by this bug in that the brake I had earlier inserted just before the station did not work as it should have done, but now with the shorter track - does.

I have sent this problem to NL and will post here their replies and comments.

Update - its not exactly length of track as such.

I have just created a track of some 40,000ft in length and the station works fine.

So the only differences between my design with the rogue station are the total number vertices in use, the height of track above sea level, the use of snow as a terrain, the fact that its horribly violent.

I'm waiting to see what NL themselves have to say before I play more.

Can we see the 40,000 foot long track?

Originally posted by alanr
So the only differences between my design with the rogue station are the total number vertices in use, the height of track above sea level, the use of snow as a terrain, the fact that its horribly violent.

It's not vertices, I created a 50,000+ foot track with a bunch of launches and several hundred vertices, and it works fine.

BoboMunkee what is the trackstyle of your 50,000+ foot coaster? Hope not wooden. It would take a eternity to load all of the wooden supports.

Originally posted by cool5

BoboMunkee what is the trackstyle of your 50,000+ foot coaster? Hope not wooden. It would take a eternity to load all of the wooden supports.

It's steel, but it has no supports. It's not a real track that is meant for riding, I just built it in a few minutes to see if I could replicate his problem so there is no need to smooth turns, build supports or anything like that.

alanr, I've pm'ed you on this. Please reply when you can. Thanks!

Problem cracked - I found a bug - please see my topic

http://www.coastercrazy.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=32529

Thanks to all who scratched their heads over this.