Long Trains Cause Railroad Crossings To Stop Working!

I think this is probably one of the most obvious technical issue that hasn't been fixed yet. I don't even know IF there is any fix for this kind of situation. I can imagine hearing a railroad crossing on repeat for an hour, but seeing a railroad crossing stop working in one of the most impressive simulation games on Steam baffles me. This screenshot says it all.

This has to be one of the most embarrassing works of DTG considering that railroad crossings never do this in real life. Well, I'm not 100% sure whether they do malfunction, short-circuit, what have you, when a really long train passes by, but I'm going under the assumption that they do not malfunction when long trains pass by. I'd say old age, rust, maybe some defects will cause railway crossings to malfunction and even stop working in the middle of a train's passing, but I'm pretty sure railroad crossings do NOT malfunction when a long train is passing. This is most likely some sort of coding mistake or possibly a hard guess from the devs of how railroad crossings in this sim handle long trains. I don't know if the devs ever plan to fix this issue as it's widely known as a problematic issue since it's really unrealistic for the game, but I hope they are planning to fix this issue. It really gets on my nerves when railroad crossings do this in TSC. They've been doing this for the longest. Longer than this train passing by (that I am obviously operating). How did this even make it pass testing?

 

I don't think it's an implicit problem of TSC, more of the route builder.

 

I think the problem may stem from how far away a locomotive is from the crossing. I noticed back a while ago while driving a long train with a DPU on the end, that the gates would go down for the leading units, go back up around when the middle of the train went by, and would drop again when the rear DPU got near. I'm not sure if there's a value in whatever controls the crossing script that could be tweaked to make the gates stay down longer, or like torfmeister said, it's a problem with the route.

 

It's to do with where the track link markers are placed, with railroad crossings there tends to be one for every start and end point on the track/s and also one for each side on the actual road, the latter give the a.i. traffic a stopping point (which they randomly duly ignore and drive through regardless) the former are trigger points for when the train activates and then clears the crossing.

The problem is it's a one size fits all mechanic, it's all well and good spacing these TL's a mile either end of the crossing to accommodate long trains but that will also be the trigger points for a light engine or DMU and will result in the barriers closing unrealistically early and re-opening far too long after the train has passed. So it has to be a (roughly) balanced compromise.

The only solution that I can see would be for newly scripted crossings to have double the amount of TL's so one set could trigger certain consist types and the others trigger the other types and have them placed apart accordingly.

In other words it's unlikely anything that will ever get added or addressed so, best advice, don't linger around watching the crossings, what is this game anyway, "Railroad crossing barrier watching simulator"?.

 

Surprisingly, they didn't even go down for the DPU units. In fact, they only activate when the head of a train approaches (obviously and can even be a moving freight car) or the back of the train approaches (close to the end of the train precisely). And fyi mister, this is a train simulator mind you. Railroad crossings ARE very important and vital if you want to experience a true train sim. Do you know how many railfanners are infatuated with railroad crossings right now? I wonder why most railfanning videos have railroad crossings in them, plus there are even people who have actual railroad crossings in their backyard sir. I love rr crossings and questioning their vitality and purpose is questioning train simulator all together. It's not just about standing in the desert, be it California or Arizona, and recording videos of modern GE locomotives haul 1+ miles of intermodal consists. It's also about standing by a railroad crossing and hearing the sometimes obnoxious, sometimes cute, sometimes epic bells on the crossings and waiting for that sweet (much to my dismay and disliking since I'm not a fan of todays GE locomotives, I prefer and adore the 1990s and previous EMDs, GEs, Alcos, Limas, Berkshires, T1s, and so on) GE to zip across the crossing at high speed or low speed. And I hope you didn't forget that train and vehicle collisions at unprotected crossings are what led to the creation of railroad crossing signals in the first place. That's like saying a steam locomotive is inappropriate for 2022. IF it has wheels, has a lot of horsepower, is great for railfanning, and IS a steam locomotive, it shouldn't be a problem to use. With the issues today, coal and oil are definitely going to be far more difficult to come by, but that doesn't mean steam locomotives can't be converted to burn diesel fuel. My point is that railroad crossings are just as important as trains that pass by them are. They deserve a lot of love too you know. Besides, the base crossings for all the dlcs are pure garbage, have the same damn sounds, and worse, look like they came from abandoned pre Trainz 2012 betas (which I'm sure don't even exist) which is why I usually use third party crossings that are far more realistic and not lazily glued together for a 1st grade show and tell. Even those crossings do the same thing. I do think it may have something to do with sensing only locomotives and not rollingstock, but still, that should be an easy fix. Of course I can't fix it because I'm not a coder. I can't code. I don't see why other third-party devs and even DTG can't fix their crossings.
Edit: Message sent to wrong person.
Edit 2: Message edited to multitask by being a response to two users.

 

I tend not to read walls of text, sorry.

 

Known core issue, not a content creator issue. it's been here for years.