I have returned to my IOW timetable and am still puzzled by how AI trains interact with static formations on sidings. I have sort of worked out "dependencies" thanks to Fawx but have only managed to get my timetable working by changing certain static formations to proper services. Is that correct? With my timetable the first 4 trains of the day come out of Ryde depot, drive onto the head-shunt and then reverse to Ryde St Johns Road. This worked OK whilst the head-shunt was empty but failed when I place a static formation at the end of the head-shunt. In the end I got around this by making each static emu drive forwards 5 yards before the first train came out of the depot. Then I linked everything using the white lines in timetable editor and everything worked ok. (I did need a total of 8 dependencies though - 2 'statics' x 4 services). I presume I will need to do the same when the units go to bed at night? If so, then that will mean I'll have 16 dependencies and this doesn't feel right. TBH I'm lucky that I am only using emus (at least they can move) but what would I have done if I wanted to put some empty/scrapped wagons at the end of the head-shunt? As always, any help will be appreciated.
I've stumbled over the exact same issue and didn't find a prettier solution for now. It's a pity you can't add a call on dependency to a formation.
As far as I know, you will need the dependencies and to make those work, you'll need the formation to have been active as a service at some point. However, I don't think you even need to make the train on the headshunt move - I think you could just get the call on dependencies off of a "wait" instruction.
Thanks for your help. I didn't think about "Wait" instructions. I'll have a look at these. This is what I have at the moment. I just think it looks a bit of a mess and haven't really seen anything similar in other people's timetables. Mind you.....it does work......and 4 timetabled services go in and out of the head-shunt one after the other (even though there is both a 2 car emu and a random carriage already there)
Well, my own timetable on DRA is split up into a lot of layers, so I couldn't do something like this in most places, plus the timetable is generally already complicated enough without doing this. But on a simpler route like IOW, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't do it. If you just use a wait instruction and disable "spawn with engineer" for the dummy services, they should just sit there peacefully and no one will notice that there's behind-the-scenes trickery going on
