Ok question's come up a couple of times now about how you use turntables in a scenario / timetable. First thing to say is that unless you want to put objectives for the player hand holding them how to turn it and making sure they have etc, you dont need to do anything with the objective manager blueprint - the trains can be directed as you want just in the timetable - which is handy really, since service modes dont have an objective manager blueprint Ok, let's start by placing a 4F at Minehead on the WSR just in front of the turntable. Next, let's route the train onto the turntable - easy so far. How do you decide whether to turn the loco or not? There's an interesting and useful setting near the bottom called Initial Pathing Search Direction. It defaults to Any which is the usual case and lets the dispatcher figure it out. Sometimes, you need to overrule it and in the case of turntables this is one exact case for it. "Forwards" means start scanning for a way to get to the objective in the forwards direction. "Backwards" means... I thnk you get it. "Same Direction" means to search in the same direction as the train last moved. "Reverse Direction"... etc. "Any" says "basically, you figure out Mr Dispatcher". To operate the turntable we need to give it a hint. Let's say we want to REVERSE off the turntable, we need to tell it to use BACKWARDS as its initial path search direction, and then we end up with this: Notice how the train is the same direction as it was - stunning eh, bet you're thinking "what did you drink tonight..." well actually this is oddly the harder one to achieve because by default it'll actually use the turntable and turn the loco. However - let's not rely on that and be explicit about it. If you set it to forwards it'll start scanning out of the front of the loco, it'll know that the turntable can move and will see if the turntable can turn to a way that will let the train still find its way to its destination, and here it is - you can see the icon has changed visibly confirming the loco was turned on the turntable. Normally "any" is perfectly fine so don't abuse this setting, but if you find it is just routing the train wrong for some reason you can use this to give it an extra hint. Hope this helps.
oh great stuff thanks for the tutorial, can now try a scenario I’ve wanted to try for a while in Köln-Aachen when I’ve finished my french project
Thanks Matt. Exactly what I needed. Think that’s everything I need to know for my weekend project now.
I'm currently working on a turntable instruction in Cologne. But I can't manage to get the AI to drive onto the turntable from a track that isn't initially connected to it. How can I manage that? The path finding in the editor works but during simulation the loco just remains standing in front of the turntable without ever getting on it.
Maybe try placing a dummy service with like a 363 or any other train that at the begining enters the turntable, changes the direction, and leaves the map if possible.
I've experimented a bit and the turntable does turn towards the loco in PIE but always stops wrongly. Apparently there are some weird shenanigans going on with determining the correct stopping position, at least with this turntable in Cologne. Have abandoned the idea of using the turntable to be able to continue with the timetable creation.
