Programming Crossing Gates

[Nutty]

I have a set of crossing gates that I am trying to set to close as the train gets closer.  No matter what settings or configurations I try though, nothing seems to work.  Strangely enough, it worked once, but I wasn't able to duplicate it.  I don't read German either which doesn't help.  Can anyone give me some assistance on configuring and programming the crossing gates to close as the train gets closer?  I imagine if I can figure it out, then other signals and animations will be easier to learn as well.

I find this a quite enjoyable game so far, but the frustration is taking away most of the fun.  Anything that can help ease the frustration would be very much appreciated.

-- Nutty --

[Goetz]

Hello Nutty,
thank you for following my advice to seek help here.

vor 13 Stunden schrieb Nutty:

I have a set of crossing gates that I am trying to set to close as the train gets closer.

The catalogue has a variety of level crossings, which differ in some aspects (e.g. animation names).

In my following example I use the Level crossings Switzerland, because it is the simplest to use, which makes explaining the core concept easier.

You may want to give the two barriers different names. This will help you to tell them apart when you tell each what to do

to close the barriers

• place a track contact on the track. You find it in the category Online catalog - Infrastructure - Rail traffic
  This contact will trigger the closing animation.
• right-click the contact
• select Events - New from the menu
  this will open the "event manager" and enter an event Track contact is triggered for you.
• Select the + sign under "Which actions should be performed?"
• select Actions - Animations and sounds - play animations
  the strip on the right presents you with the parameters of this action 
• select one railway barrier as your object
• select Schranke (the german word for barrier) as your animation
• leave the starting position as is (current)
• set the direction to Backwards to close the barrier
• add a second (identical) animation for the other barrier.

To open the barriers,

• give the level crossing track piece a unique name (for easy identification)
• right-click the level crossing track piece 
• select Event - New - Train/vehicle leaves a track/street from the menu
• enter the same commands for the animation as described above, but with the direction Forward

here's a complete demo as described above for you to download and investigate

level crossing basics.mbp

I hope this helps
Goetz

I forgot to ask: Did you select English as language for the app?
Even though some object or axis names won't be translated, at least you'll have the menus, ingame hints and the event manager in English.

Bearbeitet 7. Januar von Goetz

[BahnLand]

Hello @Nutty,

vor 9 Stunden schrieb Nutty:

I don't read German either which doesn't help.

You may use "Google Translator" or "Deepl" or possibly another translation program to translate the German texts of this forum to English.
And vice versa.

Many greetings
BahnLand

Bearbeitet 7. Januar von BahnLand

[Nutty]

Goetz - Your explanation was very thorough and helpful.  I did what you said, and things didn't go perfectly the first time, but you pointed me in the right direction and with only a little bit of tweaking got it to work how I wanted.  So thank you very much!!!!

BAhnLand - I did try to use ChatGPT to translate a few words and it helped a bit.  But honestly, a lot of its answers were best guesses saying a particular word can mean a few different things, but this is what I think it is referring to.  However, there was one word/phrase that even ChatGpt was scratching its head about saying it didn't have a clue what that word meant and asked if I had spelled it correctly.  That being - Blitzpfeil anzeigenl.

[Phrontistes]

vor 34 Minuten schrieb Nutty:

Blitzpfeil

This symbol indicates that the railway line is electrified.

"anzeigen" = show

Bearbeitet 11. Januar von Phrontistes

[simonjackson1964]

Level crossing barriers are something that a lot of people seem to have trouble with. I've had my fair share of issues with them - mostly on the road vehicle side, with cars nor stopping, pushing other cars into the path of the train, not starting again. It has taken quite a bit of work to sort them out and make them behave .

So I'm wondering if there could be a way to make them a bit more intuitive? Signals didn't use to have built in track contacts, but they have since V5. And now these all integrate with routes to control train movement. Could something similar be done with the level crossings? Integrate  a track contact for the rails, to close them and automatically count the number of trains on or heading for the crossing, and at the same time force all road traffic to stop when the lights start to flash and start again when the barriers open?

I mean, it's something that needs to be done on every level crossing, if you intend to have it work realistically, so why not take the code and the track contacts and make them into one "black box" unit...?

[Phrontistes]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb simonjackson1964:

So I'm wondering if there could be a way to make them a bit more intuitive?

The problem has already been discussed elsewhere. There @Neo writes: "I therefore find the idea of integrating level crossings into routes in a completely generic way using switchable track contacts, so that they behave like switches, to be much more flexible. This would also make it possible to control completely different processes via routes, as long as a track contact has switch positions and these can be blocked. This logic already exists in other places, but as Phrontistes suggested, it still needs to be extended to other objects. This can all be done."