Advice wanted: directional reservations and scheduling

[Matthew]

Simutrans-Extended continues to improve and the new signalling help is very comprehensive (thank you Ves!  ). However, the signalling system continues to fox me. This time the unexpected behaviour is in this layout:



The station is on a double-track line and also has a bay platform at the east end. It has a slotted post station signal controlled from a two-wire telegraph cottage. Immediately to its west, the line narrows to a single track controlled by one-train staff cabinets (they are on adjacent tiles, so they function as a single cabinet).

Convoy 2345 was due to depart east-bound at 0:00 from the bay platform. But it is blocked by a directional reservation created by convoy 200.
Convoy 200 is waiting at the east-bound platform to depart at 0:10. It arrived from the single track at about 5:56 (months are six hours long).

The behaviour I expected was that that the directional reservation for convoy 200 would not be created until it is ready to depart. But the reservation is actually created when just before convoy 200 arrives at the east-bound platform and begins to wait, perhaps when it cleared the one train staff cabinet. At that point in time, convoy 2345 was reversing.

The obvious workaround is to swap the departure times, but convoy 2345 is an express and convoy 200 is a stopping train, so this is suboptimal. If you can see where I have gone wrong or you have a solution, then please do share!

[jamespetts]

This is not the behaviour that I should expect here - I will have to look into this when I get home, but this might take some time. In the meantime, it would be helpful if you could upload the saved game at the point very shortly before convoy 200 (or an equivalent) reserves the line.

[BAC1-11]

Could you move the one train staffs on the line section where it has already narrowed down to single track, I'm aware that may cause your trains to unnecessarily slow down a bit, but I suspect this is being cause by (as you've said) Convoy 200 reserving the line away from the one-train staff as it reaches the staff to pull into the station.
try replacing the one-train staff onto tiles without platforms and see if that solves it.

[Mariculous]

I can't see any one train staff cabinet in that image.

[Matthew]

Thank you to everyone who has kindly offered help! 

I can't see any one train staff cabinet in that image.

Good point. Here is a picture of the station from the reverse angle, showing the one-train staff cabinets:



The staff cabinet onto the single-track line is at the end of a platform (eastbound in this screenshot; westbound in the OP).
The staff cabinet out of the single-track line is on the diagonal tile just outside the station.

Could you move the one train staffs on the line section where it has already narrowed down to single track, I'm aware that may cause your trains to unnecessarily slow down a bit, but I suspect this is being cause by (as you've said) Convoy 200 reserving the line away from the one-train staff as it reaches the staff to pull into the station.
try replacing the one-train staff onto tiles without platforms and see if that solves it.

As the above screenshot shows, the layout had one staff cabinet on a platform and one not. The one causing the trouble was not on a platform. You were right to suggest that the position of the cabinets relative to the platform ends is important. So I moved the inbound cabinet onto the beginning of a platform, like this:



You need to look very carefully, but it is on a different tile. After testing for several months, this change seems to have fixed the problem. The stopping train no longer reserves through the station onto the double-track line. Thank you for your advice, BAC1-11!

This is not the behaviour that I should expect here - I will have to look into this when I get home, but this might take some time. In the meantime, it would be helpful if you could upload the saved game at the point very shortly before convoy 200 (or an equivalent) reserves the line.

I think that the problem is probably with my understanding of the signalling systems, not your code!

If it is helpful, the save can be downloaded here. But you will also need to start Simutrans-Extended with a modded pakset to open the save. In Windows, create a pakset directory called Pak128.Britain-Ex-235 and copy the nightly pakset into it. In Linux, create a symbolic link to your nightly pakset, called Pak128.Britain-Ex-235. In both cases, download my addons from here and unpack the file into your Addons folder. Start Simutrans-Extended with the 235 pakset and addons.

P.S. If you have modded your simuconf.tab, check that you have with_private_paks = 1 in \Pak128.Britain-Ex-235\config\simuconf.tab