Electric Soup © I.W.Logan MCIT 1998. Last updated: 09 Jul 98 at
1400BST.
Back in January, I had a very informative email from Jan Bochmann, BAHN's author. I've decided to post the relevant section here more or less verbatim, and we both hope you will find this helpful.
Jan has now established his own website, in both German and English. It's well worth visiting for all the latest news.
Cars are calculated as about 15m per element. This results from PCC-cars TATRA T3, which were the first cars realized in BAHN's predecessor STRABA in 1990. A map scale of 60..70 el./km will show the car's lengths in the best way.
These are not needed in BAHN 3.40, because BAHN can "beam" the train from
the pull-in depot to the pull-off depot. Of course you may say this is not
as in reality, but you should think the same train uses other cars (of the
same type) next day. That's the normal way I know from tramway networks in
Chemnitz, Dresden and others. The problem of separating and coupling of
trains isn't solved in BAHN 3.40, but it is "under construction".
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If the clearance time in minutes (zeitdifferenz) exceeds the interval to the next departure the signal will not clear. That's correct.
The signal installations don't have any logic to select a train if more than one are waiting (no FIFO). The probability to start as first increases when increasing the train's speed, because the train more often looks for a free signal when the train is running faster, but there is no guarantee.
1st bug: I believe you mean a bug which occurs seldom: When a signal standing over a crossing tunnel line is switching and a train is passing the tunnel line at the signal's position at the same time, then the BAHN320 layout can be damaged. Mostly some strange signals will appear at nearly random positions.
2nd bug: as you described (entering depots from below bridges results in deleting something on the bridge)
Both bugs have bee fixed in BAHN340. The "strange signals" can be overwritten by other symbols using BAHN340 in normal way. Using BAHN320 (English version only!) you can overwrite them if you start BAHN using the undocumented switch /DDR ("defekte Daten reparieren/recover damaged data"). This allows you to delete such signals and locked track sections, too. The switch should be used with care! The best is to stop the simulation, load your file, repair the data, save the file (using another name), exit BAHN and then restart BAHN in the normal way.
BAHN340 'Pull-In' bug
The dispatcher message "Einrucken fur ungeeigneten Zug" (pull-in for unsuitable train) should always be activated! Otherwise it is possible that some trains "forget" to pull-in if they are waiting at a stop when the clock reaches the pull-in time.
The info texts marked by the blue signs can be deleted: Enter the editbox to edit the text (e.g. by CTRL+I) , then use the "Loschen" (delete) button and directly after that click the OK button.
Dispatcher message: "Einrucken fur ungeeigneten Zug" - That means the train actually stands inside a depot OR it has been in the "pull-in"-state, may be the train cannot find the depot.
The comical effect that occasionally one train cuts through another if there are crossing two 45-degree lines is known. I don't think that it will be worth it to fix it, because it's difficult to do and it doesn't result in negative effects. In former times (BAHN311 didn't support bridges and tunnels) I recommended the use of this effect as the only way of crossing two lines without using a bridge.
Some memory problems will be solved in the next BAHN version. It will support XMM for network data. This results in needing about 2MB or more of free XMM. The network area will increase to 8192x8192 elements but the compression of data will be less efficient as in BAHN340, e.g. a file needing about 300kB in BAHN 3.40 may need 1.4MB in the next version.
I have a wish list of some pages ASCII-text and you will understand that the wishes can be realized step-by-step only.
An Icon Editor is under construction. The first version of the editor will make layout symbols only (without function, no cars), but an enhanced version including cars is in preparation.
The next BAHN version will support VESA graphics at 600x800 and 768x1024 solutions (optionally). It will contain a software zoom feature too, e.g. to look at the cars in detail.
Timetable systems are no easy things to program. In the last years some people wrote or said to me they are planning to write a timetable system but I haven't yet received one. To make an interface (e.g. via text-files) would be the smaller problem, I think.
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Electric Soup © I.W.Logan MCIT 1998. Last updated: 09 Jul 98 at
1400BST.