Section Running Times

A Track Section Running Time is the time a train item will take to traverse a Planimate Track Section between two Portals.

Planimate obtains Track Section Running times by looking up the Track Network Details table (or the table you nominate as performing that role).

You may want to vary the Track Section Time of a train item from one traversal to another, due to:

• The changing nature of the train... for example - passenger or freight.
• The changing state of the train... for example - empty or loaded.
• The Track Section having a gradient, for example - uphill or downhill

or a combination of these, to produce different Section Running (i.e. travel) times in each direction, for different train types and train states.

As the modeller, you decide how complicated you want this to become.

How Planimate looks up Section Running Times

Track Objects have two directions of travel - Forward (from the Track Start Portal to the Track End Portal) and Reverse. Planimate provides System-Item Attributes called ItemTrackForwardColumn and ItemTrackReverseColumn. These attributes hold values that correspond to columns in the Track Network Details table.

To look up a Section Running Time, Planimate:

1. Works out which row of the Track Network Details table corresponds to the Track Section being used.
   
2. Determines the direction of travel of the train item over that Track Section.
   
3. Uses either the ItemTrackForwardColumn value or the ItemTrackReverseColumn value to locate the cell that contains the Section Running time to be used.
   This is the 'Nominal Section Time'.
   
4. Checks the Section Control column associated with the Road the train item is to take.
   The Nominal Section Time is adjusted if this value is different from 100.
   If the Section Control value is zero, the train is prevented from entering the Track Section.

As the modeller, you need only set the following:

1. As many columns as you wish to house the section Running Time values in the Track Network Details Table
2. The section time values in each column/row of the section times table which hold this data.
3. The values to be used in the ItemTrackForwardColumn and ItemTrackReverseColumn item attributes
4. The Section Control Values applied to the roads of each section.

Notes:

All of the above steps can be changed manually or automatically, before or during a model run.

You are not limited to two columns of Section Running Time data, you can add as many columns as you like.

You can set your Forward and Reverse Column indices to be the same value if you wish to develop a simple list of Section Times.

---

idkbase note 10007