Animated turnouts

Switching turnouts is easy, but sometimes you want to make it more realistic by introducing signals, delays and other automations.

The combination of hidden and virtual turnouts makes this easy.

Lets suppose you have a turnout ID 100 and to make it look realistic you need to set some signal to stop, wait for the signalman to walk accross the lever frame, throw the turnout, wait again and set another signal to green.

First we need to hide the real turnout from the throttles. This is done by changing the description to the keyword HIDDEN and giving it a different id so we can refer to it later.

  TURNOUTL(100,1,"Coal yard exit")  // for example

is changed to

  TURNOUTL(1001,1,HIDDEN) 

Now we can create a virtual turnout that will be seen by the throttles and specify what we want to happen when it is thrown or closed.

   VIRTUAL_TURNOUT(100,"Coal yard exit")

   ONCLOSE(100)
     RED(501)  // set approach signal
     RED(505)  // set approach signal
     DELAY(4000) // wait for signalman to move
     CLOSE(1001) // close the real turnout 
     DELAY(5000)
     GREEN(501) // set approach signal
     DONE

   ONTHROW(100)
     RED(501)  // set approach signal
     RED(505)  // set approach signal
     DELAY(4000) // wait for signalman to move
     THROW(1001) // throw the real turnout 
     DELAY(5000)
     GREEN(505) // set approach signal
     DONE