Problems related to boarding stops for bi-directional trains

(republished with revisions)

Bi-directional trains are made with two locomotive at each end of the convoy. In Traincraft, in order to make it work, you must put one of the two locomotive in "pulled mode" by right-clicking with the stake. Don't forget to fuel as recommended.

THE TESTING GROUND

Now, let's say you want to run the train on a simple straight line track, changing direction each time it reaches one end.

The direction change can be easily achieved using Railcraft's control track. I've coupled them with one Traincraft's locomotive speed controller track to make the train go at 30Km/h.

Regarding the stop, I want to be able to decide how long it has to be or to have the train depart upon certain conditions (i.e. station traffic control). So Traincraf's station track is not a good option, because it only has 15 seconds or 5 seconds of delay.

For test purpose, the train depart is regulated by this very simple circuit.

A detector track is connected on each blue side and the track that will stop and start the train goes on the orange side. When the train steps on the detector track, the Timer, attached trough the NOT-Gate, gets unpowered and it starts to spin for the selected amount of time (10 seconds, 1 minute, 10 minutes, whatever). At the end it will power the Repeater (set to the maximum value) that will keep the track open long enough to let the entire train pass.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TRACK TO START/STOP THE TRAIN

The natural choice would be to use Traincraft's locomotive holding track to hold the train for the amount of time we want. As said, we already discarded Traincraft's station track because we can't control the holding time.

But, once coupled the circuit to the track, the first run was not a success. Traincraft's locomotive holding track doesn't work right with the Hi-Speed Electric train. Once the trains is free to depart, most of the times it moves very slowly (around 3 Km/h); sometimes it even moves backward.

Thus I've improved it by adding two Traincraft's speed controller tracks, one on each side of the locomotive holding track (don't forget that we mean to run the train back and forth).

This way it works better, even if it takes an unpredictable amount of time to spin-up. But the real problem arises when the train comes on the way back. Moving this way the pulled locomotive is in front of the convoy and it will be stopped by the Traincraft's locomotive holding track.
For some reasons, the rest of the train doesn't stop at all, making a huge mess of the convoy. You'll end up with an unusable wreckage that you have to destroy and recreate from scratch.

What an inglorious ending. This definitively makes the Traincraf's locomotive holding track unusable for this purpose.

Now, Railcraft's holding/boarding/lockdown tracks are not specifically designed for Traincraft's trains.
In fact the lockdown track does not work with this train; it stops the incoming train, but when powered the locomotive remains still or even runs backward.
The boarding track can't be used anyway because it's a directional track, so it doesn't suits our bi-directional needs.
But the holding track seems to work. I've replaced the Traicraft's locomotive holding track with Railcraft's holding track and it absolutely works. I know it shouldn't, but it definitively does.

The train now runs back and forth, stopping on every pass and its speed is quite constantly at 30Km/h. It just gets some acceleration variation caused by the boosting of the holding and direction tracks, but for a very short time; someone that sits on the passenger coach will barely notice it.
So, apparently the best solution for this specific case is to use the Railcraft's holding track.

CHOOSING THE DETECTOR TRACK

Well, also for the locomotive detection I must say that, at least for this specific train, Railcraft's detector tracks works better than Traincraft's detector tracks.
The main difference between the two is that the Railcraft's ones detects the entire locomotive, while the Traincraft versions detects only the rear carriage portion.

For this specific test we need the track to detect the locomotive while it is been held by the holding track.

Thus, it looks like the Raicraft's detector tracks are the best choice.

CONCLUSION

I must say that, in general, I'm not so comfortable with Traincraft's locomotive holding tracks, mostly because they lead to unpredictable result. At present it seems to me that the safest solution is to use Railcraft's holding tracks, even if they're not specifically designed for Traincraft locomotives.
Moreover I had many problem with Traincraft's locomotive holding tracks on a dedicated server. It happened many times that, if the server restarts while the train is stopped by a Traincraft's locomotive holding track (it's good practice to have all the trains stopped when the server restarts), once the tack gets powered, the train remains still, as it has lost it's momentum.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS TEST

Railcraft
Traincraft
ProjectRed

VERSIONS USED

Minecraft 1.6.4
Minecraft Forge 9.11.1.965
Railcraft 8.3.2.0
Traincraft 4.1.4_024
ProjectRed 4.2.2.19

I'm running a custom modpack on private server.

Introducing the Automatic Block Signal Circuit Board

The Automatic Block Signal Circuit Board allows to control traffic on the railroad line, making sure that the holding track at the end of a section remains open (powered) until the train has left the section.

This is particularry handy with Traincraft's convoys, especially when they use pulled locomotives.

It's connected to a section controlled by Railcraft's block signal equipped with one holding track and one locomotive detector track.

REQUIREMENTS

ProjectRed

Forge Microblocks

MORE INFORMATIONS

Automatic Block Signal Circuit Board