The program... automatic ride, how does it work..
Starting
We assume that all locomotives are at rest, and in the forward direction. The light is not important.
After pressing the "auto start" button, the program will first take all locomotives their lights off.
Because on the track there can be both old locomotives that have high power consumption at rest, as modern locomotives with sinusoidal motor and LEDs, there is a special condition in the block card software foreseen.
This condition is called "delta mode" . After the lights are out, this condition is switched on, and the block card remembers the current consumption in the blocks .
The program will now one by one go over the in the database active locomotives and turn on the lights for a few seconds.
The current in the corresponding block will therefore rise, and this change will be passed to the program.
In this way, the program knows where each locomotive is located.
Since one can never know when and why a previous situation is stopped, it may happen that a locomotives is in two blocks, this will be detected and reported as an error.
Once all locomotives are found, if necessary, and for security reasons, the program will attempt to bring the locomotives to the next signal at the lowest speed.
This is the starting point for automatic driving.
The program will now rearrange the screen with the locomotives that were found, to keep a good overview. Then switch the block cards out of "delta mode" and the automatically drive begins.
On the screen all the speed changes, as well as turnouts and signals addressed are easy to follow.
Stop at next signal
If there are no accidents on the track and we want to stop the program, we use the "to next signal" button.
With this the locomotives will drive until their next signal, and so get ready for an easy restart.
Panic Stop
Because accidents can never be ruled out, there is a "panic button" foreseen, there all locomotives get immediately the command "speed 0", and the boosters are switched off.