RR&Co and Operation by WFRM

In lesson 2 we established a basic trackplan with 3 signals on each line, a distant, home and starter, along with a crossover and associated ground signals. We added control of the starters onto the route buttons, keeping them locked and also control of the homes, from red to yellow, onto their routes but removing the lock on the signal. The ground signals were also added as simple controlled and locked signals.

We could easily have added the distant control onto the home, the distant merely goes to green if the home is cleared and reverts to yellow if the home is returned but I have kept it separate for two reasons - first and foremost its to show a way of triggering a simple event and handling it and secondly its for when we do semaphores were the distant would be released by both the home and the starter being cleared.

For this lesson we are going to control the clearing of the distant signals, so working from the previous plan we add two flagmen

Taking the up up distant, I have labelled the flagman fmClears1, we add the trigger for this flagman as s2 clearing to yellow - a trigger is basically an event that can happen, for now this is simply a signal clearing, later we will use this powerful element to lock points and other such niceties but for now lets keep it simple (Fig 1) . On the operations tab of the same flagman we have a highlighted operating state (the "when triggered" state) - to this we add the s1 signal and set it to green (Fig 2), we then select the non-highlighted (the "not triggered" state) and add the s1 signal but this time at yellow (Fig 3). If you test your railroad by clicking the s2 route you should find that s2 clears to yellow and s1 clears to green, when the route is replaced s2 returns to red and s1 returns to yellow (Fig 4)

Fig 1

Fig 2

Fig 3

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Fig 4

Assuming all is ok, repeat the above steps for the other flagman, I have called him fmClears10, once again test test and retest, life is made much easier on complex panels if we keep testing the stage works - effectively "pulling the frame" in real railway parlance (Fig 5)

Fig 5

Download a zip file containing the working files for this stage.