CMTM/Link Introduction
Car Movement & Traffic Management System (CMTM System)
Introduction
The Car Movement & Traffic Management System (CMTM System) is designed to simulate prototype freight traffic patterns and operations in Trainz by providing each freight car on the route a series of destinations that represent freight car movements in prototype operations. Implementing this system is labor intensive to get up and get running and is not for the faint of heart. Think of it as an automated car-card system on steroids.
I developed this system because the built-in WayBill system in Trainz works nothing like the prototype and I like to operate as close to prototypical as possible. Trainz is a fantastic modeling tool for its price, but it is only a $40 software package with many limitations. Consequently, there are some limitations to this system. The first is that you can not save a session and come back to it with the same destinations for the same cars. Another problem, but one that can be overcome, is that CMTM relies on certain data in each vehicles config.txt files to be correct.
Be advised that many vehicles on the DLS have errors in their config.txt files. The work around is to use only those cars that have the information correct or to modify the config.txt files to make the data correct. The two primary Tags that require correction are the category-class code and the Company. The category-class code is a standardized system for referring to the various types of assets. A complete listing for freight cars can be found in Appendix C of this document. (I was surprised by the number of vehicles on the DLS that do not have the correct category-class.) The category-class for a freight car begins with an X, followed by one or two letters that determine the type of freight car. The CMTM system relies on these codes for proper identification.
The second problem tag is the Company tag. The CMTM system relies on this tag to determine if a vehicle is a home road vehicle or a vehicle leased for home road use. This tag must be consistent in all vehicles for each owner company that is used for home road use and must agree with the data entered into the CMTM system. I like to use the call letters of the railroad, but you cannot use the “&” as Trainz does not recognize this as a valid letter. If you enter C&NW or CB&Q, Trainz only sees C or CB because “&” is not recognized as a valid letter and the text is terminated.
The CMTM System assumes that your route has at least one portal and at least one industry to service. The portals represent either the continuation of your railroad (home road) or an interchange with another railroad (foreign road). Your Trainz route can be just one town on a railroad with industries and portals to the rest of the world, or a complete railroad with multiple interchanges to foreign roads, or anything in between.
Industries used in this system do not have to be interactive. Any spot on any spur or side track can be an industry or destination for a freight car. It is recommended that some type of structure be placed at the location and given a name so the location can be readily recognized. This will also make all industries visible on the Trainz Mini-map. If you have an industry that uses open top cars, you may want to make it an interactive industry. Just make sure that your production rates are set appropriately so there is always product to load or unload.
This system does not deal with "Commodities" or the built in "Way Bill" system. If you are using the CMTM System, the built-in "Commodities" and "Way Bill" features should be completely ignored. CMTM stands for Car Movement and Traffic Management. The Car Movement portion of this system is what directs cars to and from industries. The Traffic Management portion determines the over all flow of through traffic. Through traffic is usually portal to portal traffic, but not always straight thru on the same train. If you have three or more portals, through cars that arrive in a train from portal 1 may be destined for portal 2 or portal 3. You can control the flow of this traffic with the Traffic Management portion of this system.
