New Commuter TT

Have got bad weather, so would make sense!

TORR (Train Operated Route Release)
With TORR on, as a train travels over a route and each track circuit is vacated, the route through the vacated track circuit is automatically released. With TORR off, the route from entry to exit signal is retained and the signaller must clear each route manually after a train has passed before setting it again for the next train. Leaving TORR off increases the difficulty.

It seems strange to me that a busy area such as Westbury should not have TORR enabled by default for all scenarios. Can it be true that in real life there is no TORR between Southcote and Cogload (extreme ends of this sim)??

I also note that the only reference to TORR in the Wiki outside sim manuals is in the Glossary. It should also be included under Approach Locking and I will edit the Wiki accordingly.

Quote:

I also note that the only reference to TORR in the Wiki outside sim manuals is in the Glossary. It should also be included under Approach Locking and I will edit the Wiki accordingly.

What does TORR have to do with approach locking?

Personally, I think TORR should be set up in the same way as Exeter- available as a tick box when starting a new simulation.

In real life, Westbury does not have TORR, I don't know about Reading. In the grand scheme of things, the Westbury area (panels A and B on the sim) aren't particularly busy. It doesn't get any better at Cogload- Exeter PSB doesn't have TORR either.

Couldn't agree more. Is there any reason why [the default TORR setting] couldn't be incorporated into the system files instead of being left to the discretion of each sim writer?

Speaking of Motherwell, if you're writing a big treatise on signal replacement sparked by the default TORR option changing, there are several signals in Motherwell that are last-wheel replaced.

Some number of signal boxes do actually have TORR, so there's often a "prototypically correct" option. On sims where it's a ticky-box setting, I'm never actually clear what the "correct" setting is. (And that can be "yes", "no", "depends on era", "depends on location" [Motherwell], "only in areas that aren't really semaphore signals", ...)

Trying not to be pedantic, are these axle counter installations officially included under TORR?

In real life, TORR first appeared in the 1970s; I believe the first box to incorporate it was London Bridge. Historically , of course, signalmen had always had to return signal levers to danger (even when power frames came into existence) and the early panel boxes (either IFS or OCS) also needed that - logical if you think about it, since the switch that cleared the route/signal remained where it was until the signalman did something with it.

The justification for TORR was to reduce signalman workload in particularly busy areas. What that really meant was that it made it possible to reduce the number of signalmen in busy areas. I suspect London Bridge would have required at least one more signalman's position, perhaps rather more, if TORR had not been provided. Because it required an awful lot of extra relays and wiring, it was expensive to provide and few relay panels ever had it (it isn't hard to do a CBA to work out how many pay packets you save over the design life of the box and set that against the extra cost).

SSI, of course, can do TORR without any extra wiring or installation costs so it made sense to provide it. (I know the way signalmen are graded has changed but I suspect the reduced workload of a TORR fitted panel gets included somewhere along the line.)

When discussing simulations on the forum, everyone tends to refer track circuits, however the area under discussion could use axle counters in reality. For example, I will use the phrase 'Track Circuit' in the remainder of this post, however you can substitute 'Axle Counter Section' and it would all amount to the same thing.

London Bridge uses geographical relay interlockings which (some versions of?) come with TORR pre-wired by default. I suspect some links could be removed/added to disable TORR for a particular signal if necessary. GEC MkII rings a bell but I could well be muddled in my memory...

Out of interest, what's the difference between a geographical relay interlocking and other relay-based (route relay?) interlockings?

If i well comprise with TORR off i must delete the route after train passes it.