Timetable Generator

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post, so please be kind.

I've been playing SimSig for quite a few months and it's great fun! I totally appreciate the amount of time that has gone into creating the simulations and groundhog day timetables. I've also donated and bought a simulation after I'd gone through the freebies.

Now, I am your ultimate software nerd. It's my business, I've done it for nearly 45 years and I love it! I also love trains, trucks, planes and so on.

So, after a while of playing my favourite SimSig simulation I thought it would be better if I added a few more random looking goods trains just to mix things up a bit. I'm sure I can't be the only one who has played the same timetable over and over again until you can pretty much remember where every train is going without ever needing to consult the timetable.

I thought this would be fairly straightforward with the "Edit timetable" option, but no, I spent one Saturday morning adding two trains! The main problem was that you need to specify arr/dep/pass times for each location and I simply didn't know what they would be. I had to create a timetable with them left blank, then play it with one train (obviously speeding up the simulation) and write down the times, then start again and edit the timetable to put the times in. The effort required to add a train seemed very high.

Therefore, being a software nerd, I decided to knock up a program that could create timetables for me and figure out all the missing data. I called this TTGen, and it's up and running!

What it does is disect any timetable you give it, e.g. the groundhog day timetable, figures out all the unique routes between locations, matches this to the publicly available Network Rail data where necessary to fill in tiploc location names, platforms and so on. It can then generate a new timetable randomly using whatever input values you provide. This lets you control how many new trains per hour there will be, what ratio of each train type there will be (i.e. the first digit of the train descriptor) etc.. If you want lots of goods trains '4', '6', '7' and '8' and a few express '1', no problem. All express, no problem, you just set values that control the generation of each type.

The software then calculates and fills in all the timing. On a given route, the stopping points will be chosen at random and won't necessarily be the same as the original timetable. A train going to a station and becoming a new train could go somewhere completely different, it doesn't have to be going back the same way that it arrived. Everything is possible. The software then generates a new WTT file in a second or two.

When you play one of these generated timetables you have to be on your toes and can't assume anything. For me, that's the fun thing. You can play a different one each time on the same simulation.

This is cleary all for the purpose of creating fictional timetables, albeit based on real timetables to maintain some level of realism. I don't want to distract from the huge amount of effort that has clearly been put into the simulations and original timetables! It also does not bypass, reverse engineer or do anything else with respect to the simulations. Generating a new timetable still requires you to own a licence for that simulation, or for it to be a free one.

My intention very shortly is to put this software behind a simple web page. This avoids anyone needing to install an EXE file or anything else, also meaning that you can fiddle around with it on your phone while waiting for your other half in a shop, on the train to work etc..

I already have the next part planned, which is a user friendly graphical route selector, allowing you to build routes from scratch while the software fills in all the timing details. Again, all via a web page so you can do it from anywhere, save the data and play it when you get home.

OK, that is quite a lot to digest. What I need to know is a) are there any objections from anyone at SimSig to me doing this, I don't want to step on anyone's toes or break any rules and b) assuming it's all OK, are there a handful of computer savvy people out there who would like to help with testing and provide constructive feedback?

Thanks

Michael

Good work. I have no objections to it.

By the way, interval timings can be found on the Network Rail website for timetable planning. It can get a little involved though.