Note This wiki page was taken from the mailing list

seems that in most cases, countries electrify their rail lines, bypassing this problem. This can be simulated with third rail being added to track models.

In advtrains, a lot of trains do not have a pantograph and seem to run on diesel. Trains which do work on electric can have a third rail shoe added. Trains go into roll mode when the electric potential of the track is not high enough. The amount of blocks a power source charges is configurable and defaults at 50. When you reach the end, you must use a track with a third rail terminal (which is where the rail slopes down to the ground to allow the shoe to pickup gently), and begin a new third rail section.

To power third rail, you can configure the source to be mesecons, an advtrains power block, or magic.

For diesel locomotives, they run on an inventory of fuel which can be added using “refuelling tracks”, which work in the same way as loading tracks but only add fuel.

Fuel can be configured to be advtrains diesel, biofuel from the biofuel mod, oil extract, or anything in the fuel group (if it exists)

Trains do not run without problems. Tubes get blocked. Electric short-circuit, Power supplies break, and all forms of other things cause inconvinience.

What i propose is adding this to advtrains. Randomly, one of your rolling stock suddenly develops a problem and runs at 50-90% of its speed. To fix it, punch it with a repair tool, which leaves your inventory and makes the train work again at full speed. There is also a maintinince track, which works in the same way as a loading track but with repair tools.

For better identification, the coordinates of trains with problems can be found using a command and the broken trains make loud noises.

All of the above is configurable. Users can turn on whether trains use fuel, need repair, and what type of fuel you can use. This ensures backwards compatibility.

I send this email as the beginning of a discussion, and potential feature request. I would like to see the feasibility of this.

The following is taken from a reply to the email above.

• How should the amount of fuel/electricity be calculated?
• How should regenerative braking handle the situation with multiple (different) power sources (e.g. from the technic mod)?
• In the case of refueling/recharging tracks, it should be possible for a train to wait until it is fully refueled or recharged.
• The vehicle breakdown algorithm should take it into consideration that the maintenance tracks allow periodical maintenance of a train, which reduces the probability of a breakdown. This means that vehicles maintained more often should be less prone to vehicle breakdowns.
• The quality of the maintenance (which corresponds to (e.g.) how much is checked for a train) should be considered. A primitive implementation could calculate this based on the time spent on the maintenance track (with a limit on the maintenance status).