Dueling Coasters

[Blackstarr580]

I'm trying to build a pair of coasters that go up the first lift hill, stop and wait for their partner to do the same, and race to the finish. I've seen videos of coasters in RCT2 stopping at the top of the lift hill and waiting but I can't figure out how to do it.

[X7123M3-256]

If you want the trains to actually sync at the top of lift, that's going to be a bit awkward. You can't do this with two seperate tracks, you can only do it if you have one continuous track set up as a Mobius loop. You then need to have one train wait in the block at the top of the lift, with another block just at the rear so that both blocks are occupied by the one train. As soon as the first train moves off the top of the lift, it will clear the previous block and that allows the other train to move. You can get trains to sync at any point in the layout this way - the prebuilt "Great White Wail" has trains synchronized in the loops.

But, to put a block midway down a lift is awkward - the only piece that counts as a block is the top piece, so you would have a bump in your lift. You could alternatively have a flat section with brakes at the top, which you may get away with on some layouts but otherwise looks awkward.

What I do is sync the trains with brakes at the bottom of the lift - if the lift hill speeds are set the same (which they have to be if it's only one track), then they will still be synced at the top - but only if they don't have to wait there. If you want them to wait at the top and yet remain synced after, and don't want to put up with an awkwardly shaped lift, I can't think of any solution (other than a shoestring which is massive overkill for something like this).

[jensj12]

You can sync them at the top of a lifthill. Make sure the next block ends at two synced stations, and get two trains there waiting until both trains you want to sync are at the top of the lifthill. The trains in the station leave synced, and both tracks will be cleared at the same time, opening the blocks for the lifthill at the same time.