- Status: Accepted
- Date: 2026-07-10
Cars are intended to be semi-independent, stateful assets. Fixed trainsets would reduce flexibility, complicate maintenance isolation, and prevent dynamic energy and capacity allocation.
Cars do not permanently belong to trains. Dispatch forms temporary consists to satisfy the current pool of chits.
A consist is a transient super worker composed of compatible workers such as passenger cars, cargo cars, battery cars, service cars, and control or sensor assets.
Formation considers:
- Destination and route compatibility.
- Capacity and payload requirements.
- State of charge and route energy reserve.
- Vehicle health and maintenance state.
- Coupling and power-sharing compatibility.
- Stop and interruption sensitivity.
- Priority of all unsatisfied chits.
- Consists may form, split, reorder, or exchange battery/support cars during a mission.
- A failed or depleted car can be removed without retiring a complete trainset.
- Dispatch must manage reservations, coupling state, neighboring cars, and consist lifecycle.
- Stations require staging space and autonomous sorting behavior.
A simulation must demonstrate that changing demand causes different consists to emerge without manually scripting trains, and that individual cars can leave or join service without invalidating unrelated chits.