Is there an existing feature request for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Describe what you would like added or changed

Currently, the throttle track changes the locomotive's own throttle settings - that is, a throttle track set to reverse is a bit like telling the locomotive's reverser to change to reverse. This has some downsides:

1. This behaviour is unintuitive - I can say this as scientifically as you'll get, because there's been multiple issues created by people who think this is a bug.
2. The conditions are undetectable - Since they depend on the locomotives' own throttle setting, it's perfectly possible for two trains to approach a detector from the same direction with different reverser settings and as such be sent in different directions by the throttle track, when instead a player might want all trains to be sent in one direction from that track. Since there is no way to detect the direction a locomotive is pointing or whether or not it's currently reversing, there's no clean solution to this problem.

There are some caveats to both of these points - for the first point, arguably the problem is caused more by the texture (the arrows make it look like they propel a train in a certain direction, like how arrows work on most tracks). For the second, there are indirect ways around this problem, such as using a locomotive detector paired with a train detector and some logic to figure out if the locomotive is at the front or the back of the train, or having a wrong way train be sent down a reversing loop and returned to the track, but they're imperfect and tedious solutions (to quote the submission guideline, it's a problem that bores me).

That's why I instead propose the following:

1. Change the current throttle track's texture to be more intuitive (perhaps have dashes and pluses instead of arrows, and/or an "R" when reverse mode is enabled, or something a bit like the old throttle track texture)
2. Add a new track/mode using the arrows texture which sets a locomotive's reverser in whatever position will make it travel in the direction of the arrows - I think the logic simplifies quite nicely down to "if locomotive faces same direction as arrows, set it to forward, else set it to reverse"

Making the latter as new modes on the existing throttle track would bump it up to 16 modes, which might be a little much (there's already a lot of clicking involved with the existing track's 8 modes). Some other mods like project red's screwdriver get around this by having shift right click affect a different mode than right click, which could be used here to reduce the clicks required (one of the to clicks to change between the four speeds, the other to change mode between forward/reverse/(north or west)/(east or south) ) but as far as I'm aware that would be a first for this mod besides the signal label, so it may be more consistent to add the direction based mode as a new track.

More controversially, it may make more sense for there to be separate tracks for speed and reverser settings, but I don't imagine this could be made backwards compatible.