A general observation about routes...

H

Hot_Box_Detector

Member
Hello all:
I have been using Trainz for over 10 years. Over that time I have downloaded many routes. I see all skill levels represented in the routes... from beginner to pro. I understand that some routes may be purpose built to look like tabletop model train "layouts". But for the larger, more prototypical routes, one thing I have noticed that has not improved over the years is track laying. I DL a beautiful route and the track looks like it is following property lines like roads do. Let me say that trains do not make 90 degree turns in a short radius, ( right or left ). If you build a route and run a consist, you should not see a "jerk" movement when the train enters a siding or makes a turn. It should be a smooth transition. If your trains look like a 1930's Lionel toy train turning curves, please stretch the curves out. You don't need 15 "pieces" of track to make a turn... Your routes will look much better.

Before I retired from the Illinois Central RR in 2003, I took a track laying course from one of the "oldtimers". I did not work in the track department, I took the course to better my track laying skills in Trainz. Prototypical railroads use something called a "cubic spiral" to transition from straight track to a curve. I won't try to explain that here... just Google it. Or look here: http://www.2dcurves.com/cubic/cubics.html

Thanks & happy trainzing :wave:
 
Tying to explain the cubic spiral to some people is useless. :hehe:

I do agree with what you say though, some route makers are not paying close attention to their track work.

While I don't spend a great amount of time in surveyor and am by no means a good route creator, I sometimes use a 'cheat' method when doing track, where I put down a bit of the fixed track sections at x radius and then offset from my tangent track a few meters, then lay my spline from the tangent track and follow the fixed track as a guide. This allows for a fudged in easement that looks pretty nice in trainz. This is also very similar to what model railroaders do when laying in model easements (and not doing 100% true cubic spirals) It is easier to lay out the tangent pieces first and then place the curves in after to make sure they are nice and smooth.

see http://www.trackplanning.com/easements.htm for reference on how to do it in the model world. this is easily adapted to trainz.

On a side note, when we were making Mojave for TS12, I was still working in the surveying business as a draftsman, so was already well acquainted with real world tracklaying. I used some calculations and cad work to do many things on the route, but some of that was the track work. Joe was very good with his track laying and followed the real track as close as possible and made it smooth as possible.
 
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I've heard "cubic spirals" sometimes referred to as "easements". I've had some good results with easements by using a track laying CAD program called 3rd PlanIt (http://www.trackplanning.com/index.htm). It will automatically (if you desire) create easements into curves while laying track. You can create an image file of your layout to any scale. I use that as a texture to a flat plane and import it into Trainz as a track laying template.

Andrew
 
The only prototypical sharp radii are in transit/trolley, and even those are not taken at speed over 10-15 mph. But then again, someone is going to come up with a sharp prototypical picture on a Class I!

John
 
Challenge Accepted!

Tight+curve.jpg
 
norfolksouthern37 said:
Tying to explain the cubic spiral to some people is useless. :hehe:

I do agree with what you say though, some route makers are not paying close attention to their track work.

While I don't spend a great amount of time in surveyor and am by no means a good route creator, I sometimes use a 'cheat' method when doing track, where I put down a bit of the fixed track sections at x radius and then offset from my tangent track a few meters, then lay my spline from the tangent track and follow the fixed track as a guide. This allows for a fudged in easement that looks pretty nice in trainz. This is also very similar to what model railroaders do when laying in model easements (and not doing 100% true cubic spirals) It is easier to lay out the tangent pieces first and then place the curves in after to make sure they are nice and smooth.

see http://www.trackplanning.com/easements.htm for reference on how to do it in the model world. this is easily adapted to trainz.

On a side note, when we were making Mojave for TS12, I was still working in the surveying business as a draftsman, so was already well acquainted with real world tracklaying. I used some calculations and cad work to do many things on the route, but some of that was the track work. Joe was very good with his track laying and followed the real track as close as possible and made it smooth as possible.
Click to expand...

Don't take this the wrong way... there are plenty of quality routes out there... It's just irksome when some folks put all the time into great scenery, come out with a great looking route, but the track work is lacking to say the least, and just plain ridiculous in some cases. I know it's easy to be a "Monday morning quarterback" but my high BP and anxiety won't let me deal with the tedium of rolling my own. I have to DL what I can, merge others, then spend countless hours smoothing curves, etc... in order to run at mainline speed of 79MPH. :eek: In fact, I spend most of my Trainz time in surveyor and very little time actually getting product to my customers. The complaints are on the rise and my customer service reps are working overtime to smooth ruffled feathers ! I guess I'm just getting crabby in my old age...
 
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Boyerm25, That's track used in Switching only. They can have sharper curves in this case. What Hot Box is talking about is mainline running track.

IMHO, there are very few routes out there that are worth downloading. I don't know how many times I have downloaded a route from the DLS--- running in for a few miles--- then going back and deleted the whole she-bang. Here are some things I hate to see in route:

:(... Using low res buildings close to the track. Lo res buildings should only be used for DISTANT viewing.

:(... Badly made billboard trees up close to the track, especially those horrid autumn colored trees. Same with billboard bushes.

:(... Not bothering to rotate textures when applying.

:(... Ending streets and roads where the traffic just suddenly vanishes right before my eyes.

:(... Highways laid right on top of badly chosen ground or grass textures. Usually, highways and paved roads have a little dirt or gravel along the sides.

:(... Miles of track with no signage. There should always be crossing signs, milepost markers, and other prototypical signs along the tracks to inform the engineer and conductor what's ahead.

:(... A route with just lots of well-laid trackage but no common houses, buildings, roads, towns, or NOTHING along the route to make it interesting.

:(... No traffic on the roads. It's supposed to be a SIMULATION of the REAL WORLD! The real world has traffic on the roads for goodness sakes!

:(... and the ultimate in blah routes--- Track laid on the bare ground with no ballast, trees, bushes, grass, etc. around the track. Look at real track. There's almost always grass, bushes, weeds, etc. along the sides of the track. And ALL track has ballast!

There are a lot of other no-no's but these come to mind right now.

Cheers and happy route building!

Dave Snow
 
Many good points, Dave. Some debatable, in my not so humble opinion.
I prefer to think of Trainz as a railroad sim, not a "world" sim. I do appreciate a well crafted world but it is a low priority to me.
For instance, the original Cumberland to Connellsville is plenty good to me.
 
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Dave is 100% correct. Too much stuff from the dark ages in new routes in view of trains. Illogical industries with no road access. Weird business areas. People notice illogical items in a route. I spend hours correcting such things that either look bad or do not make sense. Lots of houses but no way to buy food - bad...

It is easy to spot "quicky" routes. Lots of people may download but few keep-em.
 
It is easy to spot "quicky" routes. Lots of people may download but few keep-em.
100% Agreement. The DLS is more like a suppository latley.
Mick.
 
davesnow said:
:(... and the ultimate in blah routes--- Track laid on the bare ground with no ballast, trees, bushes, grass, etc. around the track. Look at real track. There's almost always grass, bushes, weeds, etc. along the sides of the track. And ALL track has ballast!
Click to expand...

While I will agree 100% with your other points, the latter needs some qualification. Not all track has ballast - I can't speak for everywhere else but a class of track here in Oz, known as "Pioneer track" or "Pioneer standard" was laid on bare ground with no ballast. It was quite common in remote areas that saw little traffic or in areas that were subject to frequent flooding where the ballast would have been washed away.
 
I agree with Dave too. In fact his routes are amongst my keepers and those are very few. I have a short list, so to speak, and it's really, really short! :) One of my favorites is the Ozark Valley which I merged with Deremmy's East Kentucky and Evansville & Western, with Jointed Rail's Midwest Grain 3.0 in the middle. This makes a complete mountains and valleys, cross the Ohio River from Kentucky to Indiana and Iowa route where I can run long fast freights across the eastern Great Plains. The quality of these routes is outstanding, and with a few 'tween boards, I was able to blend them together so no one would know they were created by different people. :) This route is now the Ozark Valley and Western on my system.

What I hate is floating things where the route builder never bothered to smooth the ground under the track or adjust roads and other objects so they don't look like they're in an anti-gravity chamber! On a few other routes that I've kept, and noticed this, I've gone through and adjusted things, and even have gone through and replaced the track because the stuff had no profile to it. Why do people still use TRS2004-era track? We have some awesome track assets out there now, all made to the newer standards, which don't look like printed cardboard. Oh I'm sure we could sneak the old low poly stuff in the background and bury it with weeds, but in the front, and on the mainline, it's gross.

As far as track missing ballast... Well there are some areas where ballast is truly lacking up and around here. We have some older branch lines up here that haven't seen any ballast in 50 years and are quite buried in the dirt. These lines aren't mainlines, but do see traffic. The old Manchester and Lawrence (1840s to 2000s) had no ballast or even a grade profile to it right through Lawrence and Methuen. Finally after the Methuen tunnel (under Pelham Street), it has a very shallow grading profile which used to get flooded when the Spicket River would overflow in the spring.

John
 
There are a number of dirt/gravel textures which can be used to provide a shoulder for highways. I must admit while I normally sort out the issue of track floating above the terrain (an issue I hope is being dealt with in T:ANE) by adjusting the spline point or using chunky track, sometimes it's easy to forget to do that for roads. Also there's relatively few "chunky" road or path splines (FMA come to mind) which eliminate the bug at source.

Weeds and clutter - this is really down to what the builder is aiming to achieve and also optimisation. There's not much point in stuffing the trackside with grass and shrubbery if the poly count is going to give a < 5 FPS frame rate, or for that matter if it's a 90 MPH main line most of the detail is wasted. Equally if building a long main line run or network, the emphasis may be on crafting the rail elements and operational side over scenic mass.

Easements and track geometry. The current system does present challenges, notably the inability to specify or maintain a specific radius. If linking two straight sections with a tangent you do kind of get a transition at one end, but not the other. Again hopefully this is something the new tools in T:ANE have addressed.
 
Dang!! While I agree with about 50% said here, routes I've DL or layouts that have all this so called realism, don't run well on my PC. So in my humble opinion less is best, as the ruining of the TRAIN,s being the main purpose. I've yet to find any route that can run the traffic { including my own } I'd like with high detailed content, without a considerable loss of enjoyment due to frame rate lag. As one who enjoys both yard switching and main line running,( with a lot of traffic and static cars) this has been a challenge in my own route.

With a new PC and new trainz coming, I have my fingers crossed this isn't going to get worse?
 
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