Pssssst! Don't tell Phil!

I'm not a HUGE traction fan so I never looked into it, but I think there are differences in the wire types or something. So I suspect the dual gizmos, pantograph and trolley pole, were for running under different types of wires. When I was a kid most of the CTA L cars and all the Interurbans had dual power, trolley poles fore and aft for the 'burbs and the sticks, outside third rail pickup shoes for in the city. Changeover was pretty quick because back then they had a crewman or conductor in every car on the train.

Well, on to this VT41 thingamy, cabview is wrong, texture mapping is nuts, other than that it looks okay and runs good.





Found JUST enough room for the logo at the bottom, there's some kinda weird numberboard mesh in the middle of the panel. Need to clone and rust up the bogies as well, those are way too clean.

*EDIT* you know, nevermind all this. it's not my model. i can only suggest, so...yeah, nevermind

Hey, suggest away, if I like ideas I use them, if I don't like I usually explain why. And I often compromise or create additional versions to make everyone happy whenever possible.

well, what i was going to say was most box motors and the like had 2 trolley poles because, like several people have said here, you need to have the one opposite the direction of travel up so it tracks properly. if you're going forward, the forward one wouldn't follow the wire right and would most likely slip off/damage the wire/engine/worse, all of which end in the train stranded. Trolley poles came first (i think) so when pantographs came along, they kept the tradition. but you didn't necissarily need 2 to make it work. one central one would do, since there's more forgiveness in a pantograph (wires make contact along 1 or 2 wide bars, not a single narrow wheel), and a central location means you don't have to switch ends; the connections are always over the centerline of travel.

someone's probably going to come and tell me i'm wrong (make that definitely :hehe but that's how i understand it. but hey, make of it what you will, i can only suggest. from the little exprience i have with bogies, getting that thing to attach right over where it should be could be a pain.

now, off to try it for myself.

I know I've seen pictures somewhere of one of them contraptions with a single pole, again I'm not a traction expert but I would assume it's designed to swivel around to the reverse direction. If that's impossible to animate I suspect we could cheat by adding a second pole as an attachment swiveled 180 degrees.

Anyway the goal here was to get something, anything, into the game ASAP since there wasn't any Downtown Traction stuff at all, improvements can always come later. The 12 locos are now on the DLS, look for Downtown Traction and Download away.

ooh. will do that tommorow.

PS I started expirimenting with a pantograph on the BLW, will PM or post if i can get it to work (wish me luck!)

Freeware means freeware to me, you wanna clone one of my skins and upload your own version knock yourself out. :wave:

What I'm curious about now is what's under the hoods? Particularly that VT41 contraption, looks like you could stow enough batteries in there to run from Chicago to Pittsburgh without raising the pantograph.

usually...one big @$$ generator. Oh, and i accept your offer of cloning and re-panting

Jim --

I've downloaded the dozen locomotives. They install and run just fine. Look great too, particularly the more weathered variants. But didn't you do a custom cab for them too - or was that for other locomotives?

Anyway, gotta admit until the solo trolley pole issue is resolved only the GE variant will be in operation on Downtown Traction.

Thanks again,
Phil

Why would they need a generator when they're picking up juice from the overhead wires? And what would power the generator, an electric motor? :hehe: Hee-hee, you may be right for all I know, the only time I saw one close up was when I was about 3 years old, on the Chicago Aurora & Elgin. A guy was standing on the front catwalk with a big pole, flipping the hinged edges of the station platform up to clear the freightcars, then another guy in the caboose flipped them back down again for the Interurbans.

Custom cab, yeah, they should have his cab only with lighting effects. Waiting to hear back from Justin right now regarding how to make the windows in the shells more transparent, worst trouble with using the actual body mesh is they were never designed to be viewed from inside. If you look at the PO&N and IndustRail SD9 cabs I stuck a concrete slab painted to look like fuseboxes inside to cover the front windows that were inside the mesh for some reason. All that in good time, currently packing up 22 Chicago Metro freight cars to upload, I'll see what I can do about a custom cab for that VT41 thingy before I start cloning that.

Dadblasted furriner dinkytoy bumpercars don't even LOOK like trains!

That's a JOKE for all you European fans who actually like little trains with bumpers. :hehe:

Document some of this stuff for others, last time I had a 12" monitor was on my Tandy 1000TX back in the mid 80s, so I don't get this 800x600 restriction anywhere except the screenshot forum. I can't DO tutorials with pictures that small.

So, if the mesh has a visible cab interior that ain't too shabby, I open the model for edit in explorer, copy the body folder to the desktop. Then I edit the cabview in explorer, copy that body folder from the desktop to the cabview folder. Next up, open in Content Creator, find the "bonnet" or "cab01" or whatever it uses for the cab shell, change that to point to the body folder and mesh instead.



Have to look in game to see wheredahellarewe, right click on cab01 and select "position" to add a position system, then a bunch of trial and error to move the shell around. Numbers are left/right, aft/forward, and up/down with positive numbers being left, aft, and up. So to move down, forward, and to the right I add a minus sign in front of the number. Being an ancient and decrepid Yankee Doodle type I gotta convert from heathen furriner metric to real money to visualize how far, so 1 is 40 inches, 0.1 is 4 inches, 0.025 is one inch.



Next up is couplers, I found a knuckle coupler;

Automatic coupler w/brake hose 1,<kuid:62941:50001> by cjlear, built into TS2010. Copying the folder "\automatic coupler w_brake hose 1" into the cabview folder, I go back to Content Creator, Add a mesh, select Auto Create, and give it position numbers. For the rear coupler I add orientation, then change the last number in orientation to 3.15 to spin it 180 degrees. According to my hacknotes the orientation numbers are roll, pitch, and yaw, using some kind of quantum physics in "radians" instead of good old Christian compass degrees, 3.15 comes out to about 180 degrees of rotation.

Trial error trial error trial error trial error trial error blast it I moved it -5 when I meant -0.5 now it's underground trial error trial error trial error, eventually you get close enough for freeware. Then tweak the camera positions to match all that, it helps if you START with at least one camera position at each end of the loco so you can look at where the couplers are lining up. End result;



Inside the cab, looks like I need to move the view back about 0.2.



Forward catwalk looking down at the coupler mesh while coupled onto a tankcar.

One Trolley Pole, Two Directions?

Having lurked this thread with great enjoyment, a couple of comments on the single-pole issue.

As I understand it, there were two and a half ways to go both directions with one pole: (1) use a loop, (1.5) use a wye, and (2) the motorman gets out, detaches the (nonconductive) rope from one trolley-catcher, walks it around to the other end (rotating the whole assembly on its vertical axis), wrangles the wheel onto the wire and attaches the rope to the other trolley-catcher. Methods (1.5) and (2) work because the trolley-catcher acts like a seat belt retractor: as soon as the trolley wheel jumps (or is pulled) off the contact wire and the pole starts to move rapidly up, the trolley-catcher locks to keep the pole from lashing around and getting damaged or damaging the overhead. In (1.5) speed is low and distance is short, so a wye can be used safely.

Had thought of one way to handle a rotating trolley pole, but it involves scripts, non-pantograph animations, etc.. Never got around to it (g) if it would work at all. However, a recent unrelated project suggests an alternative, decidedly devious way to do it. Now I think of it, the same method could allow use of both a pole and a panto on the same locomotive though the "both down" option would not exist. Will advise if it pans(g) out.

(Returns to lurking.)

"there, if fixed it!"

another kludge-tastic model from me, the guy who shoves components of different models where they never should go (USRA 2-10-4 anyone?:hehe

(these are the jokes people)

Anyway, after talking about it here, and getting help from another thread, I sucessfully shoved the Pantograph from Tume's Little Joe onto Sniper's BLW models. the result was, i have to admit, very handsome.

a screenie:



I'm debating over uploading, 'cause i don't want to go hassling over uploading the cloned panto (that and i'm not sure who owns it, tume or auran). anyway, just thought i'd share.

Now that you have the technique figured out you can clone any old unlicensed pantograph. The one Phil uploaded merely says ""Original material copyright by Vladimir Agafonov aka vold." That merely means you can't claim it as your own, the ones I stay away from are the ones that say "no reskins without written permission" with an out of date email address and a website that returns a 404 error.

As for the swiveling trolley pole, would it be possible to eliminate the "auto create" and alternately hide either the forward facing or after facing one? If you look at the transfer table in the Downtown Traction route, the animation on that is so atrocious anything cobbled together for the poles couldn't be nearly as bad! :hehe: Best would be if it could actually swivel, pantograph key press 1 for up, 2 for rotate, 3 for rotate back, 4 for down maybe? Looking at all the dual poles and pantographs they all have four states, start both down, 1 aft up, 2 both up, 3 fore up aft down, 4 both down again.

Hi Sniper
If you want to have some real fun with screwlink/auto conversions, grab my VR WT wagon from the DLS. Has 'transition' couplers (3link coupler mounted on the top of an auto coupler), which allows a screw/3link coupled vehicle to couple to auto coupled stock... Can give some very interesting operations with shunting, since you would always (or at least nearly always) require one between the loco and the other vehicles

Another I've been meaning to do is an 'attachment' mesh that places a 'transition' auto coupler (similar to the one you've got) onto the hook. The VR did use a number of these, as we had 'screwlink' coupled suburban units up till the 70s/80s, and auto coupled shunters. The knuckle (in this case, a 'fixed' knuckle) was 'hung' off the hook itself. Not overly strong, buy enough to shunt the trains around with

Yeah, I've seen that type in real life, 0-6-0 Porter converted to Thomas the Tank Engine had them for pulling US or European coaches. Some kind of vertical hinge so when you pulled the top pin it swiveled down out of the way. In game it really don't matter since the game ignores incompatible coupler types, I just like to see actual contact when I'm creating one of these actual mesh cabviews, and this one came up short without a knuckle coupler.

sniper297 said:

Now that you have the technique figured out you can clone any old unlicensed pantograph. The one Phil uploaded merely says ""Original material copyright by Vladimir Agafonov aka vold." That merely means you can't claim it as your own, the ones I stay away from are the ones that say "no reskins without written permission" with an out of date email address and a website that returns a 404 error.

As for the swiveling trolley pole, would it be possible to eliminate the "auto create" and alternately hide either the forward facing or after facing one? If you look at the transfer table in the Downtown Traction route, the animation on that is so atrocious anything cobbled together for the poles couldn't be nearly as bad! :hehe: Best would be if it could actually swivel, pantograph key press 1 for up, 2 for rotate, 3 for rotate back, 4 for down maybe? Looking at all the dual poles and pantographs they all have four states, start both down, 1 aft up, 2 both up, 3 fore up aft down, 4 both down again.

Click to expand...

you mean the Blue electric MAV one right? I was worried it wouldn't be tall enough, but i'll try it. Will post later if i get it down.

Motorman Not Included

sawyer811-

Not quite that complicated - what you describe is like my original idea of keying independent animations from the four pantograph states. (If you think about that idea too long you realize that you could use sequential control - like old-fashioned radio control - and have more than four states, control other bits and pieces of equipment, etc..)

No, what I mean is to make the single swiveling pole just like it is now, the "forward pantograph," but instead of its animation being up and down, it would be down a little, swivel 180 on the vertical axis, then up again. This works as a pantograph animation because it's reversible and the end states are both positions we want. (Haven't figured out how to make the motorman pull it around, though.)

If that's acceptable, a mixed pole/panto rig is a trivial extension: it's all one panto of which the "up" position is pole up-panto down and the "down" position is pole down-panto up. A certain amount of care from the operator will be necessary to make the sparks fit the current state (one spark will actually be activated by the non-existent second panto being up).

(Ow! Just had an even better(?) idea, but it involves hiding large moving parts somewhere. How high is your highest bridge?)

on the DTC, not that high, maybe 10-20 meters, on the electrified section of the route i'm building, i've got a planned one 100 meters up

Long as you could make it swivel 180 degrees you wouldn't really need anything more fancy.

Anyway, back to the dual pantograph MAV or V41 or whatever this contraption is called, got a six pack ready to go.



These are really really hard to weather, the texture mapping is one of them deals where you got a whole texture for one little locker door, and three pixels in the upper left corner of that are applied to the entire roof and left rear sideframe. #1 is the clean unweathered one for anyone who wants to take a shot at cloning and weathering one yourself.

Those who don't wanna wait a few days for these to make it to the DLS;

http://www.humyo.com/FChMvwQ/v41locos.cdp?a=7L3TFgwuQC0

That's the locos;

http://www.humyo.com/FChMvwQ/v41stuff.cdp?a=_kAjsvKRb2I

And the bogies and cabview, everything else it needs is on the DLS.