Dockside tracks and rails

[Midland]

To model railways in dock and harbour areas there are a number of options. The first comes from Phil Skene's Industrail layout and is a fairly typical imaginative way of modelling. The first shot shows how normal track can be linked to dock rail track.





From this angle it looks good and gives the impression of track that is set flush with the surface (bitumen, concrete, ground, whatever) so that the sleepers are buried beneath the surface. In my experience this is how dock rail looks in real life the idea being that vehicles can easily drive over it and staff on foot don't get tripped up. But have a closer look...





You can see from this angle that the dock rails are made in such a way that the foot of the rail (the flat bit at the bottom) is on the surface of the surrounding ground. This means the rails stand proud by a significant amount. Apart from all the smashed suspension in dockside trucks and vehicles the compensation payouts to staff who have tripped and broken ankles quickly causes the railway company to end up in bankruptcy. I'm not singling Phil's layout out for special treatment; this is a method of modelling docks that most of us (including me) use.

So looking for a more prototypical solution I hunted around on the DLS and found a number of tram tracks. These have the inside check rail or flange that most dock rails in my town have. Check out how they look...




Here you can see yard track becoming wharf or dock track. Don't worry about the grey baseboards coz this is a work in progress.

And closer...







To my eye this track looks very realistic indeed. The result is exactly what I want for my new harbour layout. So let's run some rolling stock over it...




Shunt from the yard to the docks...




Can you see what's happened? Have another look on a paler background...





Is this because the track is configured to match the wheel and flange profiles of trams rather than railway rolling stock? If it is, is it possible to get some tram track that does correspond to railway rolling stock? Have a look at pictures of the real thing and you'll see that dock tracks are very similar to tram tracks.

Also it it possible to set the "dock rail" featured in the first two pictures to have the head of the rail (the top bit) flush with the surface without disappearing completely or "flickering"?

Interested to hear your suggestions. I think the tram track I used is Andi06's tram track without wire.




Cheers

Nix

 

[S301]

Midland, the track is fine. Have a good look at where the rail sits compared to the surface of the wheel...
In the first shot with the vans, you'll notice that the rail cuts through the bottom of the wheel, creating what appears to be a rather large flat spot (Someone leave the handbrake on eh?). In the shots on the 'lightrail', this is more visible because there is no base to the rail, just the top surface. This allows the wheels that is sitting below rail height to show. This is actually a problem with the wagon/bogie combination (Or more the position of the attachment point in the wagon) that causes this, rather than the height of the rail.

Os for getting the rail level with the ground, there are (I believe) tags in the config that allows you to lower the entire spline automatically. Changing the height of the rail in the mesh however can cause problems.

Best I can offer is to use either one of the tracks, and move it down till it sits approx 5-10cm above the ground. At a long distance (Achieve by using a birds eye view from a great distance) it may flicker, but close this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Another way is to have a special rail mesh where the rail is in a 'ballast' (have say a ash felt version, a wooden version, and a couple of others) that raises the 'ground' to rail level by a few cm (track would still need to be lowered manually to get this 'ground' to the correct height).

Just a few ideas
Zec

 

[Midland]

There's quite a bit to digest there Zec! Thanks for answering though.

So it looks like there are two issues around this:

1/ The height setting of the bogie or wheel which I can only change with a lot of mucking about in config.txt files, and

2/ Setting the height of the rail spline so that the rail head is in fact level with the ground (whatever that height might be). Once again I'm a bit loath to get into config.txt files and meshes and stuff but I can adjust the spline height in Surveyor relatively simply.

I have been playing around with 2 and although I've yet to get it flush it has improved things considerably. When I get time to look at it properly (I'm about to go out right now) I'll work out how much below the level of the "ground" I need to set the spline to get the railhead flush and then it's just a matter of adjusting all such splines by that amount.

Thanks for your input.




Cheers

Nix

 

[S301]

These are the things that can be changed:
1: Bogie height (This is the cause of the wheels showing through the rails in your screenshot). This is a mesh thing. Not much you can do about it sorry.

2: Rail height (In surveyor). This just means lower the track splines down in surveyor. There is a line in the config.txt file which can be added/changed to allow the track to be placed at a certain height above/below the land level on which the spline point is placed. Don't know if it is bridge track/double track specific.

3: Custom track that has land splines level with the rail heads, creating a slight bump in the land. This allows them to look like dock rails, whilst still preventing the flashing. I may look into this for my new 'track pack'.

4: Just use them as is (Not a good one though lol).

Zec

 

[paulzmay]

The one's you've used don't look like Andi's, as his actually have sloped sides, which are intended to be buried. The best bet is generally to lower the track in surveyor by a little less than 0.3m (or 0.3m exactly for Andi06's track). I've been using these for ages for tramways, and have had no trouble at all.

Paul