Loops in surveyor.

nicky9499

SSoTW Bot
I'm sure you've come across those big loop which railways use to gain height within a limited area (what do you call them?). I've been using a few on my mountainous line and was wondering how do those professionals, or at least the more experienced Trainzers, get about to creating them. I lay all my loops by eye, and they often turn out with uneven grades and extremely inconsistent curves.

Anyone has tips? =)
 
Never tried it. But, if you put a very short piece of straightened track every 180 degrees you can make nice circles with no extra spline points. Then apply the same gradient right round a circle, adjust by trial and error until you get the height gain you want.

Hope this helps.
 
Not a bad method, although I found that putting the very short track splines at 90 degree intervals created better looking curves, although still a little bit awkward because you need the short track splines to be at certain positions as well. Thanks for the tip!
 
could use fixed track for curve. and if you don't to leave it on there, just match the spline track to the points and delete the fixed track.
 
I'm sure you've come across those big loop which railways use to gain height within a limited area (what do you call them?). I've been using a few on my mountainous line and was wondering how do those professionals, or at least the more experienced Trainzers, get about to creating them. I lay all my loops by eye, and they often turn out with uneven grades and extremely inconsistent curves.

Anyone has tips? =)

Find the radius you want, use the fixed tracks, plase the original track on top of it, and delete the fixed ones.
If you want a neat and straight gradient, use the "Apply gradient tool" in the track section.

Lars
 
I've always called them loops, as in the Georgetown Loop or the Tehachapi Loop.
In real life, the ground is rarely cooperative enough to allow a circular loop anyway, so I lay mine by eye, using the map view to avoid any excessive kinks.

:cool: Claude
 
NSW - Bethungra Loop

I used a combination of topo maps and 'eye' to try to recreate the Bethungra loop which is located on the main NSW southern line. AS this was one of my earlier route attempts its a bit rough but the area of the loop is reasonably accurate.

One day I might get around to doing the same area using TransDEM to get a better result.

The other NSW spiral loop is called the Border loop on the main north line as it crosses the border between NSW & Qld.

PG
 
Several years ago I made my Mangonia R-R.(I think still in DLS) It had several spiral loops, one of them in tunnel. The map has grown now past insanity, very advanced and near perfection, but is private (never published). So, yes, making loops is easy and fun.
 
Using fixed track pieces sound like a great idea, but the only fixed track pieces I use are turnouts as fixed track pieces cannot be used on a grade.

Speak of the gradient tool, I've found that it's behaviour is SO WEIRD AND UNPREDICTABLE that I've given up using it after two tries. A suggestion to creating accurate gradients was to measure the distance between two spline points and adjust the height manually, such as a 1 in 500 grade. However, because I like to lay tracks in the mountains, I find that curves are very hard to measure using a ruler since they can't be bended.

Can anyone share how they got around the problem of accurate grading?
 
One thing that takes a bit of getting used to with the gradient tool is it uses the closest spline point as the reference, so if you want a + gradient but click closer to the spline point you want highest it will make the gradient go the wrong way, I usually lay all the track then apply the gradient starting at the lowest point, clicking just after each spline point so it all goes up/down as required.

Cheers David
 
Not quite getting what you intend to say here, sorry.
Okay, assuming I have splines ABCD, I want A at 0ft and D at 100.
I set the gradient to something like 1 or 2, so where do I click now? To the slight right of A or the slight left of B?

A--------------------B--------------------C-----------------------D

Lowest --> Highest

Thanks in advance.
 
To increase the track height click at what will be the lower end of the climb to decrease then click at what will be the upper end of the desent. So in your case just to the right of each point, as it only moves the section between points.
 
Not quite getting what you intend to say here, sorry.
Okay, assuming I have splines ABCD, I want A at 0ft and D at 100.
I set the gradient to something like 1 or 2, so where do I click now? To the slight right of A or the slight left of B?

A--------------------B--------------------C-----------------------D

Lowest --> Highest

Thanks in advance.

Will this help?
I've used Trainzmap (as with TRS06-SP1 - will also work with o4). Turn on the straight track indicator, this makes the map display the node/spline points. Place the anchor at the bottom of your gradient. When you hover the cursor over another point, it will display the length of track from the anchor. Make a note (pencil and paper) of the distances. You should end up with something like this (I've invented distances for you-substitue your own)

Point---Dist---Height
A------0------0
B------120----x
C------260----y
D------410---100

Its now a simple bit of maths to work out the values of x and y. x=100/410*120=29.27 and y=100/410*260=63.42.
Now use the set spline height tool under advanced tab to set the intermediate spline poins to those heights.
Result - a nice even gradient.
Hope this helps.

PS there is a marker on the DLS, similar to the track direction marker, that when you place 2 of them, the properties box shows the exact distance to the next. Would save using trainzmap, but I can't remember what ther're called!
 
PS there is a marker on the DLS, similar to the track direction marker, that when you place 2 of them, the properties box shows the exact distance to the next. Would save using trainzmap, but I can't remember what ther're called![/quote]


It is called track scanner and it is good because it measures round curves. But I have had weird results from it and have gone back to counting grid squares to get the distance between spline points.
 
Not quite getting what you intend to say here, sorry.
Okay, assuming I have splines ABCD, I want A at 0ft and D at 100.
I set the gradient to something like 1 or 2, so where do I click now? To the slight right of A or the slight left of B?

A--------------------B--------------------C-----------------------D

Lowest --> Highest

Thanks in advance.

Set your gradient to whatever in the plus and click on the X in fact anywhere between the A and the || will suffice :)

A--X-------||-----------B--X------------------C--X---------------------D

Cheers David
 
That worked great! I tried the same method on other parts of the line and it worked as well. Although the downside is one can get a little tired of all the math after awhile. =\

Thanks anyway! =D
 
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