Questions about tunnels

[AussiePaul]

Hello people, I would like to incorporate a tunnel into my little railroad set-up that I am building and playing with.

I have read the little bit that is in the manual and searched these forums and looked in other tutorials, but I haven't been able to find any with info about how to make a tunnel.
I have had a play in Surveyor and I can put a hole in the side of a mountain with the objects "Dighole" and "Dig hole1x1". I cant see what the difference in these are, and I cant work out how I constrain the size. It seems that my tunnels are just the size and shape of the particular yellow grid shape that I click in. I can't work out how I would /should line the inside of the tunnels.

I have read about adjusting the size of a tunnel portal to cover the entrance to the tunnel, but I cant work that out either.

I think I must be missing a key piece of the puzzle here.
I hate to ask silly questions, but I just cant see where I am going wrong.
If there is a tunnel tutorial or some posts on the forum, I would be happy to go there and read about it, if I know where it is.
Kind regards,
Paul

 

[JCitron]

Hello people, I would like to incorporate a tunnel into my little railroad set-up that I am building and playing with.

I have read the little bit that is in the manual and searched these forums and looked in other tutorials, but I haven't been able to find any with info about how to make a tunnel.
I have had a play in Surveyor and I can put a hole in the side of a mountain with the objects "Dighole" and "Dig hole1x1". I cant see what the difference in these are, and I cant work out how I constrain the size. It seems that my tunnels are just the size and shape of the particular yellow grid shape that I click in. I can't work out how I would /should line the inside of the tunnels.

I have read about adjusting the size of a tunnel portal to cover the entrance to the tunnel, but I cant work that out either.

I think I must be missing a key piece of the puzzle here.
I hate to ask silly questions, but I just cant see where I am going wrong.
If there is a tunnel tutorial or some posts on the forum, I would be happy to go there and read about it, if I know where it is.
Kind regards,
Paul

Hi Paul,

Tunnels are nasty little buggers. The built-in ones are kind of hoakey looking with their big horsey portal on them. Some other content creators have created tunnels using other methods and are more like bridges or regular track. For these you need those dig hole things.

What you do to use a dig hole is just that - you create a hole in the grid. Create your mountain, take a dig hole tool and make a hole where you want your track to go in.

Navigate to where you want your tunnel to come out.

Now instead of using the built-in awful looking tunnels, get some of the portals and pieces by various other creators such as Andi06. So, you find his tunnel entrances, which are located in Scenery objects, and place them where you want. You find the splines (under the spline content tab), and connect those to the entrances.

Now locate tunnel track of your choice, including that made by Andi. You now drag your tunnel track from one end to the other just like laying track. The textures and normals are set so the the tunnel is dark, and there you have a nice long dark tunnel to run your trains through.

I hope this helps. I'm sure the others will help you with more techniques.

John

 

[cascaderailroad]

Short segments of stone arch viaduct splines make good tunnel portals.

There are dark tunnel splines that have no portals also.

BNSF50 has some good PRR tunnels & Crack Covers, as does FSP Portals as static scenery items.

When placing a dighole, you have to use the tug terrain up/down tool set at minimum radius, and tug on the 4 corners, until it is a square 10m x 10m.

 

[AussiePaul]

This is helping

Thanks for those tips John, I'll get some of that stuff you recommended from Andi06 and have a play with it .

I have had a play with using the tools the way that you and CascadeRailroad suggested.

I have been having a go at using the terrain down tool but I'm not getting a very square tunnel entrance ... but that may just need some more practice.
I also find that when I use the "Dighole1x1" tool, that the hole does not appear in the grid portion that I click on , but an adjoining one.
When I use the tool that is in the objects tool panel Called "Dighole" the hole appears where I click.

Is the small red arrow that appears in the dig hole of significance?


Anyway I think I'll stop using that and download some of Andi06's tunnels and see if I can get those to work better for me.
Thanks for the help as well CascadeRailroad,
I appreciate the time taken by both of you in replying.
Regards,
Paul.

 

[Deano5]

One more for you to download is "Tunnel Gloom", it's a dark gloomy fog looking spline that you lay in the tunnels to keep them looking dark, and stops oncoming trains from glowing in the tunnel. It has a really good effect. :wave:

 

[andi06]

Each dighole removes one grid square in plan. You can place additional objects to remove more terrain. The shape of the the dighole in perspective view will be affected by the viewing angle and the height of each corner.

Look down vertically on the grid to place them accurately.

The underground crosses are simply markers to allow the digholes to be removed, select [Objects/Delete] and click on the cross to do this.