Subways, Underground, Tram or anything else Urban shots!

Love the shot of the plane.......i've scoured the streets below and can't see a tram......YET :D
 
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Love the shot of the plane.......i've scored the streets below and can't see a tram......YET :D

You may should look again. There is a yellow PCC car just in front of the RailRoad Station building. Its at the middle-left part of the picture.
:D
Your's TUME
:wave:
 
Here's my first shot in this thread:

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Some very nice shots.

I am a great fan of the PCC cars having grown up with them in Pittsburgh PA which at one time had over 800 of them with one of the largest routes of any city in the US.

Do you have any plans to make these available? I am running almost exclusively now in version 2010.
 
News from San Francisco’s MUNI PCC Cars for Trainz

Hallo All,

after creation of three non realistic PCC Streetcars wearing some colour scheme which could be seen everywhere in the USA during the 40’s and the 50’, I am about to put forward modelling a series of San Francisco’s MUNI PCC streetcars.
Therefore I did a lot of improvement to the mesh of the preliminary version, as I added many little details outside as well as inside the car. In addition to this, I introduced normal mapping including reflection effects to the mesh parts as required to provide a much more realistic appearance of the whole asset.

The car is not finished yet. Especially the internal components needs some more attention. For example - if you see the handles just beside the seats, you may recognize that the handles does not provide reflective texture like the other hand railing. So I need to get this little seat handles separated from the seat mesh to put the reflective texture onto it. Like I described – little things, but all together still a lot of work.

The asset has night mode – also at the interior and the workable doors – provided by texture self illumination controlled by script (I had a lot to learn by studying several explanations, tutorials and examples) depending on the daytime. That means the inside light turns on automatically if the sun goes down until the sun rises up again. The texture self illumination night mode looks great, but if it depends only onto the daytime, it has a major disadvantage. The lights will be turned on even if the car has been parked at the depot or elsewhere and awaits it next service. In reality, nobody would turn on the internal light if the car has been parked somewhere.
Therefore it would be much better to get the texture self illumination controlled by script depending on the head light in addition to the daytime. That means the inside light will be turned on, only during the night but additionally only if the headlights have been turned on.
I already found a function called “public native bool GetHeadlightState(void);”. Used like: “bool lights = my_train.GetHeadlightState();” it sets the variable “lights” to true or false. The light variable (true or false) can be used in an “if routine” to control the texture self illumination. Only I don’t exactly how to use this “GetHeadlightState”- function with a correct syntax. Eventually I got it working and the inner light only came up during night and only if the headlight used to be turned on, but the states have not been continuously updated. That means I had to change the daytime by using the quick drive before I got the change of the inner light from off to on or from on to off after I switched the headlights. If there is anybody who could suggest a solution or knows about some useful tutorials about such matters, I would be pleased to share this information.

Just see the latest results at the screens below in comparison to a poster of the real MUNI #1052, which colour scheme represents the “Yellow Cars” of Los Angeles – long gone.

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After working as far as you could see like the state of this PCC asset currently is, I have to conclude that there is nothing to say like “… just a little streetcar …”. The opposite is the case. In the point of view that I have now, it is harder to create a realistic looking streetcar in comparison to other locomotives (except steamers). Streetcars, Subway Cars and Busses needs detailed interiors, passenger handling, door and sound animation and a lot of it needs the handling of several different control lights at the driver control panel witch is not provided by the standard script in Trainz.
Considering this, I want to make a great compliment to all guys of you who already provided a lot of very nice assets for City Transport in any kind.

The screens above indicate the first of a series of about five or six MUNI PCC’s of the City of San Francisco for Trains. It also will be the base to create furthermore a series of SEPTA PCC’s of the City of Philadelphia. Also Chicago’s “Green Hornets” would be possible but this would require a major changing of the whole mesh. Les of mesh changing would probably been required for Pittsburgh PCCs and for the PCCs of Kenosha, Wi. But therefore I would need much more photos detailed enough to create realistic textures.

That’s for the moment, I hope you enjoyed watching the screens above.
If you have any suggestions please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Your’s TUME
 
Great work on those trolleys, no actually superb. This is not to minimize the beauty of the routes pictured here.

Several interesting things about the ones you are modeling versus the ones used in Pittsburgh.

The ones in Pittsburgh never had a front trolley pole. Also the back of the trolley was more rounded I believe than yours, not a criticism but a comment. The PCC trolley was a basic design which each city, if they ordered enough, could modify slightly to meet their specific needs. Most of the PCC cars built had the three types of breaking; brake shoes, magnetic track breaks, and back EMF breaking, which was particularly useful in hilly Pittsburgh.

If you are interested I can share several links which show pictures from the 40's through the 90's of the PCC's used in Pittsburgh and the various color schemes used. One interesting aspect some of the PCC's in Pittsburgh that were used on interurban runs was the additional of a spotlight mounted on the top of the front which was only used in rural areas.

In my opinion the PCC trolley was the most beautiful and functional vehicle ever designed for public transportation. Even after 70 years it still has a 'modern' look. And there are very few other transportation vehicles that were ever built that can still remain in active service today 70 years after their original manufacture. San Francisco truly has become the worlds largest working museum for the preservation of these wonderful PCCs'.
 
Tume-

I'm working on a Pittsburgh layout, and would like to have some Pittsburgh PCC's. I have one of Austin316's models reskinned into them now. Your models will be better with those brass wings. I'll also have to replace the poles with the Modula City GT6 pantograph...
 
Not sure where you live, however the trolley poles were not replace with the pantographs until the very late 80's or early 90's runing on the remaining PCC lines that were rebuilt to handle the newer light rail cars.

In my opinion the pantographs really made those old PCC cars look really ugly. In the last days of the PCC in Pittsburgh they were just patching together pieces from the remaining cars to keep them running until they had the new replacement cars.:wave:
 
Not sure where you live, however the trolley poles were not replace with the pantographs until the very late 80's or early 90's runing on the remaining PCC lines that were rebuilt to handle the newer light rail cars.

:wave:
I lived there between '91 and '98. Actually, the trolley poles were phased out in the early to mid 80s. Once the light rail system started service in 85, the poles were pretty much gone. Even the unrebuilt cars had pans.
 
Fantastic work Tume.

I look forward to running them on my SF route.

About time I updated the route so will have to extend Market St further West.


Cheers Norm.
 
@ Paul Bert:

Yes, I agree, the PCCs all used to have a similar appearance. For people who are not interested in streetcars or any other rail traffic all the PCCs may looks like the same thing – just a track vehicle they can ride to get from place to place. Per haps some of them recognises the different colours. But if you are interested in any stuff, you are looking much more carefully and you see even little differences automatically. And especially if you are going to collect a lot of photos and drawings to study it as you want to create a virtual model of the real thing, you just find quite a lot of differences not only about colours – and any geometrical differences require a different mesh for each kind of stuff.

From far away, the PCCs looks like the same, but the differences in geometry – especially at the front wind screens, the back geometry, the window arrangement and the roof equipment as well as the bogeys – are too large to get the several kind of PCCs modelled just by using the same mesh.

I decided to go first for the MUNI PCCs. But even some these Streetcars contains differences in geometry to others.

Another fact is, that MUNI bought a lot of PCCs from SEPTA (Philly) to create its heritage PCC – Fleet. This makes it more easy to work out some SEPTA PCC-Mesh from the MUNI-Models. Also the Kanosha PCCs looks quite similar to the MUNI’s.
I am unfortunately not familiar with the appearance of the Pittburg PCCs, so I need more photos of it.


@ Springtransit:

Don’t worry! If I will make a set of Pittburg PCCs, I would provide several trolley poles to be used alternatively. The most of the Trolley-Pole-Streetcars in Trains does not contain the trolley pole directly at it. Mostly creators used an extra trolley pool car containing the pole – just to make that the trolley hits the wires while going through curves. So I would create several trolley-pantograph-dummy-cars – even to give users the chance to use the PCCs under different systems of trolley wires including a different height of its wires above ground. Such a set of trolley-pantograph-dummy-cars also could contain a pantograph like used at the modern light rail cars.
Such a set of trolley-pantograph-dummy-cars will eventually give a choice to every user to set up his PCCs like he want to.

By the way, I can understand that a lot of people may find the light rail pantographs quite ugly on top of the PCCs. But I live in Chemnitz-Germany. In Europe the trolley-poles had been replaced in favour of pantographs after World War I !!!! So from my childhood on, I saw trams running with pantographs on top. And pantographs used to be on top at the PCCs (been built by the TATRA company – now taken over by Skoda in Czech Republic) which replaced fleet of trams in Chemnitz during the 60’s and the 70’s.
In my point of view the pantographs puts a lot more reliability into streetcar operation and makes special trolley wire switches at some junctions obsolete. Of course the design of the modern pantographs could be less ugly, but better to have efficient streetcars or lightrail train operation through and besides the streets rather than only noisy busses and more pollution.



Just see some more screens from MUNI’s PCC #1052 as far as it is now:

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Your’s TUME :)
 
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