USA Pics (electric)

[tume]

Hello NormP,

and you have done a great job back that time. You did right to delete the surplus baseboards because route creators unfortunately need to decide about some priorities. And sometimes such decisions are hard to be made. E.g wich detailes needs to be created and wich not. If we want to decorate everything keeping the same high density of details from near the tracks to far away, we would need years for such a route. Well - like I need years for my MILW project
But if we want to get somethig released in a foreseable time, we need to make compromises - so from my point of view you did the right thing.

@ normhart:
Yes there is an LRT vehicle coming across PCC 1052. I found it at the DLS back in 2008, but I cannot remember its name or kuid. Also I changed my PC two times since then an I did not take over the session I used for that video capturing - therefore I am not even able to look into it to find that LRT again.

You's TUME

 

[normhart]

Hi normp I've enjoyed your SF for many years now. Once TANE stabilizes I'll probably import it myself just so I can run TUME's new PCCs. I have not attempted to extend the F line out to the Castro but now that TUME has suggested it... I'll probably at least put a loop on the western Market street end.

It is interesting to note that fishlipsatwork's ground map extends far enough south that it should be possible to include the 3rd St. line at least down to 25th and Illinois to the streetcar facility there. :hehe: And that also passes the CalTrain Depot at 4th and King.:hehe::hehe:

I've been tempted for years to buy this thing http://www.simulatorcentral.com/index.php/bus-and-cable-car-simulator-san-francisco.html but I suspect that it isn't compatible with trainz and the main focus seems to be busses (yawn).

I must say I find the streetcars somewhat confusing, the Peter Witt looks ok but the PCCs are a bit puzzling. The doors are located as they would be in a double ender. Hum...

 

[tume]

Yes, These PCCs unfortunately have got a wrong shape - especially at the front and the end part.
This was the reason I did not go for this one too

Your's TUME

 

[pdkoester]

Hi normp I've enjoyed your SF for many years now. Once TANE stabilizes I'll probably import it myself just so I can run TUME's new PCCs. I have not attempted to extend the F line out to the Castro but now that TUME has suggested it... I'll probably at least put a loop on the western Market street end.

It is interesting to note that fishlipsatwork's ground map extends far enough south that it should be possible to include the 3rd St. line at least down to 25th and Illinois to the streetcar facility there. :hehe: And that also passes the CalTrain Depot at 4th and King.:hehe::hehe:

I've been tempted for years to buy this thing http://www.simulatorcentral.com/index.php/bus-and-cable-car-simulator-san-francisco.html but I suspect that it isn't compatible with trainz and the main focus seems to be busses (yawn).


I must say I find the streetcars somewhat confusing, the Peter Witt looks ok but the PCCs are a bit puzzling. The doors are located as they would be in a double ender. Hum...

I have that and would suggest you look at it on youtube.com before you decide. I find it boring after an hour. More of an adventure and tasks, not able to just jump into any of those pictured items. I know there are video clips of it out there.

 

[NormP]

I had within the last few years changed the Market St Tracks from Motormans 6.4M high OH Wire, too Track made by RW1hh, (Strabglies 69084) the new track also came with built in attached OH wire at 5.3M and it suits Tumes PCC tram Trolley Pole.
The Poles for 5.3 OH were By Paulzmay.
Yes I admit attached wires on corners don't look realistic ! But they are a lot easier to install !
As my own website will no longer recognise me I cannot put up any screenshots taken in TS12, I have taken a few in TANE and included them in the Trainz Gallery.

The suggestion from PWeiser to sink the poles of course cannot work with Poles that are set too connect with "Track & Wire".


Norm.

 

[tume]

Hello,

I agree the streetcar catenary system is always difficult to implement in trainz. Especially if the streetcars uses a trolley-panto rather than an ordinary panto like mostly the case at electrical locos. But since trainz does not provide a possibility to "attach" the trolley-panto to the trolley wire - even in curves, we need to take care to minimize the misalignment between the wires and the panto-pole-shoe. The best way to do so is to attach the trolley wire onto the track mesh - like mostly done. But now, we have to adjust the trolley-wire-spanns and support wires very carefully to that trolley wire - this creates a lot of work and needs quite a lot of time and a requires a lot of special support assets - especially for junctions.

Inside the Municipal Transit Railway I used splines objects for the trolley-wire-spanns and support poles. But now I made the experiences that it is better to use trackside objects to be attaches directly at the tracks like switches. I created most of the trolley wire support for the Season Town this way. Except for junctions these trackside trolley-wire-spanns includes two poles and a spann wire going across the street. This asset needs then to be attached at one of the streetcar tracks. Of course a lot of such assets are necessary - one for each road width. In addition to this quite a set of singe objects and spines are needed to create nice and complex looking junctions and track triangles as well as the trolley system around the carbarn shops.

Here comes some screens about my seasonal building update for the Municipal Transit Railway - captured in TS12. The snowy street ground texture is a bit too white so I need to fix that and later the footpaths needs to be reworked for seasonal support too. Most of my seasonal buildings visible in the screens now shares just one 2048x2048 texture and normal map file to support a nice performance. The fire espace stairs and the roof details disappeares in the distance due to the LOD technique.

Your's TUME

 

[NormP]

Tume.

I like the City scenes with snow, what a great effect on the overall picture.

However I doubt that any major city street in OZ will ever see any snow, with perhaps the exception of Hobart In Tasmania.

Norm.

 

[MeowRailroad]

Perhaps the city snowplows weren't prepared for it?

 

[PWeiser]

Convenient

For all its fiddly bits, that system of contact wire to tracks would be very convenient for a long-term project of mine: the Cincinnati trolleybus/streetcar system which used two contact wires (and two parallel trailing trolley poles). This it had in common with Vienna and not many other places...

Completely off topic, looking at some of those buildings... has anyone ever tried to make a multi-story building asset which is a spline (one endcap with storefronts, the other with the roof)? Might be necessary to build it on its side and then erect it with a 90-degree X-axis turn... (g)

 

[tume]

For all its fiddly bits, that system of contact wire to tracks would be very convenient for a long-term project of mine: the Cincinnati trolleybus/streetcar system which used two contact wires (and two parallel trailing trolley poles). This it had in common with Vienna and not many other places...

Completely off topic, looking at some of those buildings... has anyone ever tried to make a multi-story building asset which is a spline (one endcap with storefronts, the other with the roof)? Might be necessary to build it on its side and then erect it with a 90-degree X-axis turn... (g)

Hallo - yes - maybe one day N3V could jump on it - if such a feature would be wanted by enough customers.

90-degree X-axis turn at a spline???? I have never seen the possibility to turn a spline end like this - but may I just missed it as I did not need is so far
But there are multi-story buildings made as spline - e.g. made by DMDrake. But his buildings are now quite out of date. Fortunately I have got the permission to rework it os I will do my best to do some improvements - but propably not at the spline houses.
Splines have a negative impact to the performance. I will replace all building splines in that route for non-spline-scenery-objects. Mostly an area of houses only needs to be placed once and after that the copy and past tool can do a lot. But perhaps this is not possible too often in the case of a real layout like you seem to work on (Cincinnati).

For the catenary system I would also recommend to use trolley wires made from mesh which is included to the tracks - even if you have two wires above the tracks then.
If you use trackside objects for the cross spanns and the poles its no different about it.
Unfortunately you dont seem to own TS12 (includes my Municipal Transit Railway) or T:ANE DLX (includes my Season Town Northern RR) to be able to have a look how I designed the catenary system.

Your's TUME

 

[normhart]

To be honest I've never tried setting up trolley lines, in fact my only attempt at electric rails of any sort was my New Haven Coastal on which I used a scenery spline single line centenary with the poles individually placed.

However pweiser's comment about trolley busses got me thinking, Muni has a pretty extensive trolleybus system. So I found silversmiths OHTB track and...



No attempt to add in support wires or anything but I see it could be a huge amount of work.

(mumble mumble, I know I have a working trolleybus around here somewhere, mumble)

Ah ha!





(TS12 49922)

 

[tume]

Yeah - looking great - and you did a good job about getting everything in the position.

I which you could use better looking content, but such is hard to find - especially buildings that fits to the Market Street side.

Because of this lack of assets suitable for San Francisco and the big effort required to create it from scratch, I stopped my own San Francisco project years ago. But also this moment gave birth to the idea to built a large fictional City which eventually guided into the Municipal transit Railway

Originally the Municipal Transit Railway was a streetcar route only containing the passenger main station. But the opening sequence of the television series "The King of Queens" indicated several footage of New York's elevated red subway cars and so I decided to extend the Municipal Transit Railway with an elevated railway. Eventually I needed something important to get connected with the downtown and therefore I introduced the whole Airport

And still the footpath and the ERR tracks needs to be improved to support season Change.


Today I continued to create seasonal replacements for my own town houses. I have done 60 houses during the last days. Together with some other completely new houses and the assets from the Season Town Northerh RR and from the Avery-Drexel Route, I could decorate quite large areas with seasonal buildings now - but a large number is still left to be done
Just some screens from the elevated RR (Municipal Transit Railway) toward downtown.

Your's TUME

 

[PWeiser]

And a FlXible, Too

To be honest I've never tried setting up trolley lines, in fact my only attempt at electric rails of any sort was my New Haven Coastal on which I used a scenery spline single line centenary with the poles individually placed.

However pweiser's comment about trolley busses got me thinking, Muni has a pretty extensive trolleybus system. So I found silversmiths OHTB track and...
(snip)
No attempt to add in support wires or anything but I see it could be a huge amount of work.

(mumble mumble, I know I have a working trolleybus around here somewhere, mumble)

Ah ha!





(TS12 49922)

(Apologies for quoting picture, but...)

YES! That's the stuff, except that the last Cincinnati trolley buses were more PCC-like in style (and cream over orange with brown trim). What you've got there is what was called a Dreamliner (long before Boeing nabbed the title), which were diesels in blue and silver. You also have a FlXible trolley bus up there... brings back memories, Thanks!

 

[Matt3985]

Thanks TUME for all your hard work for bring this wonderful route from TS12 to TANE. Now I have a place to run all of the Electric equipment I have in my collection. Thank you very much TUME.

 

[NormP]

Normhart.

Motorman1066 (sel) also made OHTB wires although they are also set at 6.4m same as the tram OH, with plenty of different OH connectors, I'm not sure of the wire height made by Silversmith.
If you tackle the other tracks for trams (see my earlier post) there are plenty of wire and/or poles and Pull offs for them, and easy too use.

NormP.

 

[normhart]

(Apologies for quoting picture, but...)

YES! That's the stuff, except that the last Cincinnati trolley buses were more PCC-like in style (and cream over orange with brown trim). What you've got there is what was called a Dreamliner (long before Boeing nabbed the title), which were diesels in blue and silver. You also have a FlXible trolley bus up there... brings back memories, Thanks!

Those are austin316hockey's E700 (from Toronto I think) on the DLS. The bendybus is fictional but Muni has something like them.

TUME I think once N3V moves seasonal control to the sessions layer I'll be more excited by the seasonal stuff. At this point most can't really access it.

normp I don't know how much effort I am willing to spend on this. I've got a repaint project I've wanted to do for years underway and various real life dramas playing out. I'll probably fool with it off and on. silversmith's OHTB appears to be the same height BTW.

 

[tume]

TUME I think once N3V moves seasonal control to the sessions layer I'll be more excited by the seasonal stuff. At this point most can't really access it.

Hello,

yes that’s a known issue and you are not the only one looking for the possibility to change the snowline inside the quickdrive tool within the environmental settings over there.

But until this has been implemented users should be able to influent the snowline by creating a new session. In T:ANE you cannot edit payware routes – and if you attempt to do so, a message comes up telling you that it is not possible. But in the same message you get asked if you want to create a new session for such a route. If you go for that you can add trains and stuff like that to the route and also you should have access to the environmental settings in surveyor. Over there you can set even the snowline – and if you set it to “0” you will have snow everywhere – if the route content supports it

In this way it should be easy to create summer and snowy sessions for e.g. my Avery-Drexel as well as for my Season Town Route – just try it! OK – it needs some mouse clicks more than to change some settings in quickdrive but it should work that way.

Your’s TUME

 

[normhart]

Well thanks for that TUME, I had no idea there was a work-around for the weather problem. While a bit limited it does work Thanks!



It looks like seasonal assets are not fully implemented in Kickstarter Country, makes a kinda early fall feel.

 

[tume]

Hello,

the Crocodile looks great – nice to see such locos again

@normhart:
You are welcome – nice that is works for you. Enjoy changing the seasons for your pleasure


Your’s TUME

 

[normhart]

That Croc is one of only two Auran locomotives that are at build 3.7, both are experimental so far as I can tell. The Croc's wheels spin at a different rate than they travel.