Do your static road vehicles have enough room to maneuver?

JonMyrlennBailey

Active member
Have you ever built a Trainz layout with static cars, jeeps, SUV's, wagons, trucks and buses and wondered if they would have enough room to move around if they were driveable real-world vehicles? How about your trains on rails even?

1. are your track curves so tight that the porches on the ends of inter-coupled hood-unit diesel engines will touch together or even overlap? If my curves are tighter than about 65 meters, my SP SD40-T-2 porches will hit together if the engines are coupled back to back because there is little space between the units at the rear couplers. This is something I had observed.
2. are your horse-drawn carriage turns so sharp that the wagon trees will hit the front wheels?
3. do your cars have enough room to pull in and out of parking spaces without several backups and pull ups?
4. will the steps on the locomotives rub against the station or loading platform or sides of a bridge deck?
5. do your semi trucks have enough room to turn around and back up to the loading dock?
6. are your parking spaces wide enough for door opening clearances?
7. do buses have enough room to pull in and out of the train station?
8. Will a semi be able to swing a turn on a street intersection?

We have to pay attention to geometry and ruler measurements when constructing an infrastructure in Surveyor. Grades, turns and clearances have to be realistic and manageable for traffic. Also, bear in mind real-world traffic laws and regulations. Vehicles have to maneuver and park legally as well as physically. A car, bus, wagon, train, boat, aircraft, ship, bike, jeep, van, suv or truck needs so much space to move about practically, legally and safely. I see so many model railroad layouts with static gridlocked scenery cars that would have no place to go if they were in real world.
 
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Yes, cascade, I am more of a CIVIL ENGINEER at heart than a train driver. I build a Trainz route with real-world imagination. I have to consider math and physics.
Longitudinal compression for girder bridges.
 
Actually these are great observations and an excellent reason to give the route in progress a test run. The reasons that many of these things occur is we're so caught up on the route building aspects, we don't pay attention to the details such as too steep a grade for the nearby highway, or the tightness of an parking lot. In more recent times, I've actually run into some rather interesting real world examples of parking spaces being too narrow as though the architects and civil engineers used a Toyota Corolla or Smart Car as models when testing their mock ups. One parking garage at a local hospital is so tight inside that nothing larger than a Prius can fit comfortable without risking a dent. Another doctor's office has a parking lot with parking spots so tight that people can barely get out of their cars, and the turning radius on the one-way loop around the lot is so tight that even a Honda Civic driver has trouble turning.

The method I use for building, and have since I first started using Trainz back in December 2003 is to periodically give the route a test run. Take a train drive down the latest creation not only to test the signals and track marks, but also to check the curves and speeds, steepness of grades, and in addition to look out for stupid stuff. The things mentioned here are the stupid stuff, which includes floating buildings, trees, dumb looking roads and things that aren't quite in place. After I finish a section, I plop an engine and short consist down and drive the line and look around. I may end up derailing when I happen upon a broken crossing or disconnected track, or a I might bump along track that isn't smooth, but that's the purpose of the rough testing.

As I work along the route, I go back further and drive longer to test the continuity of the route to ensure that textures blend from section to section. This is more important when we've merge routes together and have hand sculpted the terrain than it is for a TransDEM generated route. A route not only needs to be smooth running; it also needs to look good as well and not have implausible intersections and other things that would not work in real life.
 
Also with steam locomotives, if turns are too tight, the front set of driving wheels will set out farther than the rail
 
In the real world rail operators or track owners would impose loading gauges to their tracks. This is different to the track gauge (narrow gauge, standard gauge, etc) as it refers to the maximum allowed width and height (for clearing tunnels, bridges), length (for clearing curves) or tonnage (to safely traverse the tracks) of each vehicle in a train. Different loading gauges can apply to different lines.

On steam engines an added restriction that was often applied to tunnels was that there must be enough clearance between the loco and the tunnel wall for the crew to evacuate in the event of an emergency. One colliery coal line (now closed) here in NSW had a tunnel that did not have sufficient evacuation clearance so the loco crew would set the loco on "auto" at a walking speed and would jump off before it reached the tunnel entrance. Another crew would be waiting on the other side to jump on and take over.

Railroading must have been more "fun" back then!
 
Have you ever built a Trainz layout with static cars, jeeps, SUV's, wagons, trucks and buses and wondered if they would have enough room to move around if they were driveable real-world vehicles? How about your trains on rails even?

1. are your track curves so tight that the porches on the ends of inter-coupled hood-unit diesel engines will touch together or even overlap? If my curves are tighter than about 65 meters, my SP SD40-T-2 porches will hit together if the engines are coupled back to back because there is little space between the units at the rear couplers. This is something I had observed.
2. are your horse-drawn carriage turns so sharp that the wagon trees will hit the front wheels?
3. do your cars have enough room to pull in and out of parking spaces without several backups and pull ups?
4. will the steps on the locomotives rub against the station or loading platform or sides of a bridge deck?
5. do your semi trucks have enough room to turn around and back up to the loading dock?
6. are your parking spaces wide enough for door opening clearances?
7. do buses have enough room to pull in and out of the train station?
8. Will a semi be able to swing a turn on a street intersection?

We have to pay attention to geometry and ruler measurements when constructing an infrastructure in Surveyor. Grades, turns and clearances have to be realistic and manageable for traffic. Also, bear in mind real-world traffic laws and regulations. Vehicles have to maneuver and park legally as well as physically. A car, bus, wagon, train, boat, aircraft, ship, bike, jeep, van, suv or truck needs so much space to move about practically, legally and safely. I see so many model railroad layouts with static gridlocked scenery cars that would have no place to go if they were in real world.

​WTH, I thought everyone did...............
 
In the real world rail operators or track owners would impose loading gauges to their tracks. This is different to the track gauge (narrow gauge, standard gauge, etc) as it refers to the maximum allowed width and height (for clearing tunnels, bridges), length (for clearing curves) or tonnage (to safely traverse the tracks) of each vehicle in a train. Different loading gauges can apply to different lines.

On steam engines an added restriction that was often applied to tunnels was that there must be enough clearance between the loco and the tunnel wall for the crew to evacuate in the event of an emergency. One colliery coal line (now closed) here in NSW had a tunnel that did not have sufficient evacuation clearance so the loco crew would set the loco on "auto" at a walking speed and would jump off before it reached the tunnel entrance. Another crew would be waiting on the other side to jump on and take over.

Railroading must have been more "fun" back then!

Fun! :D

The issues with some tunnels also included suffocation from the fumes trapped in the tunnels filled with smoke from passing trains. The crew would tie wet rags across their noses and mouths, lie down in the cab and run blind through the tunnel, and hope to get to the exit before passing completely out.

Where I live, the loading gauge is 3.5 to 4 meters between tracks, which is closer than the tracks on the Midwestern and Western US railroads. This is due to our lines being built in the earliest days of railroading with one nearby line dating back to the early 1830s.
 
Those building a replication of a true railroad as opposed to building an imaginary model, will doubtless have researched the project before hand and got those things you've cited all cleared away.
What bugs me most is the way supposedly professionally built models, including payware, leave traffic to disappear at the cross roads or fail to set road speeds so traffic hurtles through villages at 50 MPH drives in dead straight lines and right through any parked vehicles that happen to be there.
Especially as there are good assets available via DLS to cure all those road ills.
 
... or fail to set road speeds so traffic hurtles through villages at 50 MPH ...

That I do not understand. I only ever use the standard built in moving traffic feature that comes with TANE and the road speed of those moving vehicles is around 30-35 MPH (by comparison with the known speed of locos moving on track parallel to the road traffic).

The solution, of course, is to have no road traffic at all as TANE is a Train simulator, not a Car simulator.
 
pware;1650487 The solution said:
pware, I beg to differ. The railway for starters had an enormous fleet of road transport vehicles, and unless your running a train across the Sahara desert motor vehicles and roads with traffic are part of the game, and definately part of any scenery make up.

Let me cite Moor street station, Birmingham.
Opened with temporary buildings on 1st. July 1909 as part of the initiative to open a route to the South West via the North Warwickshire Railway. The station was fully opened, complete with goods sheds on three levels, on 7th January 1914. (The goods sheds closed on 6th November 1972.) Beneath the station at the Allison Street level, know as goods shed "B" GWR provided stabling for 67 horses, with provender and straw stores, loose boxes and a shoeing forge.
Less than a mile away at Snow Hill, located off Livery Street under bay platforms three and fourthere existed stabling for over 130 horses.
I can assure you these stables, the horses therein, and all that goes with them where not keep by the respective Station Masters for the love of the animal.
These were working horses that carted to and fro from the station mainly harnessed between the 8 foot shafts of flat bed trolleys to The Great Western Railway standard design drawing (No 59981) for a one horse trolley design of September 1920.


A single horse was expected to haul up to 36 cwt at a speed of 6 mph and cover 20 miles in their day's work. So pware full cicle, excessive road speeds.
(My thanks to researcher Robert Ferris for supplying much of the foregoing detailed information.)
A number of these horse drawn vehicles survived untill the closure of the respective stations, albeit in lesser numbers having been replaced by the standard GWR three wheeled tractor units aptly named "Mechanicall Horse" a frequent sight among the Birmingham traffic circa 1950 - 1960.

Respectfuly yours
John P.





 
Ideally a 'train simulator' should be a 'total vehicle simulator'. All modes of transportation therein, scenery or otherwise, should perform realistically according to their own respective natures. Trains of the planet earth don't travel as if they are the only man-made conveyances in the world. Ride an Amtrak train and look out the coach window in Utah or Colorado and see the motor traffic on I 70 running parallel with the tracks in some parts.

I can see N3V coming out with 'Vehiclez" in the future. If it rolls, floats, runs, crawls, hops, skips, jumps, trots, gallops, swims, walks, flies, glides or slides it would be simulated accurately.
 
Ideally a 'train simulator' should be a 'total vehicle simulator'. All modes of transportation therein, scenery or otherwise, should perform realistically according to their own respective natures.

Couldn't agree more. If not realistically at least semi realistically. I don't think we want the level of realism on roads that we now have in trains.
But come on, cars just do not apear and disapear, that realy is taking the biscuit especially when you consider the ralism in the trains.
And why do we see so often motorway or freeway speeds in town environments. The answer to speed though is quite simple to solved by one aditional line in the con fig file.
Unfortunately if you do add that line or if it's present, change the vale of it, then the forum fanatics will be crying copyright if you try to upload a route containg even that small change to a file...
But, there are ways to do make a road speed change and have pre set car manouverability without infringing any copy rights.

So why for heavens sake do we still put up with cars driving dead straight lines and crashing through any vehicle that happens to be parked on the highway when there is a viable option?
 
Couldn't agree more. If not realistically at least semi realistically. I don't think we want the level of realism on roads that we now have in trains.
But come on, cars just do not apear and disapear, that realy is taking the biscuit especially when you consider the ralism in the trains.
And why do we see so often motorway or freeway speeds in town environments. The answer to speed though is quite simple to solved by one aditional line in the con fig file.
Unfortunately if you do add that line or if it's present, change the vale of it, then the forum fanatics will be crying copyright if you try to upload a route containg even that small change to a file...
But, there are ways to do make a road speed change and have pre set car manouverability without infringing any copy rights.

So why for heavens sake do we still put up with cars driving dead straight lines and crashing through any vehicle that happens to be parked on the highway when there is a viable option?

I agree we don't need freeway speeds through towns. There is a way to change the speed of the traffic on the roads and there are some roads which have slower speeds than others.

The YARN 4-lane highway, for example, has slower moving traffic than the YARNish road equivalent by Streadway and others.

This line here, found in Streadway's YARNish Divided Highway L3.1

traffic-speed 45

Is the speed of the traffic. I believe this is Km/h and not mph.

While a YARN L4 road by maddy25 does not have this line and operates at the default speed.

Outside of this tag in the YARNish asset, I could not find it on the Wiki to clarify any details!

I also agree that automobiles, trams, and other vehicles are very much part of the world, and without them our routes become lifeless. With that said, however, it would be nice to determine which kind of traffic runs on various roads so that we don't have big semi-trucks traveling down dirt roads or back streets in a quiet neighborhood. For situations such as this, I use a judicious placement of static vehicles on traffic-less roads and in places where I employ street running such as in industrial areas or where there are street-running trams.

But it's all more than just road traffic which makes a route and the rest of the environment what it is.
 
If you have downloaded and installed the free DLC route "Cornish main lines and branches" you will notice that the the road traffic is stationary - just scenery car assets of that era placed on the roads. I thinks it works all the better because of it as it avoids all the issues we all seem to experience with moving road traffic.

I agree that the road traffic could be improved but it is not (and should not be) the main focus of the simulator.

parryjc, my main point was about your estimate of the road speed through towns being 50 MPH. I disagreed - from my observations the default Trainz car road speed seems to be 30-35 MPH.
 
Point taken pware. If you model late 20th Century then that speed you suggest on lesser crowded Avenues is probably just fine, however for town traffic in general it is, in my opinion, far to rapid even for modern day in City traffic.
Modeling anything from the period generally labeled "hey day of steam" road asset speeds are just not compatible with cars of that era, the 1930 Austin 10, or Morris 8 for example.
Bearing in mind also that a lorry of 5 tons of the day was limited on the open road to a speed of just twenty MPH.
That directive also applied to the mechanical horses I mentioned before, with their diminutive engines these three wheeled tractor units could hardly manage to exceed that as a top speed unladed anyway.
But, at the end of the day, road speed has to be a bit of a compromise especially for those who do not posses the knowledge to alter a con fig file to suit their own particular needs.
As you said it's basically a train game not a road game, but better control of road traffic and it's behavior would I am certain be welcomed by a vast number of Trainz users.
 
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