We have a gazillion kinds of track with a gazillion styles of ballast, and surfaces, but for some reason we can't always find what we're looking for. Over the years I have customized various track splines made by others including Wearsprada, Simulatortrain, Jointed Rail, lielestobrat, and others. The changes range from simply creating very bad or bad condition track to outright modifying the ballast.
In addition to track, I have also created a bunch of track on retaining walls, embankments, bridges, and other tracks to suit my needs. While these are great for my use, and are used on my routes, I have no plans for uploading or sharing. If someone were to do this and then share a route, the track dependency would need to be uploaded to the DLS and of course permission would be essential for this even for this one asset.
These are all some of my cloned tracks shown here. The crisscrossed tracks are Pro-tracks by lielestobrat while the tracks towards the front are those by Wearsprada and Simulatortrain.
The changes are simple. For the Wearsprada rusty US 132# track, I cloned and modified the config.txt to create an old bumpy yard track. This change came about when I wanted bumpy rocky, rolling, sidings and old branch lines and I was tired of updating the track condition on each and every segment.
I call this track JR US track #1-132 rust ---- Very bad condition.
After cloning, I opened the config.txt file and added the following tag:
This is an example with the condition set to 10%:
track-condition "0.10"
The track-condition tag works in percentages so a 0.01, or 1% would really be bad. I go down as low as 5% or 0.05 and my freight wagons roll and tip all over when running anything over 15 mph, and use the 1% for old rickety sidings and coal branch lines. It's way cool to watch.
Track textures are a bit more complex, and won't go into full detail here. For that I find another track I like, such as the rusty spur one, and then clone the texture from that, and replace an existing track and tie texture with something else as I did with the JR US track #1-132 Rusty Spur ---- Very bad condition ---- 1% shown in the yard.
This too was Wearsprada's rusty 132# track that I cloned. I took the spur texture from the Jointed Rail Spur 1, and substituted that for the existing ballast. It took a little bit of work in Paint.net to remove the tie shadow hard-painted into the dirt, but nonetheless the effect is pretty good. I use this track on various less than well used routes and sidings. I know the view needs grass, but as always routes are WIP forever.
The Pro-Tracks series are a bit more complex, in structure, but are essentially the same as all other tracks we use. The advantage to them is their libraries. The textures and track parts are in two separate libraries so that one can modify rails but keep the ballast the same, or as I have done removed the rails, but kept the ties and placed that on my clone of the ballast. Here I used a bit of Jointed Rails dirt ind tex as the grade and replaced the existing ballast. That took a bit of fiddling with and what I have are empty old ties sitting on the ground. This is great for those long lost sidings and spurs. The tracks also can use the track-condition tag so there are some bad and very bad condition tracks available in my collection.
The Pro-Tracks shown have the ballast acquired from ST 100# Jointed Rail Track [B/Rust/Old] and applied to the Pro Track texture library. There are two textures in the particular library for the LRW tracks and what was the dark texture became the coal texture while the light ballast became the sandy dirt. The dark coal track I've used, with the rusty rails, on some coal branches. That particular track also has a 1% track-condition and seeing the those coal wagons nearly tip over is quite awesome. I actually saw sidings like that in eastern PA a few years ago with trains on them!
As seen on the right, is a concrete bridge. This is Concrete Bridge 01 without Catenary with the track substituted with JR NS5 tracks. I did a series of these with different tracks to suit the line I was building. In this case I manually placed the BDW cat back on for my tram line.
To substitute tracks in bridges, embankments, and other similar assets, you need to modify the config.txt. After cloning the asset, I replaced the Kuid for the existing track with one that I found suitable. When doing changes like this, remember to also update the kuid-table as well.
Substituting the track with an invisible track can create an abandoned line, or make it easier to place track on a different center. Taking an Embankment 2track, I created various ones with rusty old track, and various other tracks I've used. I also replaced the track completely with BNSF50 invisible tracks. Shown here I put some rusty track in place on top of the embankment, with the invisible track underneath, and put the mill at the end of the spur. This can also be done with a single track by replacing one of the tracks with an invisible track, when two different tracks are used, however, this asset uses a single track asset making this impossible so both are invisible and I placed my own track on top.
I hope you all find this helpful. This is an easy way to create one's own tracks that are suitable for a specific condition or place.
In addition to track, I have also created a bunch of track on retaining walls, embankments, bridges, and other tracks to suit my needs. While these are great for my use, and are used on my routes, I have no plans for uploading or sharing. If someone were to do this and then share a route, the track dependency would need to be uploaded to the DLS and of course permission would be essential for this even for this one asset.
These are all some of my cloned tracks shown here. The crisscrossed tracks are Pro-tracks by lielestobrat while the tracks towards the front are those by Wearsprada and Simulatortrain.
The changes are simple. For the Wearsprada rusty US 132# track, I cloned and modified the config.txt to create an old bumpy yard track. This change came about when I wanted bumpy rocky, rolling, sidings and old branch lines and I was tired of updating the track condition on each and every segment.
I call this track JR US track #1-132 rust ---- Very bad condition.
After cloning, I opened the config.txt file and added the following tag:
This is an example with the condition set to 10%:
track-condition "0.10"
The track-condition tag works in percentages so a 0.01, or 1% would really be bad. I go down as low as 5% or 0.05 and my freight wagons roll and tip all over when running anything over 15 mph, and use the 1% for old rickety sidings and coal branch lines. It's way cool to watch.
Track textures are a bit more complex, and won't go into full detail here. For that I find another track I like, such as the rusty spur one, and then clone the texture from that, and replace an existing track and tie texture with something else as I did with the JR US track #1-132 Rusty Spur ---- Very bad condition ---- 1% shown in the yard.
This too was Wearsprada's rusty 132# track that I cloned. I took the spur texture from the Jointed Rail Spur 1, and substituted that for the existing ballast. It took a little bit of work in Paint.net to remove the tie shadow hard-painted into the dirt, but nonetheless the effect is pretty good. I use this track on various less than well used routes and sidings. I know the view needs grass, but as always routes are WIP forever.
The Pro-Tracks series are a bit more complex, in structure, but are essentially the same as all other tracks we use. The advantage to them is their libraries. The textures and track parts are in two separate libraries so that one can modify rails but keep the ballast the same, or as I have done removed the rails, but kept the ties and placed that on my clone of the ballast. Here I used a bit of Jointed Rails dirt ind tex as the grade and replaced the existing ballast. That took a bit of fiddling with and what I have are empty old ties sitting on the ground. This is great for those long lost sidings and spurs. The tracks also can use the track-condition tag so there are some bad and very bad condition tracks available in my collection.
The Pro-Tracks shown have the ballast acquired from ST 100# Jointed Rail Track [B/Rust/Old] and applied to the Pro Track texture library. There are two textures in the particular library for the LRW tracks and what was the dark texture became the coal texture while the light ballast became the sandy dirt. The dark coal track I've used, with the rusty rails, on some coal branches. That particular track also has a 1% track-condition and seeing the those coal wagons nearly tip over is quite awesome. I actually saw sidings like that in eastern PA a few years ago with trains on them!
As seen on the right, is a concrete bridge. This is Concrete Bridge 01 without Catenary with the track substituted with JR NS5 tracks. I did a series of these with different tracks to suit the line I was building. In this case I manually placed the BDW cat back on for my tram line.
To substitute tracks in bridges, embankments, and other similar assets, you need to modify the config.txt. After cloning the asset, I replaced the Kuid for the existing track with one that I found suitable. When doing changes like this, remember to also update the kuid-table as well.
Substituting the track with an invisible track can create an abandoned line, or make it easier to place track on a different center. Taking an Embankment 2track, I created various ones with rusty old track, and various other tracks I've used. I also replaced the track completely with BNSF50 invisible tracks. Shown here I put some rusty track in place on top of the embankment, with the invisible track underneath, and put the mill at the end of the spur. This can also be done with a single track by replacing one of the tracks with an invisible track, when two different tracks are used, however, this asset uses a single track asset making this impossible so both are invisible and I placed my own track on top.
I hope you all find this helpful. This is an easy way to create one's own tracks that are suitable for a specific condition or place.
