Tracklaying and Repair on Cloned Routes: Questions, Strategies, Examples

C

C_Blabsky

Member
Routes downloaded with trackwork that calls for repair and/or adjustment, or simply altering a route for whatever reason - What are some ways to approach this?

Use layers to lift the track off the route (trackside stuff into another layer below)? Does this facilitate inspecting and changing/repair?

How to tell why derailments occur? Do attachments of crossings and roads affect the continuity of trackwork?

Thanks!
 
C_Blabsky said:
Routes downloaded with trackwork that calls for repair and/or adjustment, or simply altering a route for whatever reason - What are some ways to approach this?

Use layers to lift the track off the route (trackside stuff into another layer below)? Does this facilitate inspecting and changing/repair?

How to tell why derailments occur? Do attachments of crossings and roads affect the continuity of trackwork?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

You do mean routes off of the Download Station?

If so the clone the route - There are two ways to do this.

The easy way.

Open the route up in Surveyor.
Make a change.
Choose Save.

Your route is now yours.

Since route is now "yours", go ahead and edit to your heart's desire. There is no need for layers or anything fancy. If you want, you can put all the track-objects on their own layer, but this becomes a painful ordeal when changes are necessary, and stuff doesn't always get put on the layer when you want, with trees suddenly now on the track-objects layer, or track on the track-objects layer. Ideally this is a great idea, but the implementation I think is poor, and there is now another layer of thinking needed because there is no way at all, period and has been this way forever, of knowing which layer you're working on. Yes... we're supposed to get a fix for this sometime soon(tm), but we'ere not holding our breath. With that said, think KISS. It'll make your life much happier.

Yes a track disconnected from something can cause an issue and cause derailments, and derailments are usually caused by misaligned track splines either where the track joins other spline ends - those circles, or where the track attaches to a fixed-track object such as a road crossing, or to an industry track such as a station or industry. The other issue could be a junction missing a lever.

If you suspect there's an issue with the track, the best way to find it is to ride along with the AI.

Tell the AI to drive to the opposite end of the route. If the AI balks and complains that it can't plot route to destination (The message is similar to that), drive yourself for a bit then issue the command again. The AI will stop and complain more. Keep doing this and eventually you'll run into the spot along the line.

Tracks should be smoothed out. To ensure this, click on the spline circles with the adjust height tool (F4 then H for keyboard shortcuts if you want to use that.). There is no need to move anything; just click on the track circle. This will smooth out the track and get rid of any broken joints. When the track spline-point turns from white to yellow, you are golden. Sometimes clicking may not fix the problem and there maybe something else. There are cases where when adding track there's an extra spline point that somehow aims deep into the ground and comes up again and produces a weird junction. This isn't a bug and it's caused by clicking and placing track. The other issue too is sometimes the circles will look connected, but they are not. One circle will be yellow, but the other underlying track, almost exactly in the same spot, is not connected but appears that way. You can see this by looking carefully at the spline point. If the spline point appears slightly yellow with a white tinge, it means that one of the spline points isn't connected and level.

For industries and other fixed-track assets such as road crossings and stations, check that the track is really connected. This can be tricky, and sometimes the only way to tell if the circles line up is to drive manually and derail. If you suspect this is an issue somewhere, without derailing, take your mouse and drag the track using the move track "M" tool by clicking on the spline point at the fixed-track. If the connecting track slides, this is your culprit. If all else fails, add in another spline point nearby, delete that segment between the fixed-track object and the new spline point, and then drag the track to the fixed-track object.

For missing junctions, the AI will complain with a message like "Unable to plot route, junction missing lever." The newer variant of this is unable to plot route after Junction xxxxxx junction missing lever or something like that. This helps because you can find junction xxxxxx and then search from there. The other way is to drive. Keep driving yourself slowly in the problem area and you'll eventually come across the problem when you find yourself looking down upon your locomotive with a big yellow X floating over it.
 
Thanks, John, as always helpful!

I don't like those big yellow Xs. So I've been downloading routes, usually making a clone copy, and opening them up in Surveyor to check them out and see how stuff works. Using the UDS is great, and riding along is how I found these derailments. And it is sometimes difficult to see what is the underlying problem.

I have a bit of difficulty deleting track; will make some more attempts and also on the leveling.

After reading PWare's layer and Bulk Replace How-To's, I experimented with adding new layers and changing trees, inserting scenery into sessions, etc., and thought it might help with re-doing trackwork while keeping the underlying topology.
 
C_Blabsky said:
Thanks, John, as always helpful!

I don't like those big yellow Xs. So I've been downloading routes, usually making a clone copy, and opening them up in Surveyor to check them out and see how stuff works. Using the UDS is great, and riding along is how I found these derailments. And it is sometimes difficult to see what is the underlying problem.

I have a bit of difficulty deleting track; will make some more attempts and also on the leveling.

After reading PWare's layer and Bulk Replace How-To's, I experimented with adding new layers and changing trees, inserting scenery into sessions, etc., and thought it might help with re-doing trackwork while keeping the underlying topology.
Click to expand...

Yeah those big yellow X's are mean especially after you've been switching freight cars for over and hour then forget to flip a junction and put the train on the ground! I agree the UDS is great for troubleshooting stuff like this and I've been doing that myself since I started using it. This is something we asked for decades ago and now we have it.

Fixing track usually doesn't change the topology unless you do something drastic. Do a few things or small things at a time. Keep in mind that nothing gets broken and you can always restore from a backup. In fact if you are concerned, go into Content Manager and make a CDP first so that you have a hard backup before starting. I do this before I make major changes to a route such as merging, or make other drastic changes.

I find layers good for scenery stuff such as trees, but for track and track-objects they get sketchy. I keep a HOLD!!! layer attached to my Route-layer which is used for storing stuff while I adjust something in the vicinity such as putting crates on a loading dock, or moving parked cars into a parking lot attached to a building. Once everything is in place, I'll then move the asset on the HOLD!!! layer back to the route.

I will warn you though with the layers. Don't get mixed up and put track and related track-objects (signals, etc.) on the session layer inadvertently because the tracks won't appear in the route should you delete the session. I'm actually running into this issue with someone else's route that I'm proofing and testing for them. It gets really messy because there's no outward way of knowing where you are should you step away and come back afterwards. With my house being quite confusing 90% of the time, I've made this mistake more than once and then spent hours undoing the mess because I saved.

When deleting track, I find putting in an extra spline circle a bit before where I need to delete something. What this does is keep the deleted section in the area where I want and not take out a whole section by mistake.

Leveling track can be tricky. Touching the white spline point will level the track and turn the point yellow. You'll notice the track will look different as well, sometimes twisting and straightening at the same time. Once the track is leveled, you might find an empty space under the track - a peeve of mine! I will get the height of the track then adjust the terrain carefully underneath to that height.
 
With a combination of methods, some of the particular problems have been solved. Still in the experimenting stage, as I don't know enough to have a design strategy and just look at bits and pieces of other's work.

Art, Science, and Sorcery!

Thanks for the warning on layers. Right now they serve well for breaking down things for study. I can see leaving a couple of layers in the route for scenery changes as a route is built.

And another great tip about using the CM to quickly save a version.
 
I'm curious. You get a lot of derails? I on gold program so I've downloaded most every payware route and even more freeware and also some third party routes. I've encountered very very few track issues. If I derail it's always due to a wrong switch setting. If you are getting a lot of derails I wonder if something else could be going on? Bad asset or something?

Your original post says: "Routes downloaded with trackwork that calls for repair and/or adjustment," - Why? What Routes? Do you just want to change them on your own are do they really require "repair?"
 
Last edited:
You're lucky then. I've come across plenty of routes where the route's creator might have been brilliant at landscape sculpting and/or building towns, but can't lay track for toffee.
 
KotangaGirl said:
You're lucky then. I've come across plenty of routes where the route's creator might have been brilliant at landscape sculpting and/or building towns, but can't lay track for toffee.
Click to expand...

Hello,
Yes, I've seen a lot of routes where the track work was wanting for various reasons. But something that actually causes a derail is rare. I view this as two separate items. There is just poor track laying and then there are those "killer" things that cause derails. Poor track is fairly common, but the OP mentioned "How to tell how derails occurred" and so I interpreted that as actual flaws causing derails, not poor track laying.
 
Large gaps under tracks, floating roads and cars, gaps under buildings stuck on slopes, over wide cuttings and embankments are some of my pet hates.

I use layers a lot when I'm route building, have a temp layer where I shove things like stations and buildings like loco sheds if I'm putting stuff inside or on platforms so I can see what I'm doing. Also useful if you have a load of splines, shove walls and fences on a layer and switch it off, which leaves the track spline points visible and vice versa.
 
Nice

Originally mentioned 'cloned' routes as that's as far as I've gotten, and just messing around with these is a good learning experience. There's always the hope of creating a 'home' route of my own, although that may be far down the line. For now, discovering how this works and getting acquainted with the interfaces has taken the most time.

There is Lots of Information scattered about, but I value these discussions from actual experiences of grizzled vets. I usually try out whatever techniques are revealed, and since the start of this thread I've been busy. (insert appropriate emoji)
 
JCitron said:
Leveling track can be tricky. Touching the white spline point will level the track and turn the point yellow. You'll notice the track will look different as well, sometimes twisting and straightening at the same time. Once the track is leveled, you might find an empty space under the track - a peeve of mine! I will get the height of the track then adjust the terrain carefully underneath to that height.
Click to expand...

Why not just Smooth Spline?
 
clam1952 said:
Large gaps under tracks, floating roads and cars, gaps under buildings stuck on slopes, over wide cuttings and embankments are some of my pet hates.

I use layers a lot when I'm route building, have a temp layer where I shove things like stations and buildings like loco sheds if I'm putting stuff inside or on platforms so I can see what I'm doing. Also useful if you have a load of splines, shove walls and fences on a layer and switch it off, which leaves the track spline points visible and vice versa.
Click to expand...

My pet peeves as well and have been since I started Trainzing in 2003. The first route I downloaded had track and roads floating all over the place. The first thing I did was figure out how to tamp things down.
 
ecco said:
Why not just Smooth Spline?
Click to expand...

Because, talking UK here unless it's a double track a 5m embankment is far too wide and ridiculously wide on a 2ft NG route and if the route is using 10m grid even more of a mess. Smooth spline is one way quick way to destroy the terrain created in Transdem, it does have it's occasional uses though.

In 99% of cases an embankment spline does a far better and realistic job.
 
clam1952 said:
...
Also useful if you have a load of splines, shove walls and fences on a layer and switch it off, which leaves the track spline points visible and vice versa.
Click to expand...

In Settings - Interface Settings is an option: Limit Contextual Information. If you check this, track spline points will only show when you are in Track mode. When you are in Track mode, fence, shrub, road, etc spline points will not show.
Likewise, Track spline points don't show when in Objects mode.

Of course it doesn't relieve the congestion of spline points where you have shrubs, roads, telephone poles and fences.
The only downside is it's a bit more cumbersome to set crossings and attach roads and tracks.
 
ecco said:
In Settings - Interface Settings is an option: Limit Contextual Information. If you check this, track spline points will only show when you are in Track mode. When you are in Track mode, fence, shrub, road, etc spline points will not show.
Likewise, Track spline points don't show when in Objects mode.

Of course it doesn't relieve the congestion of spline points where you have shrubs, roads, telephone poles and fences.
The only downside is it's a bit more cumbersome to set crossings and attach roads and tracks.
Click to expand...


I was well aware of that, was having a senior moment....
 
Thanks for the "Limit Contextual Information" tip. I have been employing temporary layers that I can hide, too.

On one route I've identified numerous places where a road crosses, sometimes with a traffic generator or working gates, that all either need smoothing or more drastic surgery. It seems painstaking to do each one separately, but I wonder if there is a strategy for dealing with this and hope for suggestions. (No bulk replace for splines, right?) I wanted to separate these from the trackwork.
 
I was looking for an answer and found this!

JCitron said:
You do mean routes off of the Download Station?

If so the clone the route - There are two ways to do this.

The easy way.

Open the route up in Surveyor.
Make a change.
Choose Save.

Your route is now yours.

Since route is now "yours", go ahead and edit to your heart's desire. There is no need for layers or anything fancy. If you want, you can put all the track-objects on their own layer, but this becomes a painful ordeal when changes are necessary, and stuff doesn't always get put on the layer when you want, with trees suddenly now on the track-objects layer, or track on the track-objects layer. Ideally this is a great idea, but the implementation I think is poor, and there is now another layer of thinking needed because there is no way at all, period and has been this way forever, of knowing which layer you're working on. Yes... we're supposed to get a fix for this sometime soon(tm), but we'ere not holding our breath. With that said, think KISS. It'll make your life much happier.

Yes a track disconnected from something can cause an issue and cause derailments, and derailments are usually caused by misaligned track splines either where the track joins other spline ends - those circles, or where the track attaches to a fixed-track object such as a road crossing, or to an industry track such as a station or industry. The other issue could be a junction missing a lever.

If you suspect there's an issue with the track, the best way to find it is to ride along with the AI.

Tell the AI to drive to the opposite end of the route. If the AI balks and complains that it can't plot route to destination (The message is similar to that), drive yourself for a bit then issue the command again. The AI will stop and complain more. Keep doing this and eventually you'll run into the spot along the line.

Tracks should be smoothed out. To ensure this, click on the spline circles with the adjust height tool (F4 then H for keyboard shortcuts if you want to use that.). There is no need to move anything; just click on the track circle. This will smooth out the track and get rid of any broken joints. When the track spline-point turns from white to yellow, you are golden. Sometimes clicking may not fix the problem and there maybe something else. There are cases where when adding track there's an extra spline point that somehow aims deep into the ground and comes up again and produces a weird junction. This isn't a bug and it's caused by clicking and placing track. The other issue too is sometimes the circles will look connected, but they are not. One circle will be yellow, but the other underlying track, almost exactly in the same spot, is not connected but appears that way. You can see this by looking carefully at the spline point. If the spline point appears slightly yellow with a white tinge, it means that one of the spline points isn't connected and level.

For industries and other fixed-track assets such as road crossings and stations, check that the track is really connected. This can be tricky, and sometimes the only way to tell if the circles line up is to drive manually and derail. If you suspect this is an issue somewhere, without derailing, take your mouse and drag the track using the move track "M" tool by clicking on the spline point at the fixed-track. If the connecting track slides, this is your culprit. If all else fails, add in another spline point nearby, delete that segment between the fixed-track object and the new spline point, and then drag the track to the fixed-track object.

For missing junctions, the AI will complain with a message like "Unable to plot route, junction missing lever." The newer variant of this is unable to plot route after Junction xxxxxx junction missing lever or something like that. This helps because you can find junction xxxxxx and then search from there. The other way is to drive. Keep driving yourself slowly in the problem area and you'll eventually come across the problem when you find yourself looking down upon your locomotive with a big yellow X floating over it.
Click to expand...

The part I'm interested in is this:

"The newer variant of this is unable to plot route after Junction xxxxxx junction missing lever or something like that. This helps because you can find junction xxxxxx and then search from there"


But what exactly am I looking for? and what is the fix?

I thought a junction was just a dot with a numbered name on a map where tracks came together, so why does it need a lever and how do I put one there?

I had a problem with this in the Cumberland to Connellsville route and now I have another in the Baltimore to Connellsville & West Mega Route and I would like to be able to fix these. The only track related work I've done is to add portals to the Clinchfield TRS route so this is all new to me.

Willy
 
WildWillyWacko said:
The part I'm interested in is this:

"The newer variant of this is unable to plot route after Junction xxxxxx junction missing lever or something like that. This helps because you can find junction xxxxxx and then search from there"


But what exactly am I looking for? and what is the fix?

I thought a junction was just a dot with a numbered name on a map where tracks came together, so why does it need a lever and how do I put one there?

I had a problem with this in the Cumberland to Connellsville route and now I have another in the Baltimore to Connellsville & West Mega Route and I would like to be able to fix these. The only track related work I've done is to add portals to the Clinchfield TRS route so this is all new to me.

Willy
Click to expand...

When you add tracks, a junction lever is usually added automatically. Each junction is then given a number so it can be found on the map. You can rename a junction to anything you want by clicking on the ? in the track-objects menu, and then clicking on the junction. With the little panel open, you can rename it by clicking in the name field.

Sometimes, it's not as bad as it used to be, junctions somehow don't get their junction lever. In this case, you can add one from the track-objects menu. They have various names such as switch machine, switch lever, etc., You can also use this to replace the red-stick levers put in by default to something you like by using this in conjunction with the bulk update/replace/delete tool.

You can end up with missing levers by deleting them by accident. I've done this and then not noticed afterwards. Grr!

Another case of junction missing a lever is the lever isn't missing, but during editing the track was stretched and the lever is now too far from the track spline point to work properly. Using the track-objects menu, you can slide the junction lever back in place and that fixes the problem. I most case, the faulty junction is all read instead of having both red and green arrows.
 
JCitron said:
When you add tracks, a junction lever is usually added automatically. Each junction is then given a number so it can be found on the map. You can rename a junction to anything you want by clicking on the ? in the track-objects menu, and then clicking on the junction. With the little panel open, you can rename it by clicking in the name field.

Sometimes, it's not as bad as it used to be, junctions somehow don't get their junction lever. In this case, you can add one from the track-objects menu. They have various names such as switch machine, switch lever, etc., You can also use this to replace the red-stick levers put in by default to something you like by using this in conjunction with the bulk update/replace/delete tool.

You can end up with missing levers by deleting them by accident. I've done this and then not noticed afterwards. Grr!

Another case of junction missing a lever is the lever isn't missing, but during editing the track was stretched and the lever is now too far from the track spline point to work properly. Using the track-objects menu, you can slide the junction lever back in place and that fixes the problem. I most case, the faulty junction is all read instead of having both red and green arrows.
Click to expand...

I turn this "feature" off since I use switch machines that have right and left side versions on my NG routes. I try to have the indictor on the driver side unless the track work doesn't permit it. And I have to consider right and left divergent turnouts. One size doesn't fit all cases with these switch machines. So I always add them manually. I usually get it right with the 2nd try. I mean there's only 2 choices. But if I haven't figured it out by the 3rd attempt it's time to get up and take a break.

Bob Pearson
 
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