Home
Tutorials
Rail Simulator - Creating Yard Ladders |
|
Home
Tutorials
Rail Simulator - Creating Yard Ladders |
Rail Simulator's track laying tool is all about freestyle flexibility and only maximum length and minimum radius are predetermined.Whether the following is useful or not depends on how fussy you are about precision, some rounding off and limits as to how precise the mouse movement is means it won't be exact.
92 feet is about 28 meters, so start with a 28 meter straght for the #8 turnout.
The minumum is 100 meters so we'll go with that, stretching the length to match the straight part like the drawing (of an AREA #8 switch). After that, those who like snap track, CTRL and select both straight and curved pieces, CTRL C to copy to clipboard.
CTRL V to paste duplicate clones all over the landscape. Snap to track doesn't seem to work with this, so we've got to use the join tool to move each piece to the existing track;
Select the track to be moved first, track you want to snap it to second.
When you select the curved piece, grab it at the end you want to attach, cuz if you grab the opposite end it will flip and you get a left hand switch. Note where the yellow lines are, if I select the end section the curve will snap to the end instead of making a switch.
Once it snaps the points & frogs are automatically created.
Probably a simpler method would be to start each switch with the doohickie right after the guard rails, then stop the curve when the end is at the edge of the straight. Won't be EXACT exact that way, but would be a lot faster to do.
So let's try that - it looks more prototypical as far as spacing somehow.
Place doohickie at end of guard rails, stretch until outside edge of curve touches inside edge of straight. Or, make it more curved, use the length number at the bottom to make each one the same.
Starting from the end of each switch attach another piece, hold down CTRL key to make a straight track:
Paint with gravel or tarmac to fill in between:
Switch to scenario editor, populate with cars:
Comment by Dave Nelson: FWIW, the ideal appearance for the diverging path is a curve almost up to the frog, a straight thru the frog and then an identical curve in the reverse direction to bring the second track back to parallel, spaced for either yard or mainline distance.
For an AREA Number 8 switch, the radius of the curve between the points and the tangent leading thru the frog would be 509 ft. The points themselves would have a bit of a curve to them too (762 ft) so the total curvature would have to be an average of the two.
Track centre-to-centre spacing varied by era, railroad, and situation (e.g., wider for congruent curves with the extra amount varying by curve radius) but for most of the 20th century you'd find 13' center to center spacing to be the most common "standard" used in North American yards and 16' spacing out on the main.
Back to Jim: Let's take a whack at it: I'll start next to another switch so I get an idea of about where the frog will be generated, make a 100 meter radius curve 12 meters long and stop.
No frog cuz it's too short, drag a 10 meter straight (hold down the CTRL key to get a straight segment).
Drag a curve from the end of the straight the opposite way to align with mainline, note the frog is in the straight section.
Probably the easiest way to do that is to lay doubletrack, use the crossover tool, then delete extra track sections and weld to make a regular switch. That's only if you're not fussy about curved frogs, of course, but the general idea is you can pretty much make whatever kind of Xtracks sections you want, doing it in short segments. It's actually a lot easier to do than it is to describe once you get used to it.
13 feet center to center? 13 divided by 3.3 is about 3.9 meters, I'm measuring 3.53 on the mainline. Theoretically it will be possible to write our own track rule sets in the future, meantime spread 'em out and use the multiple copy & paste so you don't have to measure twice.
13 Nov 2007