Home Tutorials Rail Simulator - Tracklaying 101: Placing a Switch

Rail Simulator - Tracklaying 101: Placing a Switch

by Jim "Sniper" Ward

Laying simple track is a no brainer, but connecting complex stuff together takes some figuring out. In the Rail Simulator\Manuals folder there are subfolders for language, if yours is English read the PDF files in the EN subfolder.

First problem, how to make a switch?

Each of the flyouts has a little pushpin icon in the upper right, click on that to stop from retracting if that's a problem. Top window click the track tool, middle choose the texture, bottom window replace the 1 with a 2 in the track number window.

Autocrossover won't work except on straight track, so hold down the CTRL key and wiggle the track back and forth until it locks in place going straight. Yellow lines indicate no curvature. I haven't experimented with this much so I don't know for sure, but I once made an extreme grade using the CTRL key, so it might be best to enable snap to terrain to make it flat.

Turn off snap to track, select the crossover tool, then reselect the track texture (or choose a different one). Move over one of the tracks, when the yellow gizmo appears stretch out and across to the other track. How far you stretch depends on what you want the radius of the switch to be, stretch further for high speed crossovers.

A gray box (not shown here) appears above the crossover after you release it, if you want a symmetrical double crossover with a diamond, click on the gray box. If not, click anywhere else and you have a single crossover. To convert from crossover to single-to-double track junction switch select the house icon (select object), click on the straight track beyond the switch, hit the DELETE key.

That autogenerates a pair of buffers where the track you just deleted was connected, to fix that select the weld tool, then click on the gray box above the buffers.

All done!

15 Nov 2007