3 Track Cajon Project

[Tomcat]

I now have 2 missing track bins, Buzz, I haven't got a clue as to how to check what they actually affect in the game, they both show as loft and road items in RW Tools, and it won't let you delete them as they aren't scenery assets, and I don't want to delete them anyway, if they are important features. They both look as though they have been created by the author, and have slipped through the net in the asset checking stage, I'll wait until he comes back and informs us what to do.

Cheerz. Steve.

Steve,

The missing track bins are not important, they were just tests I was playing with when I first started the route a couple of years ago. I'll get rid of references to them before a final release. Thanks for pointing them out though, this is exactly the kind of information I wanted from the alpha release.

The flying service platform is a bit of a mystery. That asset is from SMMDigital and it's called 'SMM_LocomotiveService0' which you'll find under the 'Commercial/Industrial Buildings' filter. When I select that asset from the list it appears underground and I have to lift it up to ground level, from the looks of it, by exactly the amount it is lifted off the ground for you. What you see is the entire asset, there are no pieces missing. Now the question is why do I have to lift it up to ground level? I'm not a modeller but I thought that maybe the 'pivot' point has a negative value (I have no idea if that is the right term) Does anyone else have this problem? There is another instance of this asset used at the West Colton yard at the locomotive service area, is that one raised for you as well?

I tried placing the asset in several other routes, both freeware and DTG payware and it always appears initially underground upon placement for me.

Here is how it appears to me. If I hit the 'J' key to reset the asset to ground level it gets moved to beneath ground level by several meters;

Screenshot_Cajon_Mojave_34.08819--117.31898_06-17-59.jpg

[Tomcat]

Hey Tomcat,
I got it fixed, the route being inside was exactly the problem. Absolutely beautiful !!!!! I'm looking forward to future releases. Great job sir

Ed

Thanks Ed, glad you got it working. If you find anything wacky, like ex-railwayman did, please let me know.

[ex-railwayman]

Hmmm, this structure is indeed a mystery then, Tim. That screenshot I posted I have since noted down as being at the Metrolink EMF, which I assume is Engine Maintenance Facility, so, you might be correct in stating that the asset doesn't need to be 10 feet off the ground, logically speaking, maybe it is a quirk of the scripting and the item just requires to be brought up to ground level ordinarily then and left alone, I'll try that, thanks for your feedback, and I won't worry about the missing trackrule bin files now, either.

Ya know, this is a staggering route, I've been in San Berno and Colton Yards for about 3 hours and haven't got out yet, it's phenomenal the amount of track mileage you have included, absolutely outstanding, I'm mesmerised as to how much you have put down, and there's no stuttering, or, lag at all, anywhere, it's superb, well done, this area could be a layout all on its own, never mind the rest of the route.

Cheerz. Steve.

[BoostedFridge]

I've made 4 scenarios now for the route, each covering a new area. I am still struggling to fill a single page in my notebook of fixes to suggest for you.

There are a lot of single track sidings that need a 'buried' speed sign to make their speed show up in the HUD.

I would also suggest either buried signals, or buried yard signals for the yard tracks at Colton, and Barstow. This will allow AI and player trains to operate in the yard without some of the strange glitches or errors from having two trains in the same 'block'.

I haven't found any areas of track yet that I would call 'rough'. Most of the mainlines have the unevenness set to 20, which is quite smooth. Remember, at the high speeds of much of the main track on this route, even small amounts of unevenness will cause cab sway. I have been using a value of 35 for the mainline on the Cascade line, and 45-55 for the Siskiyou line.

There isn't much that can be done about the cab sway on the easements into superelevation. Its much better than taking the superelevation out of a corner, and having your train start to tip up on two wheels!

[ex-railwayman]

Hello, me again........I have a missing road bridge on the back line out of San Bernardino Station, I have attached screenshots so you can see the location, I have nothing showing as missing in my RW Tools, unsure if as it is on the edge of the route you have actually placed one there, or, not!!!

Cheerz. Steve.

San Bern missing bridge 1.jpg

San Bern missing bridge 2.jpg

[Tomcat]

BoostedFridge:

Yeah, I've delayed signalling the yards mostly because the yards are so darn big it gives me a headache just thinking about trying to signal them. I'll have to poke around in some other routes to see how it was done. I think Bob did that with the MRL so I await it's release so I can look at how he did it. Minerman, I think, did it as well with the Bergen Line so once I get back into the groove I'll have a look at that as well.

The speed limits I was slowly working on before the alpha release and there is still much to do. I started with buried speed signs in the Barstow receiving yard since two of those tracks are pass through with a speed of 25 rather than 10 or 15. The problem is, I need a rigorous testing method because many times once the signs are buried I promptly forget which tracks I did. I'm probably going to have to print out yard schematics and mark off each track as I do it or I'll get confused really fast. Yards and I don't get along so well unless I'm properly lubricated with a bit of brandy or Kahlua in my coffee, and then we get along even less well but I don't care so much.

As far as rough rides go, cab sway doesn't bother me, it's more the bump as you enter or exit an easement that aggravates me. Once I get my little test route finished and post a link here I think you'll see what bothers me and a few others. It's still not perfect track work but it's head and shoulders above anything I've done up to this point. Another thing that crossed my mind as I was working on the test was the issue of distant terrain... what do you think of this... suppose I create a route with the same starting coords as Cajon Mojave and before I do anything else I extract all of the terrain that would cover Cajon Mojave and then run distant terrain and then if, by some miracle, distant terrain works then I take the distant terrain folder and copy it over to Cajon Mojave. I guess it's worth a shot unless you think that would not work at all.

Can't wait to run your new scenarios! I've run your first one twice so far and haven't gotten tired of it at all. Same thing with gtrtrogers first scenario which I've run three times but only completed once so far because I misjudged how long it would take to stop that heavy a train and sailed merrily through the same red signal twice.

[Tomcat]

Hello, me again........I have a missing road bridge on the back line out of San Bernardino Station, I have attached screenshots so you can see the location, I have nothing showing as missing in my RW Tools, unsure if as it is on the edge of the route you have actually placed one there, or, not!!!

Cheerz. Steve.

Morning Steve,

You got me! There is no bridge at that location and I don't think I would have ever noticed, but now that you pointed it out I can't help but see it. California Department of Transportation has been notified, superintendent fired and a crew dispatched forthwith.

Tim

[ex-railwayman]

Thanks for responding Tim, sorry to put you to all this trouble, I just wanted to do a bit of switching and then run a local freight from that area into San Berno Yard.

Cheerz. Steve.

[BoostedFridge]

The speed limits I was slowly working on before the alpha release and there is still much to do. I started with buried speed signs in the Barstow receiving yard since two of those tracks are pass through with a speed of 25 rather than 10 or 15. The problem is, I need a rigorous testing method because many times once the signs are buried I promptly forget which tracks I did.

What I would suggest for those huge yards is if the entire yard section has the same speed limit; 10mph for example, then have a speed sign for that speed on one of the root tracks, that the ladder tracks branch off of. That way any train coming or going from the yard can see the impending speed change. That way you don't have to put a speed sign on each one.

Another thing that crossed my mind as I was working on the test was the issue of distant terrain... what do you think of this... suppose I create a route with the same starting coords as Cajon Mojave and before I do anything else I extract all of the terrain that would cover Cajon Mojave and then run distant terrain and then if, by some miracle, distant terrain works then I take the distant terrain folder and copy it over to Cajon Mojave. I guess it's worth a shot unless you think that would not work at all.

Its a good idea, and worth the few hours it would take to try out. The issue with the distant terrain on the version of the route you sent me was absolutely maddening. I was convinced that there was a texture in your terrain .bin file that was not being read properly. There was a reference by another route builder in an old thread to a very similar problem when he added DT, which convinced me that was the issue. I went through and tested each texture, and couldn't find one that would consistently generate those 'patches' in the DT.

If you are going to try to transplant the DT, make sure that the route you are generating it in has the EXACT same textures in the environment/terrain/xxxxxterrain.bin file. The order of the textures is whats crucial. When you generate DT, it will colour those tiles based on the terrain texture colours in that file.

Good luck!

[Tomcat]

Thanks for responding Tim, sorry to put you to all this trouble, I just wanted to do a bit of switching and then run a local freight from that area into San Berno Yard.

Cheerz. Steve.

No worries Steve, if anything I should be thanking you for taking the time to point things out. If it's no trouble for you, then keep pointing out my boo boos and I'll do my best to address them.

Tim

[Tomcat]

What I would suggest for those huge yards is if the entire yard section has the same speed limit; 10mph for example, then have a speed sign for that speed on one of the root tracks, that the ladder tracks branch off of. That way any train coming or going from the yard can see the impending speed change. That way you don't have to put a speed sign on each one.

Yep, that was the plan. If a junction branches out to 20 tracks I wasn't going to bury speed signs for each track if they are all the same. I mentioned the Barstow receiving yard because of the pass through tracks at a different speed than the rest of the yard... I have to remember there are a few in West Colton as well.

Its a good idea, and worth the few hours it would take to try out. The issue with the distant terrain on the version of the route you sent me was absolutely maddening. I was convinced that there was a texture in your terrain .bin file that was not being read properly. There was a reference by another route builder in an old thread to a very similar problem when he added DT, which convinced me that was the issue. I went through and tested each texture, and couldn't find one that would consistently generate those 'patches' in the DT.

If you are going to try to transplant the DT, make sure that the route you are generating it in has the EXACT same textures in the environment/terrain/xxxxxterrain.bin file. The order of the textures is whats crucial. When you generate DT, it will colour those tiles based on the terrain texture colours in that file.

Good luck!

What I might try first is just clone the route and take out the MixMap folder on the clone and then run DT to see if by some miracle that might work, if it doesn't then I'll give a blank route a try with just extracted terrain.

[Tomcat]

Further observations on DT.

Taking out the MixMap folder from Cajon_Mojave resulted in no joy. DT was borked from the get go and it was plainly obvious from watching the DT window processing the terrain.

I spent 2 hours extracting terrain on my test route which covers the same area as Cajon_Mojave but with the 0,0 tile at the San Bernardino yard gate just South of Baseline instead of the 0,0 tile being at Summit. I have done only 5 or 6 tiles of painting and that was pretty much just roadbed underpainting with the gravel texture from the 0,0 tile till Ono, 5 miles of track tops. Now I run DT and it works 99.9% flawlessly. The .1% screw-up are the East-West black lines that show up at -31, +31 and +93. This certainly seems like a pattern so I took a quick look at Tehachapi Pass, the only other route I have with DT, and the East-West black line at Sand Cut seems to be around 31 tiles North of the 0,0 tile.

Now I'm thinking, for the future, that it may be possible, with some planning about where to place the 0,0 tile, to position the black line where it will be the least intrusive. On my test route it just happens to be in a very bad place as it runs parallel to both the Cutoff from Phelan to Palmdale and parallel to the Lucerne Valley sub on the Northern face of the San Bernardino range. I'm going to start a fresh route, same area, with the 0,0 tile placed a bit further North, maybe 10 to 15 tiles, from the San Bernardino yard gate, hopefully placing the black line through Lancaster where it will be hidden by all the structures and crossing, fingers crossed, the Cajon sub in an area that is fairly flat - perhaps falling somewhere between Oro Grande and Helendale.

I'm not hopeful that this will mean that Cajon_Mojave will someday have DT, I still have to run the test where I recreate Cajon_Mojave with the same coords and see where the lines fall... if moving the DT folder would even work.

That's it for now. Just tossing this out there for any route builders contemplating DT for their route. This may be something to consider... or it may be all hot air. More later after another test or two.

[Bananarama]

Tim,

I hadn't considered that it was the number of tiles from the start point...good find...I had thought it was dependant on lat/lon. Either way, you may have to stick with the original route start tile, as everything else is based from this point and may otherwise screw up further work, or worse, cause you to have to relay track/roads and then alter the scenery tile names.

I've tried every which way 'til Sunday to get rid of the line on Tehachapi - going so far as to move track/roads on a back up copy. Nothing worked. Very frustrating.

The only way to remove the black line would be to delete the textures folder in the route's Terrain directory. However, this will also mean that DT won't have textures and instead rely on the DT terrain color specified in the texturing.bin. Not too bad for Cajon, as the DT colors would fairly consistent from season to season - except for winter of course.

I reported this issue to DTG a few years back, but either they don't care or are unable to fix. Good to know that you may have found the cause, as this will help in planning future projects. I have a couple that needed to be redone anyway.

[BoostedFridge]

Those East-West running black lines appear at the exact same distance interval as you move North-South. I believe its every 60 miles, or something like that. I have 3 of them on the Siskiyou. They vanish as the 'camera' gets close to them, but still appear in the distance. An absolute PITA, but seem to be unavoidable with distant terrain enabled.

[Bananarama]

Those East-West running black lines appear at the exact same distance interval as you move North-South. I believe its every 60 miles, or something like that. I have 3 of them on the Siskiyou. They vanish as the 'camera' gets close to them, but still appear in the distance. An absolute PITA, but seem to be unavoidable with distant terrain enabled.

The lines will only be visible so long as there is a textures folder in the Terrain directory.