Amtrak Acela

[micaelcorleone]

Announced by RSC in the latest showcase and scheduled for two weeks after the NEC release, now we have a first WIP:

"Hi all,

I would like to show you the progress made on the Acela, currently still work in progress, but as you see it is coming along great. Ricardo 'Reppo' Rivera is modelling this for us and doing a fantastic job, we at RS.com towers are really looking forward to this train!

regards
Derek"



Oh happy day!

[ATSF3814]

Oh yeah! Looking forward to flying down the tracks in this thing at 150 mph.

[imnew]

Great job ! NEC Acela AEM and all that other stuff, and a technical update.... xmas starts early this year Its friday. Cheers RW HQ

[styckx]

Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside

[IIIIIREPOIIIII]

Ok bad enough that i cant sleep since you gave us the date of 24,June for the NEC,Now you gotta show us this Dreams of packing the NEC full of GG-1's in black amtrak,silver amtrak repaints & And the Tuscan red herself rolling along next to them old pc freights Then the brand new Tosters come along = NO SLEEP i feel like im getting sooooo waiting for this!

[styckx]

Will drop a subtle request/suggestion before this model gets too far along..

Possible to add the retractable mirrors? It's sort of a unique feature with the Acela (and HHP-8).. I know Railworks can't do "mirror" effects but it's a little unique feature of the power units and part of daily operations.

In use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuej4GpTn0

[SithMurcielago]

As always if you need anything from me let me know I have all the tech info on these babies, Plus some diagrams on my website.

[Chessie8638]

Cab photo: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... ?id=494981

Plus the training simulator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YG-haI4WXg

Also the screen, not sure which one (but they can be switched anyway): http://www.flickr.com/photos/cluth/1051 ... 4071228203

[Reppo]

Hello, I hope you are fine, I introduce me, my name is Ricardo and I am the developer of the Acela Express trainset for Railworks. The English is not my mother language so I hope you have patience with me.
I hope you feel free to ask any question about the developing of this project. At same way I hope you can help me and point me in the right direction when I have some doubt about technical stuff.

Thanks for your nice words about this work.


Regards.

[SithMurcielago]

Well let us know if you anything and we will be very happy to help.

I have a question about the hatch on the Acela? Will it be possible to script the hatch to open by pressing a key or an object like another train approaching the front will trigger the hatch to open and show the front couplers?

[micaelcorleone]

Hi Reppo.

Nice you join us here. Welcome.
On Facebook someone said you are from Chile? Cool thing.

Your model looks awesome so far.
But I have a first thing to complain about.

The blind under the frontwindows where the motors of the wipers are located seems to me to be a lot larger than in reality(?) and the frontlights seem to be a bit too low.

[Hawk]

But I have a first thing to complain about.

You rivet counters are never happy, are you?

[arizonachris]

You rivet counters are never happy, are you?

No, seems like we're not, altho I don't count every rivet, just every few.

Bienvenidos, Ricardo. Welcome to RWA. Yo habla mucho Espanol, pero no escriba mucho. Your English is fine.

[Reppo]

Hello and thank for your welcome, I am sure that I will find constructive help here.

As you can imagine, I would like to make all little detail of the model but sadly many times it is not possible, anyway I will try to get the max number of nice things that this so beatiful train has. For example, currently and even with many modelling tasks to do, I am working in the script which I hope achieves the tilt feature, I am pleased to say that this feature is almost finished with full success.

Now, I would like ask for your help for developing of cab. Currently I have a decent graphic material to use like base to model, but I don't know anything about the functionality of each lever, button, light or gauge on the cab desk. I will be very pleased if anyone can indicate what is the function for each control.

Any extra info about the driving operations like check procedures or starting procedures will be very useful to add to this train. Currently I am the developer of the scripts for Oovee so I am get use to work with special features.

Hi Reppo.
On Facebook someone said you are from Chile? Cool thing.

Yes, I am from Chile, country of great wines, beatiful women and earthquakes.

The blind under the frontwindows where the motors of the wipers are located seems to me to be a lot larger than in reality(?) and the frontlights seem to be a bit too low.

Both issues are currently solved.

I have a question about the hatch on the Acela? Will it be possible to script the hatch to open by pressing a key or an object like another train approaching the front will trigger the hatch to open and show the front couplers?

I am afraid this feature is much more difficult to achieve due to collision box, we can not have 2 different collision boxes, one for open nose and the another for closed nose. Anyway I don't like discard anything.

Possible to add the retractable mirrors?

Maybe, but I don't want to promise anything, all extra work depends of the available time, which always is short.

Bienvenidos, Ricardo. Welcome to RWA. Yo habla mucho Espanol, pero no escriba mucho. Your English is fine.

Muchas gracias.


Thanks in advance.

Best regards.

[micaelcorleone]

Any extra info about the driving operations like check procedures or starting procedures will be very useful to add to this train. Currently I am the developer of the scripts for Oovee so I am get use to work with special features.

"Both issues are currently solved."

Excellent. You do the Oovee scripts? Hehe. This means outstanding quality for the Acela. Excellent, excellent.

EDIT: Maybe this can help you Reppo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YG-haI4WXg

EDIT2: I hope you can include a working cab signalling system. I think you need to talk to RS.com about this as they might develop their own for the AEM7 and the NEC route.


EDIT3: I've found some pictures (with description) and a huge gallery of Acela shots (see links). One picture says that the Acela has a speed control. This would be a nice feature for the model. I know that this is possible as the class390 tilt train for RW also has this feature (activation with Q).


gallery ( the cab-related shots are spread over the pages): http://fiveprime.org/flickr_hvmnd.cgi?method=GET&page=1&photo_number=50&tag_mode=all&search_type=Tags&sorting=Interestingness&photo_type=250&noform=t&search_domain=Tags&sort=Interestingness&textinput=acela,amtrak

EDIT4: I don't know if you also do the cars or if they're already done, but here is a layout I found. I hope you can include a passengerview if time permits.
http://www.trainweb.org/tgvpages/images/acela/layout.jpg