Railworks America

It is just a thought that popped into my head.

I love to be about as realistic as possible when switching cars around, but it can be difficult. The biggest issue for me is the view. Comfortably, I can sit in the locomotive, but I can't see what's happening at the other end of the train. At the same time, if I use the fly over view by pressing "3" or "7" (which I rarely use anyways), I can't really focus on the distance that well, so the only decent way for me to get what I want is to hit "8" and free roam until I am comfortably standing where I can see what I want to see as I back towards another set of cars. My idea though (and I'm not sure how to do this myself, nor if it has in fact been done already) is to have a camera that is set on the ladder of the end car, as if you are a conductor hanging onto the ladder, just to hop off and throw switches and connect air hoses once the train stops, like this guy.



Just like the head out view in the Cajon Pass UP Loco or the head out view on the Marias Pass SW unit where it puts one camera view on the nose of the locomotive and the other at the rear of the loco on the opposite side. I think this would be neat to have on the rear car of the train. Maybe I'm just odd , but I think it would be a lot cooler to be switching cars with that view available than it does from space or the ground. Let me know what you think! Thanks!


If I knew how to add or modify something to the files to achieve this, believe me, I would!

I would be nice to be able to hang on to any car. Run8 has this feature.

For Railworks, it probably means a "5" passenger view or "Shift 2" head out view has to be added to every rail vehicle at the right position (x,y,z).
That means editing hundreds of cars.

So an edit-and-add option to RW-Tools would be an easier option, if a general formula for the right x,y,z can be found.

I don't know how you can "climb a car" from "8" ground view as it rolls by ... You can "walk a passenger train" using the consequitive "5" passenger views from the F4 HUD. But to select one at random from the gound outside?

Another alternative would be a "3" rear-of-train view fixed at a corner of the last car, at the head height of a typical crew member holding on to a grab iron.
This probably means a change to the core engine, which is out of our control.

Nice idea, but, a little impractical, as _o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha said you'd have to put a camera on every boxcar, hoping that they all had ladders of course, what happens if they don't, and if you're dropping off boxcars onto different roads, you'd need a camera on every car in the consist which may prove difficult to achieve, best to just stick to using the HUD, I think.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

How about using the coupler view (6)? Focused on the last coupler in the consist it gives one a little bit of that feel of riding the irons when switching.

I agree with your concept of a "ladder camera" view, but ex-railwayman has a point regarding cars without ladders. So, how about a camera located just off each corner of a car at about 5 feet above ground level? Just Trains sells the "JJA Autoballaster", which includes an operator figure located at the controls and allows the player to take the place of that figure to operate the control panel. Obviously, there's some interesting camera work going on, which might be adaptable to your idea. I seem to recall as well a boxcar that featured a "hobo cam", but of course I cannot recall who made it or where it might be available.

Until that happens, I'd suggest pressing <2> or <3> to go to the desired end of the train, followed by <8> to put yourself on the ground. I cannot resist noting that such complex maneuvers would be a switching scenario writer's nightmare, since there would be no way to estimate the amount of time a given player would take to complete them, therefore rendering AI traffic management even more difficult than it already is. I'll have to spend some thinking time on this possibility.

I remember the same discussion years ago.
Someone made a proof of concept, it worked well but needed to be added to each car blueprint, and the camera position must be calculated according to the car length.

At the end we suggested this as Kanawah said : "Another alternative would be a "3" rear-of-train view fixed at a corner of the last car, at the head height of a typical crew member holding on to a grab iron." to DTG but it was never implemented.

I constantly use "3", zooming out until I can see what's happening. Sometimes followed by "8" for more realism.

ex-railwayman wrote: hoping that they all had ladders of course, what happens if they don't

I believe on all American cars there is a ladder, because I cannot think of any that don't.

FourEightFour wrote:

ex-railwayman wrote: hoping that they all had ladders of course, what happens if they don't

I believe on all American cars there is a ladder, because I cannot think of any that don't.

I believe your correct.


Almost ALL U.S Rolling Stock has a ladder or Grab iron of some sort.


There are still some older cars around that have the old high ladder common on cars to access a roof walk. not may of these are found but some have survived.

I have asked about this before. MSTS had it where you could go to the rear of the train and act as a brakeman backing up the train. It was not integrated into each car, but worked no matter what the consist. I would love to see this.

LandN wrote:I have asked about this before. MSTS had it where you could go to the rear of the train and act as a brakeman backing up the train. It was not integrated into each car, but worked no matter what the consist. I would love to see this.

This is exactly what I'm thinking about! Not so much climbing onto the rear, but just being there. Using 6 limits my view way too much. I can't look at what I'm backing up to until I'm there. And using 2/3 and 8 just, I don't know, not quite what I'd like to have. I agree and disagree with many of the comments though. I am glad to receive feedback. I am glad LandN agrees! If I'm correct, it also showed the distance in feet to the car you were backing up to, which would also be cool, but not necessary.

Yes it does. It counts down the number of feet until the coupling is made.

THat would be awesome in TS.
It simulates a brakeman with a radio.

Chacal wrote:I remember the same discussion years ago.
Someone made a proof of concept, it worked well but needed to be added to each car blueprint, and the camera position must be calculated according to the car length.

At the end we suggested this as Kanawah said : "Another alternative would be a "3" rear-of-train view fixed at a corner of the last car, at the head height of a typical crew member holding on to a grab iron." to DTG but it was never implemented.

I constantly use "3", zooming out until I can see what's happening. Sometimes followed by "8" for more realism.

The proof of concept.

As has been said you'd have to set it up for every car. I'm not really sure if there's any way to hack something into the end of train cam, but they're a bit more amenable to suggestions these days, I'll attempt to poke someone given it's a relatively small thing to do. The problem might be compatibility with other nation's stock which won't have shunters riding on them, I guess it could be a blueprint toggle or a secondary camera definition or something.

Could an end of train view be triggered by the Numpad 3 key? I'm pretty sure that some rolling stock developers have employed Numpad keys for other functions.

Ok, can we attempt to nail this idea down, preferably involving a tweak to the existing camera arrangements so there's as little to do as possible.

* You want a view that looks like you're standing on the steps of the rearmost car
* Currently there's the 3-cam, the 6-cam, and occasionally the 2-cam if you ran round the train, or it started "backwards."
* What counts as the rear of the train is not always obvious - sometimes your locomotive ends up at the rear, and the 3 cam goes to that, the 2-cam to the "rear".
* Non-US stock has a high chance of not having a suitable brakeman position, so this couldn't be a default option.

So:

* This would probably have to be an alternate camera view, perhaps enabled per-car. Perhaps also you could have a menu toggle to default to using it ( not sure how much testing that would involve, it'd probably trigger an entire gui retest which I doubt is going to happen, somehow )
* Binding it as shift-3 isn't any good, because sometimes that's the wrong end.
* Perhaps shift-6?

Anyone got any *specific* ideas or changes?