Wagon types

[RudolfJan]

You probably already know, but where is the wagon type stored in the xml files? For engines I could easily find the tag <EngineType> but for wagons there must be something saying "Passenger" or "Freight" but I could not locate it. Who can help me out?

I need for selveral purposes, like an asset catalogue and a rolling stock swapper.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Isn't it a tick box or selection drop down in the blueprint editor when creating a wagon? Anything official like a wagon type should be applied thru the blueprint editor.

There is some new documentation on the blueprint editor in the Railworks/Dev/Docs folder. Then again, it might not be included.
AFIAK, there is hardly any difference in the blueprint between passenger cars and freight wagons.

The RailworksWikiTiki doesn't list any difference.

[RudolfJan]

Thanks for your reply.

I'm afraid DTG and its predecessors made a mess of this. I saw scenery items have a "Category"tag, engines also have a tag to distinguish Electric, Diesel and Steam. Wagons do not show this. Mike Simpson did some nice work with respect to this topic. I guess by reading your answer and the RWTools manual that he uses a number of rules:

E.g. if there is a passenger view, it probably is a passenger coach, if there is cargo, it probably is a freight wagon. If Engine and wagons are in the same directory, it is likely a DMU or EMU ....

I guess I will need to do similar tricks. It is doable, but a lot of programming effort. Mike is really good in discovering all this.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Thanks for your reply.

I'm afraid DTG and its predecessors made a mess of this. I saw scenery items have a "Category"tag, engines also have a tag to distinguish Electric, Diesel and Steam. Wagons do not show this. Mike Simpson did some nice work with respect to this topic. I guess by reading your answer and the RWTools manual that he uses a number of rules:

E.g. if there is a passenger view, it probably is a passenger coach, if there is cargo, it probably is a freight wagon. If Engine and wagons are in the same directory, it is likely a DMU or EMU ....

I guess I will need to do similar tricks. It is doable, but a lot of programming effort. Mike is really good in discovering all this.

You are most likely right, Rudolf.

Be aware that some car types are ambiguous in this respect, a US caboose, UK van or SBB Sputnik can have a passenger view and a postal service or baggage car can take a lading. I can imagine a scenario where the player has to spot a postal service or baggage car at some platform and have it loaded or unloaded, with the carts on the platform being visually emptied.

And yes, Mike Simpson and a couple of other people's contributions have been and still are invaluable in disclosing RSC and later DTG's secrets.
ChrisTrains also lists some detailed information on content creation etc. that might be of help. Also rail-sim.de might provide information as they have is a lively creation scene.

Als Nederlander kun je vast wel Duits lezen en begrijpen tenslotte. Vergeet ook Treinpunt.nl, ruilsim.nl en cola.nl niet.

[jalsina]

You probably already know, but where is the wagon type stored in the xml files? For engines I could easily find the tag <EngineType> but for wagons there must be something saying "Passenger" or "Freight" but I could not locate it. Who can help me out?

I need for selveral purposes, like an asset catalogue and a rolling stock swapper.

The only I have observed that differentiates passenger wagons from freight wagons is the sub-folder where they are located (inside the RailVehicles folder), named either "Freight" or "Passengers". This difference seems to be in all DLC including the European trains.
I wonder if you can query that catalog with those "main" folder names.

Inside Freight you find different folder names for freight categories. But you can have 2 or 3 different sub-categories (deeper folders) including some named "default" along other weird sub-names.
Inside Passengers you mostly find Coach but sometimes those sub-names are different (like Armfleet in NewYork-NewHaven).

I haven´t found anything inside the wagon bin (xml) that makes a difference. I will keep digging.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

I haven´t found anything inside the wagon bin (xml) that makes a difference. I will keep digging.

Me neither. Because the blueprint editor makes no distinction between the types of wagons, it is not important in wagon creation.

But when you want to catalog your collection, it is important to know.

Heck we could use with a good cataloging tool, or a shape file viewer, etc. RW_Tools has its limitations.

[RudolfJan]

I haven´t found anything inside the wagon bin (xml) that makes a difference. I will keep digging.

Me neither. Because the blueprint editor makes no distinction between the types of wagons, it is not important in wagon creation.

But when you want to catalog your collection, it is important to know.

Heck we could use with a good cataloging tool, or a shape file viewer, etc. RW_Tools has its limitations.

Thanks all. I thought I need a catalogue to be able to do two things:

- Create realistic quick drive consists
- Create general replacements for rolling stock.

RWTools supports the latter, but it does not remember what you did. I would like to be able to replace e.g. all DB BR143 variants for the vR version, with the least possible amount of effort (I think essentially I am a still a software engineer and so I'm very lazy (Though I did not practice it professionally for a long time)).

So I'm working now on a catalogue module that should be fairly easy fo the community to contribute. Just see if it will work. For the moment you just need to complete the data manually in the tool...

It's not yet finished. I now can build a catalogue for a specific product and submit it. Next step is to combine all catalogue parts. Then next step is to create replacement lists... And then I still need to be able to modify scenario.bin files .... So please be patient, because I also want to continue my efforts in LUA and the scenario authors guide...

[jalsina]

A wagon catalog with graphics display, showing the name and the dlc where it is located, with a better query than the custom editor would be a must for TS2016.
The Custom Editor works for me a 100% of the times now (after Pavig described in Steam a method to use it without crashing). However when you choose wagons to use in your consist, you don´t have a clue of where they are located and if they are loaded or unloaded (which you can select in the scenario builder). You can end building a 100 cars consist that may be using 20 DLC sources.

What would also be interesting (I think I had mentioned you that before) is to know the "count of wagons" and their total "real" mass of the consist. By "real" I mean not just the mass value in the wagon bin but the allowance for loaded or unloaded.

[Chacal]

I've been working in the past on such a catalog for the specific purpose of swapping rolling stock in scenarios.

Building a catalog from the existing blueprints or RW-Tools exports is easy.
But the biggest problem I've met is that there is no data about car types, e.g. there is nothing that says a car is a tank car, or a box car, or a 52ft gondola, except for its name. And then there is no rules for naming cars, so your gondola could be named "PRR 52ft gondola" or "Gondola trash loaded". Hoppers are the worst offenders. How long and how heavy is a "3-bay ribbed"? Lenght and weight are essential information for swapping in scenarios.

In North America there is a standard known as AAR Car Type Codes. Possibly other countries have something similar. It would be great if wagon blueprints had a data field for this kind of code. Absent this, we can enter it in the catalog.
With this information, it becomes easy to swap a car with a similar one. It is even trivial to write a program for swapping any car you don't have for a similar car you have, in all consists of a scenario, or all scenarios for a route.

[jalsina]

I've been working in the past on such a catalog for the specific purpose of swapping rolling stock in scenarios.

Building a catalog from the existing blueprints or RW-Tools exports is easy.
But the biggest problem I've met is that there is no data about car types, e.g. there is nothing that says a car is a tank car, or a box car, or a 52ft gondola, except for its name. And then there is no rules for naming cars, so your gondola could be named "PRR 52ft gondola" or "Gondola trash loaded". Hoppers are the worst offenders. How long and how heavy is a "3-bay ribbed"? Lenght and weight are essential information for swapping in scenarios.
............

It is exactly the same problem of the engine names which creates a great disorder in the catalogs of the TS2016 roster. In Career, Standard and Free Roam the engines are alphabetically ordered. But you see a diesel starting by GE or EMD and others with no manufacturer initials like the SD70 or the SD75 or starting by the railroad initials or the full name. They are also mixed with BR and DB locos which makes of it a nightmare for someone with 25 pages of locos.
The Quick Drive listing is still worse, because they are ordered alphabetically by the "consist name". What you read at first glance is not ordered in any way. There are even the Sherman Hill locomotives which use the same name for locomotive and for consist, showing 3 or 4 variations of the same loco (SD40-2, SD70, etc.)

So imagine the mess in the wagons hidden in the heart of TS2016 assets. When I installed the Krellnut sounds, I discovered cars in folders I did not imagine.
It would be really very complex to do such a catalog.