Animating a siderod on a bogie

I’ve finally succeeded in animating the siderods on the bogeys of the Porter diesel I’m working on in Railworks. After many tries, using different approaches, I studied the blueprints of the example steam loco included with Rail Simulator.(Reading the manual is always the last step!) I had failed to assign an Animation ID in the animation section of the engine blueprint (It can be anything.) and then put that ID into the blueprint of at least one of the bogeys. (Interestingly, It can be either bogey or both.) Also, since the wheels and rods are animated in 3DC, the Node id’s in the bogey blueprints needed to be left blank. I did not need to treat the wheels as drivers as required by MSTS (wheels1 instead of wheels11, etc), but kept the RW naming convention. (1_0500_bo01wh01, etc.) For anyone not totally bored by now, here’s a short YouTube clip of a Porter in action.

[img:10b9p94s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJmIet32TM[/img:10b9p94s]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJmIet32TM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJmIet32TM</a>&lt;!– m –>

I’m working on a Porter diesel which has siderods on the bogies. I’ve tried to animate them with the Animate Rods/Pistons plugin and manually. In both cases, the rods animate correctly in 3DC, but rotate 360 degrees with the wheels in Railworks. Anyone know if it’s possible to animate rods on bogies and if so, how? Thanks.

Newer tried it but since it is possible to animate rods on a steam engine it must also be possible to animate rods on a diesel engine.
Have a look at a steam engine tutorial would be my advice.

Many years ago I did manage to add animated side rods on bogies as a test for someone doing a BLS electric loco in MSTS.
I think we just treated the wheels as driving wheels and made them children of the bogie group.

This way the wheels and rods animated as normal but being children of the bogie they turned when the bogie turned.

Thanks, guys. Is this what you mean, Paul?
1_0500_bo01
-andgt;1_0500_wh01
–andgt;1_0500_rod1

That’s how I built steam engines a long time ago in MSTS.

Yes, that works in MSTS. However, I’m not having any success using the same method in RAILWORKS. A solution would be to treat the bogies and body as separate engines, as you would an articulated engine. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go to that extreme.