Can 3dc do it?

Not sure if the following is of any use, but:-
If you take a scenery object (eg bridge) and (using the Route editor) make sure that the andquot;terrain objectandquot; box is not highlighted then the track sleepers and ballast does not show up over the object. All you are left with are the 2 rails. You could then draw the sleepers you require on to the top of the bridge itself. This certainly works with solid topped objects. Not sure with open topped structures.

I have included a picture below to show what I mean :-

It’s a picture of a stone embankment on the Welsh NG Ffestiniog Rly. The top picture has the terrain object property of the embankment set to on and the sleepers and ballast show. The bottom picture has the terrain object property set to off and only the rails show.

Kevin

I Have started working on a small andnbsp;narrow timber bridge and I would need a length of track andquot;without the ballastandquot;. Let say a 10Meter track. I usually try things before asking questions but this time i’ll ask first. Can i make such a thing with 3DC. Ties would seem easy enough, rails might proved to be harder to shape, wood texture for the ties and rusty metal for the rails. When all is lined up one could merge all pieces and use the MSTS wiz. to export. Sounds to be andnbsp;not a too daunting task unless this newbie is way out in the boonies and making track pieces is a far more difficult task.
andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; Any toughts or counsel?

andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; Have a fine day.

Yes, it can be done, but I don’t have any particular thoughts or comments on it. Sorry.

Richard

Thank you very much for your replies fellows.
andnbsp;Les i would not laugh at such a fine piece of rail I will have to learn how to do this, amazing all the new examples of the power of 3DC .
andnbsp; When I mentionned rail section andquot;without ballastandquot;, I mean a rail section without the crushed stone the rairoads put between the ties. If I had a trestle made with big timber the andquot;ballastandquot; would fall between the cracks.I think that andquot;ballastandquot; is a proper term as i was just looking in a model R.R. magazine and the term is widely used.

andnbsp; andnbsp;Have a nice day. andnbsp;

Yard_hand,
Not sure what you mean about andquot;without the ballastandquot; but here’s a section of rail I did using the Extrude Tool in the Object Building Tools Panel.

I’m no railroad hand so don’t laugh, although I think it’s pretty close.

A bonus to using the Extrude Tool for this is that the rail can be bent along it’s length for turns or elevation changes. Rusty metal textures shouldn’t be too hard to find on the web either.

Ties and bridge timbers should be pretty simple to make with cubes.

Les

I’m an old conductor from Norfolk Southern railroad….yes its ballast. andnbsp;

Yardhand,
That just tells you how little I know about the rail industry…….hehehe. I never knew the rocks were called ballast….

Anyway, this piece of rail has I think somewhere around 20 points on the end face to get the shape. I just placed the points in a square and started moving them around until it looked right. I didn’t add points along it’s length, but that could be done during the creation of the rail, in order to get the bends where you want them.

For the trestle timbers, cubes may be the best way to go, but you could look at the Surface Object also. A good trestle texture on a flat surface object could save on points and faces amounts if that is an issue.

Les

Small question for troub.
andnbsp;Are The troub I saw on train-sim.com?.
Any way,if msts is not fussy about track shape it would make things much easier.I would like to pick your brain a bit. In msts all things I made had three files ,an.s, .sd, .ace. But it seems that track sections have a fourth file .tmh. I tried to read one of them but it’s all gibberish like the .S file ,would you know what’s in that file and what is required to make one.
andnbsp;If i just want a 10M straight with a different texture could i edit and rename the .sd ,rename the andnbsp;.thm files make a new .ace and update the tsection file?

andnbsp; Or is there more to it.There was a post on train-sim on this subjet,there was quite a bit of info and the fellow answering the post said he would try to make a tutorial on the subject when time permits, so it could be a while.Any way i will give it a try and see what happens. andnbsp;

That rail section looks good, but I wouldn’t put anything like that into MSTS. andnbsp;As crappy as it looks sometimes, there’s a good reason why the default rail sections are cubes. andnbsp;It would be a tremendous waste of polygons (slowing down the performance) to use such a detailed piece of rail.

Hi YardHand,

The .thm files (which also appear in the shapes directory), are the thumbnail pictures of the shapes which appear when you select an item in the Route Editor if you have ‘thumbnails’ selected. These are generated automatically by the train simulator.

If you are wishing to make sections of track, note that all track in a route uses the same two texture files ‘acleantrack1.ace’ and ‘acleantrack2.ace’ and although you can make other track textures, they will not work on track used in the game.

If you are building a bridge, it might be worth just laying normal track across it, then placing a thin oblong shape between the rails with the appropriate texture for the bridge planking.

Making track sections yourself is fairly difficult and if you wish to distribute the pieces to other users, you will need to get them registered into the tsection.dat file which is now produced on the train-sim.com forums, otherwise confusion is caused all around.

I hope that makes sense.

Mike.

Thank you very much for the input Mike.

So i can ignore the andnbsp;.thm file. As for textures i would not want to apply it to any other track section in the route, it would be strickly for this particular piece. As for compatibility with tracks sections on various site, this is not an issue at this time as i am light years away from producing anything to upload files. As for the suggestion in the third para., i think it defeats the purpose of wanting to make the needed track section. I would like to have a bed made of large wood beams,not a plank bed, the track piece would have no ballast or other texture under it,so if you where to stand on such a trestle and look down it would scare you as you would see the ground or raging waters between the ties.
andnbsp; andnbsp; So all i really require is two rails ,10M in length and a number of ties.

andnbsp; Any other toughs would be welcome.
andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; Thank you again for taking time to help.

Thank you for all the info. I think trere might another solution namely andquot;Xtracksandquot;. I downloaded ver. 3.2 from trainsim.com, I did not install it yet. I read the documents and there’s an interesting item, andquot;Special bridge sections with guard rails and without any track bedandquot;. That is probably what i want.
I wpuld install Xtrack to be used on a new road i have just started and have only 3 pieces of track laid. I am still debating if I should install the package, I would welcome any comments from any Xtrack users out there.

andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp;Thank you and happy 3DCing.

That’s a good question. andnbsp;I’m not an expert on track sections, so my answer will consist partly of another question. andnbsp;The question is, is the reason that all track sections use acleantrack*.ace for textures because all track sections reference those texture in their .s files, or because track sections are somehow hard-coded to all use the same texture. andnbsp;I think it’s the former (all track sections reference those textures in their .s files).

So, if you want track sections with a different texture, I would think that you can copy and rename the .s, .sd, and .ace (don’t worry about the .thm), edit the .sd file appropriately, edit the tsection.dat appropriately, and [b:2as0uzpb]edit the .s file for the track to reference the [i:2as0uzpb]new[/i:2as0uzpb] .ace file[/b:2as0uzpb]. andnbsp;That’s the important part. andnbsp;Although the .s files are compressed, you can use a utility called FFEDIT_UNICODE.exe (refer to the TechDocs again) to uncompress and compress .s files. andnbsp;Uncompress the .s file, look through it, and you should be able to see where the texture is referenced. andnbsp;Just change the .ace file, save, and that’s it.

Like I said, I’m not an expert on track sections, but I think this should work. andnbsp;I have seen people make bridges into track sections, and I know that the whole bridge doesn’t use the acleantrack*.ace files for the bridge textures.

Yep, I’m the same troub from the train-sim.com forums. andnbsp;MSTS is [i:dcf3vu38]not at all[/i:dcf3vu38] fussy about the track shape. andnbsp;Remember, all it cares about is the path information that’s stored in (I think) the tsection.dat file. andnbsp;The trains will follow the paths, not caring at all what the shape files for the track sections look like.

Mike is right, the .thm files are just thumbnail images you see in the object selection box in the Route Editor.

Your bridge should actually be pretty simple to model, but getting it into the game as a track section would be a little more difficult. andnbsp;It would be pretty much necessary to make it a track section so that it would match up seamlessly with the track connecting to it, otherwise you’d have to do some trick like laying regular track, backing up your .tdb files, deleting the track where the bridge is, and restoring the .tdb file (thus getting rid of the references to the default tracks’ shape file in the spot where the bridge will go, but preserving the track in the track database), and putting your bridge where the andquot;deletedandquot; track was. andnbsp;All that is pretty dangerous and complicated though.

I don’t know how to make an object a track section. andnbsp;I could venture some educated guesses, but that could get you into trouble so I would refer you to ask some of the track gurus at the train-sim.com forum. andnbsp;I know people have done similar bridges as track sections before, and can probably tell you exactly what you have do.