Switching trolley poles/pantographs

[NSL Fan]

I know there is a way to switch the trolley poles with bin, but I can't figure out how to rewrite the files to do this. Can anyone help me? i use the NSL pullmans fron the file library.

thanks
NSL fan

[OTTODAD]

Hi Zach !

I know there is a way to switch the trolley poles with bin, but I can't figure out how to rewrite the files to do this.

I remember a discussion on this subject but am not aware of MSTSBin having provided an easy solution.

Trolley poles are fixed parts of a trolley car and are not animated. Unless somebody can create one where each of a pair of trolley poles can be raised according to the direction of travel then you are stuck with what you got ! :-(

O t t o

[philmoberg]

Otto's right, in that there are several threads. This one is a good place to start: http://www.elvastower.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1288

The short version of the long story is that the car has to be set up for reversible poles. AFAIK, the only models in public release that are set up to do this are Tim Muir's NOPSI 800/900 class cars, which are available in the library at Elvas. There are several others in development however. -Phil

[NSL Fan]

Then how do you animate the poles?

[OTTODAD]

Then how do you animate the poles?

If you are a trolley car creator and have it's GMAX, TSM or whatever source code then you can add animation to it, but would need to decide which height of overhead wire to raise them too and only one panto/pole can be animated with P !

Trolleys not being used a lot in specific for them routes, I doubt whether there is much interest on the subject.

O t t o

[philmoberg]

The way Tim worked it out was to designate the rear pole as Pantograph2 and the other as Pantograph1. When operating from the front end of the model, as built, the rear pole raises and lowers with the P key. Switch ends, and the front pole, which is now trailing, operates the same way.

Subsequently, I refined the idea fo a single pole car, based on a suggestion from Wayne Campbell. In this case, the pole is animated as Pantograph2, and is set up using the trailing end as the "down position." An invisible poly serves as Pantograph1 to fool the sim into thinking there's a second current collector. One of the modellers on UKTS has worke out a different approach for this.

IN additon to the other thread, there is some discussion of this in some much later replies to a post you made back on 17 April:

http://forums.flightsim.com/ts/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=12&topic_id=5181&mesg_id=5181&page=

Additional discussion is here:

http://forums.flightsim.com/ts/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=12&topic_id=5371&mesg_id=5371&page=

http://forums.flightsim.com/ts/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=13&topic_id=79360&mesg_id=79360&listing_type=search

http://forums.flightsim.com/ts/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=13&topic_id=79504&mesg_id=79504&listing_type=search