Expanding on an Existing Route/New Route Creation

[Railcoyote]

Hey There, Railcoyote here,

I had a question for the Route Designers and it involves the possibility of expanding on any route . Let me give an Example:

Let's Say that I want to expand The Cajon Pass Route to not only Encompass San Bernardino to Barstow, but also say from Los Angeles to Barstow (The Entire LA-Barstow Division.) How could I add onto the existing route or how could I modify it so that the route could be expanded upon..

Of course I myself am also thinking about Developing the Lordsburg Division of the UP/SP (Tucson AZ- Lordsburg NM) and I'll probably study the Route design Manuals as well as the Signaling manuals.

Anyway time to forget about the SuperBowl and work on the railroad.


But if anyone has any ideas on how to "Expand" on an existing route, Feel free to give some feedback here.
RailCoyote--

[sniper297]

http://steam4me.railpage.org.au/RailSimulator/tutorials/krs_copy_route.html

Create new route using Cajon as a template, copy the contents of the cajon folder (76b3a3f0-c9b0-48f2-9eff-1af9b00166d6) into the new folder (the one with the latest filedate) then hack away. Best is to give your new route a different name, so it can co-exist as an addon route without doing anything to the original. Then expand away, no need to extract new tiles or anything since those are added automatically.

Still trying to figure out why anyone would WANT to go to Los Angeles tho. ;)

[Railcoyote]

http://steam4me.railpage.org.au/RailSimulator/tutorials/krs_copy_route.html

Create new route using Cajon as a template, copy the contents of the cajon folder (76b3a3f0-c9b0-48f2-9eff-1af9b00166d6) into the new folder (the one with the latest filedate) then hack away. Best is to give your new route a different name, so it can co-exist as an addon route without doing anything to the original. Then expand away, no need to extract new tiles or anything since those are added automatically.

Still trying to figure out why anyone would WANT to go to Los Angeles tho. ;)

heh Well I was thinking of expandiing not only the San Bernardino area but also the Barstow Area..(was thinking of either going East to Needles, CA or West to Mojave, (Also isn't there an SP/UP Cuttoff that runs to Palmdale, CA? After all imagine making a rather large division/sudivison...that's what I'm thinking..

(of course here's a thought Has anyone considered doing Tehachapi? (Mojave, CA-Bakersfield, CA)? And what about Sacremento, CA - Reno, NV (Donner Pass).

After all there is a lot of American track to Model.. Nothing to it, but have to do it..

RailCoyote--

[harrisg35]

I've pulled all of the SRTM (.hgt) data for the region of Tehachapi, and also have the .kml file coordinates for the route. Now I just have to figure out how to get it to appropriately load into Railsimulator. I've been studying the manuals and information at the UKTrain-Sim site, and am still trying to get this all sorted out. Tehachapi is my all-time favorite route on MSTS.

I'm hoping that some innovative company, such as 3Dtrains, has a go at this route because I believe that RS offers a platform for an incredible simulation.

[Railcoyote]

I've pulled all of the SRTM (.hgt) data for the region of Tehachapi, and also have the .kml file coordinates for the route. Now I just have to figure out how to get it to appropriately load into Railsimulator. I've been studying the manuals and information at the UKTrain-Sim site, and am still trying to get this all sorted out. Tehachapi is my all-time favorite route on MSTS.

I'm hoping that some innovative company, such as 3Dtrains, has a go at this route because I believe that RS offers a platform for an incredible simulation.

I tend to agree with that last comment, and in fact I would personally love to run some Mountain Passes...

Also here's a thought for these Routes.. Break each section of Line into Divisions and then once the Dev Tools are out, maybe an idea for Portals will allow us to move trains between routes..

At least in theory it would be fun to see.

Railcoyote--

[MikeSimpson]

I've pulled all of the SRTM (.hgt) data for the region of Tehachapi, and also have the .kml file coordinates for the route. Now I just have to figure out how to get it to appropriately load into Railsimulator. I've been studying the manuals and information at the UKTrain-Sim site, and am still trying to get this all sorted out. Tehachapi is my all-time favorite route on MSTS.

I'm hoping that some innovative company, such as 3Dtrains, has a go at this route because I believe that RS offers a platform for an incredible simulation.

If you download my RS_Tools utility from the file library here, it includes an option to convert your .kml marker files to Rail Simulator marker files (will also convert MSTS .mkr files). So should save you some work.

Mike

[harrisg35]

Hi Mike:
I've been trying to get the Easy Blueprints function to work, but keep getting the "Run Time 76 Path Not Found Error." I cannot locate any FAQ to help me resolve this issue. Can you take a moment to help me correct my problem? I've been working with setting the paths within the "Options " menu of your program, and have installed the SERZ.exe in the Windows\System32 folder. I have also installed InfranView, although I believe that is not connected to this issue.

I did get my .kml file to translate to a .csv file through your program. :-)

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Railcoyote]

Railcoyote here,

I have another question dealing with Route creation.

How would you go about deleting a route let's say if you made a mistake and wanted to then create a new one? I mean is there a way to delete routes that don't work out?

Just some thought here..(Going to look at the DevDocs to see what i can find.

but if anyone has an answer feel free to post it up.

Railcoyote--

[jp 4712]

RS have said that the Mk1 upgrade will have the ability to delete routes and scenarios easily. But if you can't wait till then (couple of weeks???) then go to http://members.optusnet.com.au/virtualtrains/downloads.html where you'll find Mike Simpson's RS_TMB will do the trick.

Paul

[Railcoyote]

RS have said that the Mk1 upgrade will have the ability to delete routes and scenarios easily. But if you can't wait till then (couple of weeks???) then go to http://members.optusnet.com.au/virtualtrains/downloads.html where you'll find Mike Simpson's RS_TMB will do the trick.

Paul

Eh I'll wait a couple weeks, After all Better to wait and get some good stuff to use, rather then muck it up..

So I'll wait.. and hopefully when the US Developer tools come out, we can start building some real good routes..(Heck I definitely want to try out Tehachapi that's for sure!)

Railcoyote--

[Railcoyote]

Okay, I'm going to re-activate this thread, as the Marik 1 upgrade is out. and I was wondering how you would say Expand the Cajon Pass Region so that it covers a larger area (I'm thinking of expanding Cajon's SP/UP Cutoff to go all the way to Mojave as well as expanding the route West to Mojave from Barstow.

So how would this be done? I mean you have a route that is already partially done, so how would you add terrain/track/Signals, to that? (and yes I would probably make a duplicate of the Cajon Subdivision but would need to figure out how to bring DEM's/SRTM's into the mix.

So feel free to give advice or ideas.. after all it would be nice to expand on this route..

RailCoyote--

[geejay]

There is a cutoff from the old SP_UP route to the double track just West of Summit. It is not shown in the present configuration. If you go to Google Earth, you can see it. Just adding that would give you a few more options.

[zbobg]

This is one possibility: Extend the existing Cajon route for a seamless transition from the existing Cajon content to an extended Cajon route, rather than a new separate route.

You do want to completely backup the Cajon Assets and Content folders before you do any of this.

You will be adding to the existing Cajon route using this method. When the final product is packaged you will package ONLY the added content. A user will install the package into the existing Cajon content. It will be important that the user also back up the original Cajon content, that might be difficult to do without a freestanding installer. As a user I would prefer that an installer make an automatic backup to a 'zipped-up' format, for that purpose you can include the freeware command line pkzip which can be used from a batch file for example. Or you could (somehow) use the package manager to package the original content. You DO NOT want to package an entire new Cajon route (containing the original content) as that may violate the EULA and various copyrights.

Get your DEMs for the Mohave extension. Now you will edit the existing Cajon route by adding the new terrain. It might be tricky to merge the new terrain with the existing terrain because adding new terrain tiles might undo some of the existing terrain and its manual modifications. Also because you don't know what terrain source was used by the original Cajon designers your added terrain is very likely to not exactly match.

The track that goes to Mohave exists in the Cajon content leading just outside of the Barstow yard. That's where you could (should) begin to lay new track.

You will be adding new terrain tiles, new track tiles, new scenery tiles, new terrain paint tiles and new road tiles. In addition you may also be adding custom content from another content provider - but custom assets is another subject.

When you have a finished product you will package ONLY the added tiles along with a new tracks.bin for Cajon, the user will install all this into the existing Cajon route folder (in the Content/Routes folder). The tracks.bin file will contain all the track from the original Cajon content plus your added track, that's what makes it a seamless extension to the route.

The alternative is to create an entirely new (named) route that might only contain the Barstow yard (or an edited version) from the original Cajon content in addition to the newly created track(s) to Mohave. This might be less problematic to design and build.

My personal preference would be a seamless extension of the original Cajon route.