On real railroads, the engineer is supposed to know the route intimately, which obviates the need for any type of direction/location signs. In real life he also just drives the route set up by the remote switch operators, and has to slow down or stop and kick out a brakeman to reset manual switches in yards and spurs, but trainsim ain't real life. What I was wondering is if anyone knows of real life railroads that use direction/location signs on the route to indicate where you are and where the diverging path is gonna take you, and if so what those kind of signs would look like. Here's my "route of the pretzel benders" main map:
This map covers only the player route, it's actually two seperate routes within one, with a different track layout for the AI trains that merges with and seperates from the player driveable tracks at different points. The activities are set up similar to explore route, where you choose your own path with the switch window, the only exceptions being that the AI traffic junctions have auto switches that can't be thrown in an activity. All other switches are manual, the trouble being that it's easy to get lost since you throw the manual switch ahead of you and you don't know if that leads to a different town or a dead end spur.
This is a new section on PO&N6, not on the above map. The two outer tracks are AI routes, the one on the far left merges with the left inner track, then diverges again further up. The player has a choice here, if he continues straight ahead on the left inner, he'll be heading to Sundermeyer, if he throws the switch to cross over to the right inner he'll be on the track to Fowlis. This "main divide" sign is something I came up with today, I'd like to know if there's something more prototypical. Also it would be nice to place some signs saying which track leads where, but again I'm trying to keep the look as prototypical as possible while compromising for playability.
I don't like the look of the big yard marker cube, this is to let the player know the area he's driving into is a dead end, without using an actual road sign "dead end no outlet", which would look really silly on a railroad.
I dunno why anyone would explore route when open ended activities with loose consists and AI trains is a better option, but some people do, and throw the auto switches onto the AI route and get lost. It's difficult, but possible to overrun a stop signal in an activity and end up driving onto the AI route too. So I came up with this, the yellow sign indicates the AI route, the green the player route, so you can't drive onto the AI route without knowing about it. These were default signs, but I altered the colors and cranked up the gamma on the texture so you could see them from more than 5 feet away in the sim.
There are lots of wyes to turn around on, but finding them can sometimes be difficult, this is my solution at present to mark the switches leading to the wyes.Anyway, that's what I got so far, anyone who knows something or even suspects something about prototypical signage feel free to toss your two cents worth in. Pictures would be nice, but descriptions are also good.
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RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., Hack, Jul-30-02, 10:17 PM, (1) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., sniper297, Jul-30-02, 10:27 PM, (2) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., Hack, Jul-30-02, 10:46 PM, (3) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., CPR_Malice_96th, Jul-30-02, 10:55 PM, (4) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., sniper297, Jul-31-02, 00:43 AM, (5) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., pennsyfan2, Jul-31-02, 01:34 AM, (6) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., sniper297, Jul-31-02, 08:40 AM, (7) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., highball5, Aug-03-02, 00:33 AM, (18) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., bnsf4794, Aug-02-02, 04:36 PM, (17) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., dvdhoven, Jul-31-02, 09:07 AM, (8) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., flarrfan, Jul-31-02, 12:31 PM, (9) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., andrewpickell, Jul-31-02, 01:22 PM, (10) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., sniper297, Aug-01-02, 01:02 PM, (11) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., nw_fan, Aug-01-02, 01:49 PM, (12) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., dvdhoven, Aug-01-02, 01:55 PM, (13) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., sniper297, Aug-01-02, 04:41 PM, (14) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., Hack, Aug-01-02, 05:21 PM, (15) RE: WHERE AM I? Prototype signs query., sniper297, Aug-02-02, 03:05 PM, (16)
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