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I'm at the point in my route construction that I've laid down a few roads. Eventually those roads cross the railroad, and often not at 90 degree angles. What I have here(see attached) is one instance in my route of that happening. I'm just wondering what the right thing to do here is... I don't know of any 3rd-party crossing fillers in the F/L. So I'm asking to you all -- Which looks better, one crossing piece or two for each track on an angled crossing...? and which pic shows the better height of those pieces(higher or lower)? With two crossing fillers there, a using a 2-lane highway road piece looks good at an angle... however this particular crossing it doesn't work well as I don't think this road has shoulders on the sides, its just a 2-lane paved road.
Its just a matter of finding what you prefer, roads are scenery items. This can be anything from just crossing the track with the road section to more detailed crossings. The rail/road crossing sections that came with MSTS are a little lame in my opinion. Straight crossing (raise the road to just under the rail tops): My personal choice: Steven s_masters@shaw.ca
Both those ideas you gave look great, thanks. What's the name of the shape used in your 2nd pic...? Or is it a track piece...? After running over the crossing I posted screen caps of you notice little visual difference from the cab.
The crossing pieces are static scenery items that were placed after substituting a "sunken road" section for the original road piece. Its a bit more work for each crossing but I think the results speak for themselves. Steven s_masters@shaw.ca
Steven:Another idea you might use is to lay a section or two of "JPRd10mStrt.s" so the stripes in your regular road don't cross the tracks (sometimes that is more prototypical). If you do this, note that default road sections are at different heights (as in sloppy work) and there's a fix in the forum file library.Hope this helpsMark A Southern Railway Fan
A thousand route builders will come up with a thousand solutions for the same thing. If you wanted to improve that a bit, you could use a different road.ace file that would better "match" the other road textures you're using. This means taking the road2lane.ace into tgatools and painting over the white lines and export using the filename road.ace. It would give the roads the same "pavement", one set with lines, and one set without. Steven s_masters@shaw.ca
Steven:That's a great idea! Wish I had thought of it. In the area I'm modeling, they sure nuf' have "blacktop" on many of the sidings, so the default roads work for me in most places. When I get into the "city" I'm going to use your idea myself.Thanks!Mark A Southern Railway Fan
I ignore the stock crossings and opt for the signals-only types. I simply lay road to the rails, adjust the grade to approach the railhead start 20-30M away from the rail the set the signals and move the flashers/gates to the desired final resting place.In building ATSF Marceline, there are VERY few crossing that actually hit a 90-degree crossing. More importantly, double track doesn't always match the spacing of the default crossings that have pavement in place. To me, it's just easier to do this way....JBD
My personal choice:
