Electrified & Non Electrified Route

Is it possible to use two kind of tracks, so that we can see some tracks with its third rail and the others as normal?Today my post is aimed to get some useful tricks, and ask experienced simmers, perhaps some have tested this before.Long time ago I'm planning to build real route of about 215 kms (140 miles), that comes from the big modern city to the countryside, joining other towns too.
The first 42 kms (26 miles) are crowded mainly by electric Toshiba trains, that in the real life use covered third rail for power supply, for the urban trains.
There are also a few diesel for freight and passenger trains, going from the main central station to the end of the route, so they pass those 42 kms, and from now on, the tracks are no longer electrified, there are only diesel freight and passenger trains.
Even so, the traffic here is very important for suburban and inter-urban services, those that pass by my town.
But here the electric trains cannot run at all.Do you think, is there a way to limit the trains domain, so that I cannot drive a train out of its limits?
I'm afraid there's not. For the RE allow us to set Electrified/Non electrified checkbox for the whole route.And the second question is:
Is it possible to use two kind of tracks, so that we can see some tracks with its third rail and the others as normal?
For this I think the answer might be something like the solution proposed by metraup in his post named "Yes! Two Ballasts In 1 Route-No Xtracks or Tsection!" on April 19th. http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID6/11798.htmlThis is something that I want to study now, before starting to lay track.Thanks for all in advance...

Eduardo.
(My E-mail is in my profile)

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RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, OTTODAD, May-08-04, 11:40 AM, (1) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, edwardson, May-08-04, 01:06 PM, (2) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, OTTODAD, May-08-04, 04:34 PM, (3) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, buttercup, May-08-04, 06:12 PM, (4) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, edwardson, May-08-04, 08:19 PM, (5) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, edwardson, May-09-04, 00:37 AM, (6) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, Swissie, May-09-04, 02:34 PM, (7) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, homer13j, May-10-04, 06:31 PM, (9) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, Swissie, May-11-04, 06:07 AM, (10) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, OTTODAD, May-11-04, 06:08 PM, (11) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, homer13j, May-11-04, 07:23 PM, (13) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, OTTODAD, May-11-04, 07:35 PM, (14) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, Swissie, May-12-04, 04:37 AM, (15) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, OTTODAD, May-12-04, 05:43 PM, (16) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, edwardson, May-09-04, 05:56 PM, (8) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, OTTODAD, May-11-04, 06:15 PM, (12) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, buttercup, May-13-04, 11:41 AM, (17) RE: Electrified & Non Electrified Route, edwardson, May-14-04, 09:34 PM, (18)

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Hi Eduardo !Yes you can use 3rd Rail Tracks of the type used in the U.K. in the same Route as well as one or two other types. I think they all have center rails ? Don't use the type used in the "Chicago Elevated", they are frame rate killers ! When I say "2 other types" you could use the "Concrete Tracks" and give them another Track bed, but the Rails Texture got to be the same for all, unless you built sections with Y-Tracks only, using your choice of YcleanTrack1/2.ace for them, giving you in fact 4 different track types in one route ! If the Overhead Wire needs to be hidden, you can raise it's Height out of sight !Making non-electrified looking tracks in an "Electrified Route" out-of-Bounds for non-electric locos is not possible as you anticipated. Non-electric Rolling Stock can of course run on electrified track but not vice versa, unless you make the Electric locos "Diesel" in their .eng files, then needing dummy overhead wires and gantries for them on supposedly electrified track sections, but still not being able to prevent either running where they are not supposed to ! All a lot of work which is hoped the next Train Sim version will simplify ?HAVE FUN !O t t o

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Thanks Otto, for your reply.That's the route I promised to you, that passes through my town.
No, that third rail is not central. It's of that kind that's at one side of the track, all covered by wood (to isolate and avoid danger), and it's cut at every switch or level crossing, and at the edges the third rail is leaned upwards, so that the pieces that take the power from it beside the bogies, can take it and loose it easily.
There are also warnings everywhere so that nobody tries to walk over the tracks.
(I need many words to express all this).These third rails are used either by old English Electric Motor Units (E.M.U.) and the Japanese Toshiba's in the environments of the great capital city through the first 42 kmts.
At the main station, there's is also a double track branch line, where this EMU's go down through a tunnel and enter to a big subway station, so that passengers can easily transfer from the train to the subway train to go and work in downtown, mainly in the rush hours. This part would be hard to do, but I'd like to.I'm ready to start the route; I'm just tuning some important design details.I'll try to post some pictures; I'm searching now.Oh, the same system is used at the other great station that I showed you before, for urban trains.Well, I'll see to find the best solution, and here I'll go on simming...The best wishes for you with track laying...

Eduardo.
(My E-mail is in my profile)

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Good Luck, Eduardo !And don't get too frustrated if things don't work out quite the way you planned ! I don't think that there are any 3rd rail tracks without a center rail in MSTS other than the Chicago Elevated, I did not keep being virtually unplayable due to it's low frame rates.Take Care, O t t o.

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Hi Eduardo,Check out this link.http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID3/23140.htmlRegards,Eric

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LAST EDITED ON May-08-04 AT 08:20 PM (EDT)

Thanks, Eric:The third rails I mean are not exactly like these, but are very similar, and attached this way.Thanks for the link.Regards...

Eduardo.
(My E-mail is in my profile)

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Otto:Here is the third rail that I'd like to simulate.
It's not easy, I'll make it all with no third rail. I'll make it electric and hiding the overhead wires, and warning that electric units shouldn't run beyond such a place. Under these conditions the route will be worth playing.Here's how the real third rail is:Take care

Eduardo.
(My E-mail is in my profile)

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LAST EDITED ON May-09-04 AT 02:37 PM (EDT)

Hi Otto> Making non-electrified looking tracks in an "Electrified Route" out-of-Bounds for non-electric locos is not possible as you anticipated. Otto, at least there is a trick to have electrified looking and non-electrified looking track on the same route - although once the properties for a route are electric, then your electric motors can go anywhere on that route, as you correctly stated. If you set the route properties to electric (overhead wire) and lay your track normally, then all the track is featuring an overhead wire. Once track laying and placement of interactive objects is complete, you can edit out the overhead wire over dedicated stretches of track by going into the respective .w file and changing the linetrackobj (
filename ( a1t10mstr.s )
...to static (
filename ( a1t10mstr.s )
...for every single track section that you want to de-electrify. This trick is of course only useful on an electrified route where you want to take away the wires from a spur, say under the intermodal crane or inside the fuel loading dock. See my earlier post here:http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID6/11439.html
( also referred to in http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID12/461.html )If the main route needs to be dieselized, and just a small portion of the route also needs electrical wires, then I recommend using a set of overhead gantries that come with 50m wire sections firmly attached to the gantry, and to place the gantries ncluding wire as scenery objects. Dick van den Hoven once pointed out a very useful source for such objects:http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mr_train_sim/
then click on Caténaire in the menue, and look for files saying "Supports avec caténaires", for example in the 1500v section, in the LGV section etc.Talking about third rail here, things are of course different. Maybe the use of track sections from the Cykworks third rail track add-on package would do a helpful job here? Plus setting the route to electric with a wire height of -150 metres (i.e. buried under ground) to allow the operation of electrical motors? Lukas a.k.a Swissie

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So it is possible to have both electrified and non-electrified tracks in the same route. Or at least the appearance of it. Good job, Swissie.Now the problem with my route is only 2 tracks are supposed to have catenary while all the rest don't. Going through every .w file and editing the correct tracks would be a nightmare not to mention the track edits that would be necessary to separate cat from non-cat track since I used lots of 4-track sections to reduce tile object counts. If only I could start my route today instead of 18 months ago...Todd

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LAST EDITED ON May-11-04 AT 06:09 AM (EDT)

Hi Todd,you sound like a candidate for using the gantries with overhead wires attached to them (see the link in my above post). Just use them instead of simple gantries without wires on the few tracks you want to electrify, and keep the rest of the route unelectrified or electrified with the default wire buried -150 metres underground or +10000 metres high in the sky...There are various models around on that site. OK, they're basically all of French design, but the site offers many different styles, modern and old-fashioned supports, concrete gantries for high speed lines, gantries for DC or AC lines, etc. So I'm certain you'd find some useful shapes in there. If placed with the autoplacement feature in the appropriate spacing (40 or 50 metres, as this are the two lengths of the wire section attached to the available versions to chose from) and some manual adjusting, the extra work is more than rewarded by the excellent looks of those wires (much better than the default). I think some of the packages also contain "bare wire" sections of various lengths (you'd need them for the turn-outs of switches etc. anyways). You could use these in combination with any set of supports, although that translates into a bit more of the manual adjusting, of courseNo need to use the "static track trick" which I would also recommend to use with care only. I never tested it over an entire route, just for spurs and dedicated sidings. I'm not sure if it couldn't cause some hick-ups if used over an entire stretch of the main (interactive objects, switch nodes etc.), and you certainly would not want to run a .tdb rebuilt later on CheersLukas a.k.a Swissie
edited for a typo or two

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Hi Lukas !As Todd said, A LOT OF WORK, OUCH !What we need is Track pieces with a parameter which can be set on laying, "Show Overhead Wire Y/N", the height determined by the Route's .trk file as as present but only applied to track pieces with such an overhead wire ! Matching Gantries to be added as at present and perhaps again being aware of positioning their support arms so that they match the Overhead Wire height as per .trk ?Take Care, O t t o.

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I don't want to take over Eduardo's thread so I'll try to keep this short.I originally intended to create wires for my gantries, but quickly tossed that idea because the number of custom gantries I have to create would have gone from about 70 to several hundred in order to be accurate (my ultimate goal). I am not using gantry auto-placement because the gantry spacing varies greatly throughout the route. Yes, that means placing all gantries by hand. Fortunately only 17 miles of my route are electrified and gantry placement is now complete. Looking east towards West 65th Street:
I have accepted the fact that I'm either going to have too many wires or not enough.

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Looking good, Todd !I'll be watching out for that one ! Take Care and BACK-UP often !O t t o

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LAST EDITED ON May-12-04 AT 04:41 AM (EDT)

Hi Todd,I agree, a lot of hand-work, and I see the limitations with the inflationary number of shapes needed. The autoplacement is useful on longer stretches of mainline only. From my experience , it does not handle yards, sidings, spurs etc. properly, although you can of course define different gantry sets in the gantry.dat to simulate various types of supports, vary spacing etc (of course, one set is always effecting all the tracks on one tile when you run the autoplacement). But even with an optimized autoplacement feature, urban areas such as the CUT above would need a lot of hand-placed gantries where the autoplacement fails. As your results look excellent, they were certainly worth the pain...I agree with Otto, it would be nice if we could turn on and off a (more realistic looking) catenary for each track piece individually. One more of those MSTS day-dreams Lukas a.k.a Swissie

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Hi Lukas !> It would be nice if we could turn on and off a more realistic
> looking catenary for each track piece individually. Yes, indeed ! Just got the amazing NORTH WEST ENGLAND Route with complicated track layouts, covering a HUGE area, so much so that it causes the WHITE VOID travelling in it West to East.It features electrified sections with gantries only, no overhead wire, three rail sections without a third rail and non-electrified sections all in the same Route. Impossible to create the way it should look, being limited in the way tracks can be supplied, individually selected and specified for whatever use, spoiling the otherwise brilliant efforts of it's creators ! I am doing my best to make developers aware of what the real needs for the next Train Sims are and hope that most of what we want from them are going to be implemented ! Take Care, O t t o.

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Otto:There's another way to achieve this, and it's based on the route about London Picadilly underground, where they simulate electric rails, though those third rails are different than these ones.
But it's a good trick.I set the route as No electrified.
In explore mode you can only use diesel trains or railcars, throughout all the line.
For the urban sections, electric trains will only run in Activities.
I can make activities for most of the services already known.
So electric trains will only run where they should, and diesel trains through all the line, only stopping where they're expected to.As for the third rail, I can simulate it with special tracks sections, or not to show them at all.I think this is a better choice, is it not?Kins regards...

Eduardo.
(My E-mail is in my profile)

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Hi Eduardo !Did not read the Routes Design Forum for a couple of days, being busy elsewhere and yes, that's another bright idea ! Would it not be great if the next Train Sim would let us lay a variety of different track types and textures in the same Route ? Take Care, O t t o.

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Hi Eduardo,This might be what you are looking for.http://www.trainsimfiles.com/products/ukfs/release_v3.1.htmlRegards,Eric

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Thanks, Eric:
Thank you very much.Yes, I think it is what I'm looking for.
I entered to this site, and I downloaded 3 files, about 20 mb. among all.
I will try them on this weekend, so that I can test them slowly;
I'll post to you about this, as soon as I can.Once again, thanks for your attention.Kind regards...

Eduardo.
(My E-mail is in my profile)

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