Track Sharing?

[thegameguy 4]

Hi,

I'm wondering whether it is possible to create track sharing (where two forms of railway share one track) between EL/GLR and standard rail? It's astheticaly pleasing and it saves a tile worth of space. Im looking at the track sharing between the district line of the tube (London) and national rail, see photo for example

If this does exist, please point me to it, and if it doesn't and someone thinks they could code it, it would be great. (Now kind of thinks this should be in NAM)

Thanks,

The Game Guy

-------

You ate my lama

[Tsokoa 9]

There is a transition between rail and el-rail https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/4338-ground-rail-2-elevated-rail-transition/

For GLR you have this https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/14960-glr-to-rail-beta/ or glr to subway then subway to rail but it might be weird to have two transitions.

  Edited July 6, 2011 by Tsokoa  

[jacksunny 741]

Is it possible: Prrobably

Do we have it right now: Not as I know of

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The two systems are designed to be separate. Theoretically the light rail (El, subway, GLR) tracks cannot support the heavy rail. I think they are the same gauge, so there is no reason why the heavy tracks cannot support the light rail trains, but not vice versa.

One of the big problems with heavy rail is that it does impossible ups and downs over the terrain. Needs fixing to set up proper road beds, cuts, and trestles. To make heavy rail realistic you have to terraform (civil engineer) to get proper grades, and it is difficult to get the tame to build a bridge across a chasm unless there is water at the bottom.

[TekindusT 3,809]

And you've only mentioned the RL engineering issues behind all this.

Going to SC4; I don't think it is a very feasible thing to do (because if it was, the NAM Team would have worked on it), but if the modders are able to separate the pathing for different networks (i.e. EL-rail/cars/buses) in a single puzzle piece, I don't see why this couldn't be done with GLR pieces or heavy rail pieces. I'm sure that the transit modders will be able to provide a technical reasoning for its feasibility.

  Edited July 6, 2011 by TekindusT  

[cogeo 960]

The two systems are designed to be separate. Theoretically the light rail (El, subway, GLR) tracks cannot support the heavy rail. I think they are the same gauge, so there is no reason why the heavy tracks cannot support the light rail trains, but not vice versa.

One of the big problems with heavy rail is that it does impossible ups and downs over the terrain. Needs fixing to set up proper road beds, cuts, and trestles. To make heavy rail realistic you have to terraform (civil engineer) to get proper grades, and it is difficult to get the tame to build a bridge across a chasm unless there is water at the bottom.

Indeed, heavy rail cannot run on light rail track, however the opposite is possible, and actually it's quite common in many European cities. Some examples:

- In London, underground trains partially run on track shared with National Rail.

- In Stuttgart, suburban trains run on the DB network.

- In Athens, the metro shares track with the suburban rly, and the suburban rly also operates on mainline tracks.

I'm wondering whether it is possible to create track sharing (where two forms of railway share one track) between EL/GLR and standard rail? It's astheticaly pleasing and it saves a tile worth of space. Im looking at the track sharing between the district line of the tube (London) and national rail, see photo for example

...

If this does exist, please point me to it, and if it doesn't and someone thinks they could code it, it would be great. (Now kind of thinks this should be in NAM)

In simcity, this is currently not possible. The rail network has rail-only paths. The GLR track has both light-rail (el) and rail paths (used in the UDI missions). So you can easily make a transition lot, allowing rail automata running on GLR track, but this looks unrealistic.

What you can do is make additional double-network puzzle pieces (rail + GLR). It may possible to make a draggable network, but I think not actually. So these puzzle pieces would be double-networked and double-pathed. It can have the appearance of normal rail (easier), but I think it would be nicer to make special textures, which is a significant amount of work though. However, the question is what this new texture would look like. It couldn't be one with a third rail, for example, because GLR has a two-track texture. You could instead add electric poles (T21 exemplars), which again would look weird, as normal GLR lacks electric poles too. The GLR network actually looks unrealistic - in real world it would only allow DMUs to run on it (but this is another issue). So the only solution, is... use the rail texture again. Maybe add some simple T21s, with an electric box here and there. The puzzle pieces will be mostly copies of the existing GLR pieces, with some additional ones, like transitions and branches to GLR-only and rail-only networks. I had asked for this in the past, but apparently NAM members were rather unimpressed. Assuming that no new textures will be made, the amount of work required can be expected to be "moderate". Some station lots will be needed too. I haven't given-up the idea, but I'm not planning to make these anytime soon. However, I could provide help and guidelines, if anybody is interested.

[thegameguy 4]

thanks for the responces, I might try making somthing (however have not even done a crappy coposite lot that everyone moans about on STEX so could be some time learning!)

Edit - On second thought, i've just seen the complexity of the pathing code, might make some textures and put this up in the transit modding section and see if their willing to help!

  Edited July 7, 2011 by thegameguy  

[cogeo 960]

Ehmm, as said above, the problem is not just the texture. It's quite a lot of work, if you are going to make them though. Apart from the texture, the work needed for making the puzzle pieces is considerable too. The set must contain all GLR puzzle pieces, plus a multitude of "connections". For example, just think of how many "Left Junction"-type pieces are needed:

- Left Junction

- Left Rail Junction

- Left GLR Junction

- Left Junction, Rail ahead

- Left Junction, GLR ahead

- Left Rail Junction, GLR ahead

- Left GLR Junction, Rail ahead

(there may be others too)

And if you are going to make all pesky GLR intersections, like Y and W, and the S curve, it's gonna be hellish.

A minimal set should contain:

- Straight piece

- Diagonal piece

- Left & Right turns

- All Left (and Right) junctions listed above

- Their diagonal counterparts

- Intersections with street, road, avenue and (elevated) highway. A perfectionist would also include diagonal versions, as well as all straight/diagonal combinations, but as normal GLR contains no such pieces, they could be omitted too.

Also, to reduce the number of pieces, we could eliminate the "Rail Junctions" (heavy rail is supposed to be less curved), so the above 7 Left Junctions could be reduced to:

- Left Junction

- Left Rail Junction

- Left GLR Junction

- Left Junction, Rail ahead

- Left GLR Junction, Rail ahead

In such a case, the number of puzzle pieces would be:

[code] - Straight 1 - Diagonal 1 - Left Turn 1 - Rifgt Turn 1 - Left Junctions (ortho) 5 - Right Junctions (ortho) 5 - Left Junctions (diag) 5 - Left Junctions (diag) 5 - Intersections 4 ================================== Total 28[/code]

I have not even counted T- and Diamond-GLR intersections and Y intersections. With these, the total number of pieces could well rise to 35 or so. This is by no means a "trivial" amount a work.

Pathing and texturing is indeed not very much work, becuase they can be exact copies of (or even directly referencing) the GLR and Rail ones respectively.

So, I would say don't make any textures, before you find someone who is willing to make all these.

[z1 566]

A simpler alternative would be just to add GLR paths and CheckTypes to the existing rail pieces.

[Ronwe 3]

The two systems are designed to be separate. Theoretically the light rail (El, subway, GLR) tracks cannot support the heavy rail. I think they are the same gauge, so there is no reason why the heavy tracks cannot support the light rail trains, but not vice versa.

One of the big problems with heavy rail is that it does impossible ups and downs over the terrain. Needs fixing to set up proper road beds, cuts, and trestles. To make heavy rail realistic you have to terraform (civil engineer) to get proper grades, and it is difficult to get the tame to build a bridge across a chasm unless there is water at the bottom.

Actually, this isn't quite true. While I can't think of any examples of heavy rail using light rail tracks in current times, there were some examples of this occuring in the past. Interurban and even trolly lines were often used to service inner city industries where it was too difficult or even outright impossible to lay heavy rail right of way. There were industries that were serviced only by a switch laid right in the street from the trolley line through the front wall of the factory or wearhouse. All freight movements were made at night so as not to interfear with the morning and evening rush. Conventional locomotives couldn't be used on these lines because of the narrow radius curves, but special small electric locomotives were common sights shunting a handful of boxcars down the city streets to their scattered destinations far from the railyards.

It also is a myth that elevated rail could not support freight trains. Chicago had an example where freight movements were made every night over part of the city's elevated network. I don't have any references at hand at the moment, but I can look them up if desired.

[pahs1994 6]

Scranton PA has trolleys and frieght lines shared in certain parts to travel between towns. Right now it is just for the museum but 60years back it was a pretty extensive route between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre

6TrolleyExcursionProject

SYSTRA was responsible for coordinating with the National Parks Service (Steamtown National Historic Site) and existing freight rail operations