Quickly MOD an existing rail BAT?

[tails2489 350]

How difficult (or, preferably easy) is it to modify an existing rail station to accept other forms of rail? i.e. adapt a El-Rail station for regular train rail... or modify a regular rail station to now be compatible with HSR?

[11241036 5,095]

That's entirely possible and not too complex, however, you need the right tools and need to understand what's going on.

1. Download SC4Tool from here. Install it according to the installation instructions.

2. After starting this tool, choose "Visual editor for transit enabling your lots". This will launch an editor that will allow you to modify the settings of which types of traffic any lot can handle. Open your lot and after clicking on the "transit switch" tab on the right side, you will get a screen looking similarily to this:

3. Next, you need to know what you want and how lots can handle traffic. With this tool, you will write entries where every entry needs the following information:

First, if traffic is moving from outside to inside, or vice versa.

Second, if traffic enters/leaves from/to which directions (N, S, E, W).

Third, which types of traffic. If you choose "outside to inside", the box labeled with "In" sets the type of traffic that will be able to enter the lot, and the box labeled with "Out" into which type of traffic it will turn into while entering. If you choose "Inside to outside", do the opposite. For example, if you simply want pedestrian traffic to pass through this lot (something you might want to have with nearly any transit station), you need these settings (please note that in most cases you will always need TWO entries: one for Outside-to-Inside and one for Inside-to-Outside, with the opposite settings):

For any type of traffic that is supposed to pass through this lot, you will need to do the same. BTW, HSR is based on monorail traffic. And for railway, remember to add settings for passenger train AND freight train. As you can see, the two rightmost boxes contain the same type of traffic

If you want a lot to let pedestrians board trains, you need to create setting where the two rightmost boxes do not contain the same type of traffic. This is an example of what you can do to allow passengers to enter trains:

Pairs 1, 2, and 3 allow pedestrians, railway trains, and freight trains to enter and leave the lot, respectively. Pair 4 turns passenger trains into pedestrians when entering (upper entry), and pedestrians into passenger trains when leaving (lower entry). ANY pedestrian can "choose" to leave this lot as pedestrian or passenger train, not just those that have entered as pedestrians.

 

I hope that helps, I'm sometimes having a hard time expressing myself in English because that's not my native language.

[rsc204 21,806]

There are 2 aspects to consider when converting any station to a different type. One is more a visual thing, i.e. changing the track types to match a new network. This is pretty easy and done in the Lot Editor. Some networks will use simple textures, such as Rail and GLR which are easily swappable. Elevated networks and some ground ones (notably HSR), use models (props) to display the network used. Props for all these networks are part of the NAM, so you should have all the pieces you might need. However, some modellers will "bake in" such textures or props, making them part of the station model itself. In those cases, there is no easy method to alter the visual part of the station, unless you can get access to the original 3D modelling files and can render new models.

The second part of this involves changing the TEing (Transit Enabling) of the lot, to alter which networks it serves. This can get incredibly complex, especially for networks not included in the base game. Only rail, el-rail and monorail networks can be TE'd. If using an override network, for example HSR, you must use the base network, in this case monorail, as the basis of your TEing.

There is only one application that can do this, SC4 Tool (found here), the basics are easy enough. Again using an example of switching from Rail to G-HSR, you'd remove all the "G" (rail) tiles from the Lot, replace them with "I" (monorail) tiles oriented in the same direction.

You then need to look at the Transit Switch tab, here you will have a bunch of switches with Passenger Rail in them. Alter all those to Monorail instead, assuming the existing lot is well modded, this will at least work properly. However, if you have to build these switches yourself, this quickly goes down a rabbit hole of further complexity. You will probably need to look too at the Capacity value and almost certainly alter the Entry Cost value. For a comprehensive guide to those, see here.

However, in the example here, there is ideally one more step we need to take, altering the paths. Using G, H or I in the Lot tab will automatically assign valid pathing for Rail, El-Rail and Monorail. However, HSR is an override network, so we need to consider if the paths will be the same. For the elevated HSR, this would not be a problem, but G-HSR does not run elevated. In other words, the default paths will be at L2 or about 15m off the ground. In situations like this, it's necessary to manually assign a path for every pathed tile, done by right clicking a TE tile and selecting "Edit Reps (Expert). Otherwise, your G-HSR station will have paths in the air, making trains jump as they pass through the station, although if modded correctly it will still work functionally. This part of the process is pretty much undocumented and few really understand it. Your best bet would be to find an existing modded station, then use the values from that as a template for your station. Note this only works if the rail is in the same directions (N-S or E-W), so ideally find one that matches the station you are altering. If you have to start messing with rotating paths, that will only make this part more arduous. Likewise, without a template, you'll need to track down the Path IDs within the NAM to use (Rep 16). Some of the directional stuff is also counter intuitive, even if the arrows look wrong, stick to the values of your template lot in both the main Lot view and Expert settings. Note for HSR networks, the following download is an extremely useful resource with some extra props and paths you can use.

[tails2489 350]

@rsc0405 @11241036 Thank you both! It doesn't seem tooooo complicated, I think you both made really good points and gave great step by step instruction. I'll give it a shot with a certain HSR Station I've been hoping to integrate into my region's passenger rail system and see if it works.