Make plenty of backups!

[NW 2156]

Argh, There is nothing more frustrating than to lose all of your work when the trkdb goes belly up. I got the idea to add a large power plant to a old favorite desert route and spent a couple of months detailing the heck out of the area. I thought since all was going so well I would just keep a minimum of backups of my work since having multiple copies of a route in a folder gets confusing for me. Well, That was like committing the cardinal sin of route building and I got bit. I decided to take a break from the power plant and started ripping out default bridges and replacing them with much better ones. The problem I ran into though was too few Xtracks bridge rail sections of different lengths to work with. Thus, I relied on using Dynamic Tracks on both sides of the bridge so the bridge rails sections would be centered on the span. That was a freakin mistake. Using Dynamic Track ruined the whole route and I ended up back on the "The start" line.

Just when you think all is going well that damn RE will bite you in the butt every time!

Robert

[hiball 3985]

Sorry for your loss that sucks, but lets be honest, the RE only does what you told it to do. I think you bit yourself this time. When I was building my route I did a backup after about every two hours of work, and copies can be renamed with a date and time added..

[ebnertra000]

On my route, I usually made them after finishing a line. Since they were only 10-20 miles long, that meant they were fairly common. I've only needed them once or twice, but they are lifesavers when you have them. I have a minor issue with an area right now, so I may have to dig into the backup bin again here soon

[qballbandit]

I don't build, but I do mod like crazy. After every 10 saves in the RE, I save the world & tiles folders/rdb & tdb files to my backup folder. It's quick, and has saved my butt plenty'o times.

[tie]

Dynamic track...ohh what a heartless and loathsome evil thing it is too. That's why I keep it locked in the dungeon with the key hanging around the dog's neck...or is it buried with the skeleton horde in the forsaken crypt...hmmmmm

[ebnertra000]

Yeah, I removed all but two pieces in my route and those may yet disappear. I had been using them to fill gaps in yards and to join mainlines when I connected different ends until it occurred to me that there are short track pieces that can fill those gaps just as well. I also thought about upgrading to US/DBTracks but there are sections I used that aren't available in those sets

[NW 2156]

Well, I will admit that my train wreck at diablo canyon might be my own fault. I agree about the evils of dynamic track but find the short comings of the Xtracks bridge rail sections to be partly to blame. If it was not for a shortage of correct sections of bridge rail track then no dynamic track would have been needed at all.

I am thinking those dang bridge rails would be better off being done as static scenery items like any other scenic piece in a route.

Anyone seen any set of static bridge rail sections?

Robert

[hiball 3985]

I ran into the same situation and just used a few short pieces of X tracks to fill the gaps, flying by in the cab it's hardly noticeable unless you are really looking for it.
I don't understand how a static scenery item would work, how would the TDB go across it?

[ebnertra000]

From NW 2156 -

Anyone seen any set of static bridge rail sections?

I had a request for those a while back that I have yet to release fully. I'll toss those over to you once I track them down.

I, too, have a little trouble with bridge track sections, particularly with bridges built to US measurements. I usually need a combination of 7.7m and 28.2m pieces somewhere in the bridge to get them right. That's why I build my bridges to metric values that I think are close to the actual size. Makes my day so much easier...

[NW 2156]

Jim, The idea would be for using the already existing track on the bridge which is none bridge rail sections. Instead of switching out the Xtracks sections for the limited bridge rails sections, I could just plop down the bridge rails between the running rails using a static shape since MSTS does not care about the bridge rail pieces between the running rails anyway.

Some early MSTS bridges had the bridge rails modeled as part of the bridge but aligning them just so was a pita and most modelers opted out of modeling the bridge rails as part of the bridge shape.

The bridge I was messing with is the canyon diablo bridge in the file library on the FBL3. This bridge is 150m long. The problem I had was on one side I needed a straight section of 79.730 meters to connect the bridge to a switch that makes up a passing siding on the route. I guess I screwed up by linking Dynamic Track to this switch since it had both siding markers and signal markers. I should have put a buffer piece between this switch and the Dynamic Track.

Robert