I am currently in the process of reworking the trams in Pak128.Britain, adding variety especially to the steam locomotive fleet (there had hitherto been only one steam tram locomotive; there will now be five new ones), making the detail of the weights, capacities, power, tractive effort and so forth more accurate on the basis of research, as well as increasing the number of different types of tram track from one (or two in Experimental) to seven and correcting the scale (all current trams need to be reduced to about 60-80% of their current size to be in scale with other vehicles, having used the BR Mk. I railway carriage as the scale base). I also plan to add a more detailed (if not complete) timeline of London electric vehicles.
During my research to try to find the correct length of the Blackpool & Fleetwood "toastrack" tram (if anybody knows, please let me know), I came upon this (http://archive.forum.simutrans.com/topic/06545.0/) thread from the old forum, back when The Hood created all the trams that we have now, as long ago as 2007. The very first post in that thread shows a Croydon Tramlink tram apparently made by Kieron which does not appear in the current pakset and whose .blend file is not in the repository. I had planned to add Croydon Tramlink trams myself at some point; does anybody know where the .blend files for these vehicles are? It would be helpful to be able to add them.
I shall spare posting images of the steam tram locomotives for the present, as the steam trams, at the correct scale (which are no larger than a tall if not very long Transit van) are so small that little detail can be discerned, and they would not make interesting thread image fodder.
IIRC the Croydon tramlink model was made by Kieron but was one of a small number of models that I didn't have a copy of and sadly therefore got lost for all time when Kieron's old computer went bust.
Oh, that is rather a shame. It always pays to have backups. I shall have to create the Tramlink trams myself one day.
I found the tramlink model a few weeks ago. Remind me in a few days time to give you a copy. Also if I remember correctly trams were made to the same scale as road vehicles at the time. I've forgotten are there now the same as rail?
Ahh, splendid! Yes, please do upload/send it when you get a chance. That will save me some work.
I am in the process of rescaling all the trams to the same scale as the rail vehicles (not least because they use rails of the same scale as rail vehicles and can intermingle on the same tracks). Indeed, from what was discussed here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=12764), it would make sense to have road vehicles the same scale as rail vehicles, too, although I or somebody else will have to set up a Blender script for automatic exporting of road vehicle alignments (we currently have only other vehicle and non-vehicle alignments automatically rendered) before this is feasible given the number of road vehicles. A project for next Christmas, perhaps...
Edit: Another curious thing - I see the following in en.tab:
Flexity-SwiftFront
Flexity Swift
Flexity-SwiftRear
Flexity Swift (rear)
but there is no Flexity Swift in the pakset. Is this another missing tram? Do you have the graphics for this one?
FlexitySwift is the Croydon Tram (the original fleet that Kieron drew). I thought that road and rail used the same scale - at least I did when drawing the road vehicles although many of the lengths were guesses for earlier road vehicles.
Ahh, thank you for solving that mystery! It does make sense for road and rail to have the same scale, but I suspect that some rescaling will be necessary to make them all conform.
See attached.
Aha, thank you!
Hello All
It´s Be planned all trams they was be showed in the old thread http://archive.forum.simutrans.com/topic/06545.0/ to make new?
All of those trams, except for the Flexity Swift (Croydon Tramlink) have been resized and will be incorporated into the next release. All but the Swift were already present in Pak128.Britain in any event. The Flexity Swift graphics Kieron has just uploaded, and I shall check the scale for those, possibly add other liveries, and add those to the Experimental version of the pakset, too (and The Hood might well add one livery variant to the Standard version as well, I expect).
James - I'm confused about the extent of rescaling you have needed to do. IIRC the scaling was originally chosen so that a modern tram would just fit into a full simutrans tile (i.e. single tile station). If anything the Croydon tram should be the very definition of rail and road vehicle scaling for the set. What scale are you using that requires everything scaled down 60-80%?
Quote from: The Hood on January 12, 2014, 05:18:43 PM
James - I'm confused about the extent of rescaling you have needed to do. IIRC the scaling was originally chosen so that a modern tram would just fit into a full simutrans tile (i.e. single tile station). If anything the Croydon tram should be the very definition of rail and road vehicle scaling for the set. What scale are you using that requires everything scaled down 60-80%?
I have used my universal 15m scaling ruler (I think that I have uploaded the .dae file before), which was based on the length of one of the earliest vehicles in the pakset, the BR Mk. I carriage. I used that same universal scale for all the ships and boats last year, as well as rail vehicles (although many 19th century steam locomotives need re-scaling). On the basis that rail, road, tram and smaller water vehicles should all be to the same scale, I found historical data on the actual lengths (and in some cases, widths and heights) of some trams, and scaled those precisely according to my universal scaling ruler. For trams for which I could not find data, I scaled them to fit in with those trams for which I could find data. This resulted in a reduction to between about 60 and 80% of the original size (that is, not a reduction
by 60-80%, lest there be any confusion). This applied largely only to first generation tram vehicles. The second generation tram vehicles are mostly the correct length, but were too wide and high (I have only just fixed the height issue on my latest commit). Indeed, the Bombardier Swift (from Tramlink) was slightly too short on the y axis, although was too high and too wide.
I have now produced graphics for the Flexity Swift in both old and new Tramlink liveries, which are all on my Github repository.
Are your trams on Github now finished? Just wondering whether to merge them into standard yet.
Ahh, yes, unless there are any errors to correct that I have so far failed to spot, they should now be complete.
Excellent I will get onto including them. Have you made any other additions recently not mentioned in the forum?
Trams all rescaled now. NB the Flexity 2 and Incentro are now more articulated than before (could give compatibility issues) I've also taken the time to draw a few more modern trams:
(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/593/0i4v.jpg) (https://imageshack.com/i/gh0i4vj)
Top to bottom: Manchester Metrolink M5000, Midland Metro T69, Midland Metro CAF Urbos 3, CAF Edinburgh, Croydon Variobahn
I also plan on adding Tyne & Wear units before uploading them all.
Impressive additions, and all looking lovely. Might it also be worthwhile re-doing the tram icon to match the new sized trams?
Also, the Tyne & Wear Metro should probably be classed as rail rather than tram, as it does not run on, nor was it designed for running on, a street tramway.
No, but neither is the DLR. I view the "tram" tab as a "light rail" tab, and was planning on recoding the London underground units in that tab too. The principle benefit for standard is that tram and rail have different bonus speeds. If light rail is coded as rail, they are so slow that they are not profitable, even with minimal maintenance. Experimental doesn't have that problem, so you can code them how you wish.
Ahh, yes, I suppose that, in Standard, there is no functional difference between tram and rail save for the speed bonus, whereas, in Experimental, we have way constraints.
While DLR is certainly light rail, London Underground isn't. Speeds for London Underground can be as high as 60 or 70mph for the sub-surface lines which is just as fast as suburban railways.
Edit:
Forgot to say, great work with the graphics :)
Could you perhaps somewhat shorten the names of some of the early models? The "Blackpool Electric Thingamajig Etc. Company & Co Electric Tram" doesn't fit the line window.
Quote from: zook2 on February 07, 2014, 01:12:38 AM
Could you perhaps somewhat shorten the names of some of the early models? The "Blackpool Electric Thingamajig Etc. Company & Co Electric Tram" doesn't fit the line window.
Ahh, it does in Experimental, where the window is extended.
The Hood - any chance of uploading the .blends for the new/rescaled trams?
Quote from: kierongreen on February 06, 2014, 11:04:10 PM
While DLR is certainly light rail, London Underground isn't. Speeds for London Underground can be as high as 60 or 70mph for the sub-surface lines which is just as fast as suburban railways.
Edit:
Forgot to say, great work with the graphics :)
I was thinking Tube as Light Rail and Sub-Surface (when they get done) as heavy rail. I agree there's not much distinction between the Metropolitan line and any of the other inner suburban services into London. But I seem to remember when attempting to balance the tube stock that it wasn't working too well...
Tyne & Wear Metro:
(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/35/9dkq.jpg) (https://imageshack.com/i/0z9dkqj)
I've drawn red and black variants for experimental too. I'll get uploading the redone tram graphics and dats to SVN and hopefully to git with the blends too.
EDIT: I would push the new blends to your github if I could convince git GUI to recognise the fact I've just dumped an entire folder of new blends into my checkout of the repository...
EDIT2: it's found them. Unfortunately I keep getting an error when I try to push them - do you need to have me set up on your git branch or something? I hate GIT - way too complicated for just a few file uploads!
Excellent :)
That does look rather splendid! I do like that. Were you asking me about my Github branch, or did you mean the Standard mirror, or something else...?
Your github blends branch.
Ahh, I see; Git works better, I think, when people have their own repositories from which people can then merge: it is intended to be far less centralised than SVN.