Usefull information For route building

[mikesimpson]

Really, if you are building or trying to build a route and you do not have the Abacus Route Building guide by Michael Vone, you are doing it the hard way.

Get the guide, build the tutorial track, and by the end of that, you should have a good idea of what you are doing.

Its a lot easier than trying to follow the MSTS help files, and sending messages to the forums when you get stuck

[ohmygawdwotsausername]

Yuri

Thats excellent, ten out of ten mate nice one.

[bigvern]

You can get the gradients finer than that if you wish. Using British gradient nomenclature, i.e. x in y divide the x by y then take the inverse tangent (you can do this with the expanded Windoze calculator). That's your angle. To set the precise angle, rotate the track using End key and the Up/Down NumPad keys.

1 in 100 comes out at an angle of 0.572.

[D1972]

You can generate Real life Latitude & Longitude by using an online converter tool at http://www.streetmap.co.uk

So here an example for Euston Station (London, UK)

First do a search for a location in streetmap to find a location. This will bring to a web page with a map of the location you can zoom in and out with different levels of detail.
Some times you may be given a choose of different places, Road Names, ECT which share the same name.

So now you have a map of you r loctaion you want your reference point. So left click you mouse this will bring you in to a refreshed page with a OS x,y grid reference where you enter a new search. For example Euston has an OS grid reference of 529750,182750.

NOW FOR THE CONVERSION BIT

Below your map you have some text and here is a sample of what you are looking for

Use http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dl ... 50&A=Y&Z=1 to link to this map.
Location is at 529587E 182735N (N51:31:43 W0:07:60) Click here to covert/measure coordinates

Now click on the link ( Click ""here"" to covert/measure coordinates )

This will take you to a new window with the conversion tables. Euston Station shown below for example.

Lat (WGS84) N51:31:40 ( 51.527902 )
Long (WGS84) W0:08:00 ( -0.133458 )

Note this conversion may take a few minutes even on broadband.

P.S. London has aerial photos and is shown square by square though.

Hope this helps.

Andre (Technical Officer of STRATFORD FORTY-SEVEN GROUP)

[qzdcg8]

Yeah - I spotted this one too - on one of the LU sites there is a complete set LandRanger points for the WHOLE London Underground - you can use the URL to convert TQxxxxxx coords to MSTS coords using:-

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dl ... ype=LRGrid

In this case this will give you back the MSTS coords for TQ332817

Steve N

[photons66]

When placing tunnels use 2 * 10Mstrt before to allow easy tunnel mouth editing.

Step 1 place track, including tunnel.

Step 2 Raise terrain, including around non-tunnel track. (F9 tool)

Step 3 select track, not 10Mstrt next to tun but the one before, set the embankment and cutting no.s to 45, track width to 18, now check track selection, if correct press Y, the terrain should lower to the track.

Step 4 Use terrain edit tool (F9) just click once on terrain, any selection should vanish (red lines), press W to go to Wireframe mode, move cursor over tunnel enterance, press V, this should make a hole in the terrain, you should be abled to make this hole just big enough to uncover the tunnel enterance.

Step 5 Place a tunnel portal, align it with tunnel enterance.

Step 6 Rotate to line up with tunnel, F4 tool, if you use H to bring it level with the terrain and N to normalise the terrain rotation (flatten to ground),then move into position using F3 tool, press CTRL to keep the portal at same height.

You should have done one tunnel and placed a portal, without using terrain patches.

It does look a lot but it is quite easy once you get the hang of it.
Do try this on a test route a few times.

Alan Heath

Will this work with the Hendon tunnels on the MML (just after the M1 passes over it) as there is a lot of forestry which the line passes under?