Kickstart - Adding taillights to wagons

[mikesimpson]

Following Dave B's great work on adding a flashing taillight to the HAA wagon and Russell Westwood converting a whole bunch of wagons, I have set up RS_Tools to automate this function.

To use this option you must have already downloaded and installed the file UKTS_19985_taillight-drb.zip
by Dave B. From uktrainsim.com. Dave’s file adds a red tail light to the HAA stock.

This option expands upon Dave’s work and gives you a list of freight wagon types to which you may add
a red flashing tail light. Two files, TailCode.txt and TailLight.txt have been added to the RS_Kickstart
folder. TailLight.txt contains a list of freight wagons with their settings as compiled by Russell Westwood
(for which many thanks). Do NOT modify TailCode.txt.

Users may add other wagons to the list in the same format as the existing entries.
To add a red flashing light to the end of any wagon, go to the ‘Edit Rolling Stock’ screen and select your
wagon, then click the ‘Add Red Tail-Light’ button. You are warned about files which are required, and if
you click OK a list of wagon types appears. Select one which is the same type as the one you wish to add
the taillight to and a new copy of the wagon is made with the suffix _Rear, e.g. Eunos_Rear - This can
then be added to the end of your consist.

The new version v1.0.89 is on my site now.

[mearle73]

Thanks Mike great stuff.

[smarty2]

Fantastic Mike cheers, will there be an option to add the tail lights to Carriages in the future?

Regards

Mart

[stephenholmes]

Hi everyone
Mikes Kickstart and Rs Tools are worth their weight in gold.
These utilities must rate as the best ever created for Rail Simulator.
Thankyou Mike for these kind regards Stephen
Ps Thanks also to Dave for providing the flashing tail light and Russel Westwood these are brilliant additions to Rail Simulator

[pendolinofan]

Given they are digital and therefore weigh nothing, i'm guesing that was just a figure of speech

Great work as always Mike.

Adam

[mikesimpson]

Fantastic Mike cheers, will there be an option to add the tail lights to Carriages in the future?

Regards

Mart

Hi Mart,

The TailLight.txt file can be edited to add extra types of rolling-stock. Adding the tail lights is a bit of trial and error, the 3 figures required are (in metres)
1. Distance left of the centreline
2. Height above track
3. Distance behind the centre of the carriage

As the first 2 will not change all that much between items, you can try something like -0.8000, 1.1600 as a start, then try half the length of the carriage for the 3rd entry

If those are not quite right, then you need to edit the Carriage's .bin file to fine tune these settings so that the tail light is not floating behind the carriage, covering other features etc.

If anyone comes up with some decent settings for any rolling stock, please let me know and I will include them in the file so that everyone can benefit.

[Sly401]

Hi Mike with the taillight positions in the Z axis... a pretty close bet would be to use the coupling position , I don't know if you could parse this out, but it would be a good starting point


cheers

Sly

[davveb]

Good work Mike. Here's a couple of other locations I did work out:

HTA
-0.7
1.11
-8.36

DT's Mk2E
0.968
2.345
-10.15

Dave B

[mikesimpson]

Thanks Dave,

I will include them in the taillight.txt file next update.

[stephenholmes]

Hi Everyone
I just want to say thankyou to Dave Brindley for his latest additions Oil Lamps for steam locomotives.
These are superb and just what was needed for steam fans like myself.
Kind regards Stephen

[codrivermike]

Am I missing something? I added the taillight folder to the correct place and followed the read me, including deleting the blueprints.pak. I then used Kickstart to add a rear lamp to an FSA wagon, in particular one of the European container pack wagons. FSA 3 x 20ft tank 002. everything seemed fine and kickstart told me the wagon had been created. it even showed up in the list. I did notice though that there is no 'save' button highlighted so i just exited kickstart and I cannot find the modified wagon. It does not show up in the FSA folder, it dosn't show up in the wagon list when I try to use kickstart to swap the new wagon over and it dosn't show up in the list of wagons in RailSim editor.
What have I done wrong? Where's it gone?

Best regards

Michael

[mikesimpson]

Hi Michael,

I will need to get back to you on that in a day or two, my PCs are virtually all packed up now as am awaiting carpet layers tomorrow and I am left with an old PC on the kitchen bench.

I will see if I can work out what has happened to your oil lamps.

Mike

[codrivermike]

No worries Mike. There's more to life than Rail Sim. have fun with the carpets.

[mikesimpson]

No worries Mike. There's more to life than Rail Sim. have fun with the carpets.

I failed to mention that the temperature here today/tomorrow is expected to reach 41 deg C. Which for someone who hails from Northumberland is a little on the warm side for moving furniture...

Anyway, I have just had a look at adding a taillight to the file you mentioned, and it worked fine.
I selected the FSA 3x20ft Tank 002 in the Kickstart window
Clicked Add red tail light
The box popped up showing a list of wagons you could select from
Clicked on FSA
Kickstart reported it had done it, and showed FSA 3x20ft Tank 002 in the list of rolling stock.

I went to the folder C:\Program Files\Rail Simulator\Assets\Kuju\RailSimulator\RailVehicles\Freight\FSAWagon\3x_20ft_Tank_002\Wagon and as well as fsa.bin there was the new file 'FSA 3x20ft-Tank 002_Rear.bin

This appears in the game as FSA 3x20ft Tank 002_rear and I was able to add it to the end of a consist. (It did not have any tanks loaded, just appearing as a flat, but I assume if I ticked the Loaded option it would load OK).

Mike

[Squatch]

Sorry for dragging this one up again, but I seem to be having the same problem - I can create the [wagon]_rear ok, then exit kickstart, but when I go back into kickstart and look to add that wagon to a consist, it's not there. I used RS_tools to make sure everything was read/write, but no difference. No big deal really, just more puzzled as to what I'm doing wrong....

Ta