Adding Railway Networks and Trains to Prepar3d

[NormanLGibson]

You can create routes along real world railway networks and have trains travel along these routes at set times by using CCP (Carrier and Convoy Planner) created by FSX@War. You can create your own rail network maps from Open Street Map (OSM) Shape Files. I will explain that later.

The railway networks are best in PR scenery as they fit very accurately to the real railways in the PR scenery. They can be a little off position using default or generic scenery.

You can create a rail map for anywhere in the world where an OSM Shape file exists.

For a start following a request from a forum user I have created a rail network for Washington State USA that you can download from here https://1drv.ms/f/s!Av2KDJ8SuEk0gUJk2iJCv_RtWamN

Install CCP downloaded from here https://www.fsxwar.com/dl.php?app=CCP&v=1.3.3.8

There is a very comprehensive tutorial on how to use CCP in the following video link. Watch from 12 mins for creating routes and convoys for ground vehicles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP6ca4Q ... e=youtu.be

Here is a part of the map in Seattle


If you want to get started install CCP and learn how to create routes and convoys. For now place any ground vehicle to follow the rail network and I will find some trains and give download links. I once purchased a low cost train model from Turbosquid and converted it into a usable sim model but the EULA will prevent giving it away but there are others.

Cheers,

Norm

[edakridge]

The scenery in P3Dv4 is much more accurate to real life than previous versions of the sim. This should make the undertaking much easier. I have tinkered with trains in FSX before, but it was a while back. I used the rolling stock models that we did for the FSX@War Southeast Asia pack and converted them to ground vehicles. Using CCP, I had to experiment with the Min/Max delay between vehicles to make a "Train".

Here is a video that shows what can be accomplished: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOdg0Fi ... A&index=26

This was in FSX and I had to slew down the tracks and put each waypoint into the file manually, since FSX's rail network was far off from the real map.

Example:

Code: Select all

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Trains can be done, but the work involved can be EXTREMELY tedious.

[NormanLGibson]

I have created a few train "convoys" using CCP and routes along a rail network in Germany and have inserted the "convoys" into Prepar3d over Megascenery Earth Germany. The trains are small from the air and you will see them travel along the "real" railway lines on the PR scenery. Bridges and tunnels obviously cause a hiccup although in my test a train traveled nicely over a small bridge.

At 15 secs the train is hard to see just behind the chopper.

At 29secs there are three trains one behind the other with a steam locomotive following the other two.

The steam locomotive is a model that I purchased from Turbosquid and converted to a Prepar3d model with steam effects which you can see in the video. The other trains are built from Ed's train component models that can be downloaded from FSX@War SE Asia Pack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJxn1Gs ... e=youtu.be