Railways map preview

[Whiplash]

Yo amigos;

I'm going to use this thread to document the development of the aforementioned DXMP map. For those not following my mapping efforts that closely, DXMP_Railways is planned to be a reimagination of my first map, DXMP_Railway, the latter being somewhat basic, while Railways will be much more ... in every respect.

In this map I'm going for hyper realism, at least with the railway part. I've attached some screenies.

[atrey65789]

Nice job! Keep up the great work!

[Mastakilla]

great work on the tracks

[jager774]

Awesome

[Majster]

It's very "crude" for now, but my first map was same. It's good to learn many things in the first map, expirence is very valuable.

[Whiplash]

More snaps.

[Majster]

Really nice! I love your railroad tracks.

[[FGS]Chees]

What MJ said! I would personally delete a sleeper on the tracks every 2 or so...and break them up as theirs just to many of them in real life your looking at about 4/5FT apart on each one but you have 4/5 in that one space alone and it wont do bsp, fps or reality within the map any justice. Thats jmo take it or leave it, it's still looking real nice tho Whip keep up the good work bro

[ShadowRunner]

looking and seeing some nice potential for gameplay, keep chipping away at it with the features and ideas... good progress.

[Whiplash]

Work on the station area.

[jager774]

Nice work Whip!

[TheWolf]

I thought that railroad ties were in the gravel a little?

[ShadowRunner]

I took a train from Cheltenham to Bristol yesterday and had 40 minutes to study all this.

The gravel is actually higher than both tracks, at the edges, a mound of gravel either side, running straight like the rails.
In between the two tracks in the middle, the gravel doesn't rise, just flat with the gravel under the rails. And yes the sleepers are "sunk" into the gravel, occasionally some gravel spills over the sleepers, along with litter and vegetation, sodacans, newspapers, crowbars and that kind of thing, passenger and engineer debris.

From studying it, I think the hardest part is to get the oily feel and to do the debris like sodacans, newspapers, and to get the gravel having that effect of little mounds and piles, without destroying fps for the players. The sides of the rails are actually black, whether rusty or not. There is lots of wood besides the sleepers, also sunk into the gravel, these wooden squares and blocks contain switches and other electrical terminals. These could be either side or in between the tracks. Also of course the usual lights and signalling equipment, engineer stuff.

Also I noticed the railway or gravel was never ever the same height as the grass or land beyond the railway, either an embankment or a cutting, or tunnel etc. On embankments there tended to be drains and sewers at the bottom of them, even if it was in a farmers field. Unfortunately I couldn't see anything useful when passing road crossings. The only time the land was same height as the railway was at road crossings. Also the mound of gravel either side of the railway was fairly constant.

[chin.democ.]

There's two types of rail - rusty and clean looking. The rusty ones believe it or not are the new rails, these new rails have been left out in the rain and have a thin layer of rust in them, the old rails are clean looking as the rust has been long worn away by friction from trains.

[Whiplash]

Both of the above posts are correct: though it was too much hassle for me to try and build the line on an embankment so I didn't do that.

Another, more serious error was not having the ballast (the gravel) come up higher, closer to the rail. Typically, when a railway is built, first the alignment has an initial layer laid down, then the sleepers(/ties) then the rails. Finally, more ballast is laid until its practically up to the level of the rail. My map basically does everything but the last part.
See below for pix of tracks under construction




@Chees don't take this the wrong way but I think I know a fair bit about railways and I can say with confidence that it would be extraordinarily rare for sleepers to be laid 4-5 feet apart. As a general rule with wooden sleepers you want about 1 width of sleeper between sleepers, perhaps a little bit more. With concrete sleepers you can be a bit more conservative again, though I've seen some railroads in the U.S. where they have massive concrete sleepers laid under the same specifications as wooden ones.

I may try to make more realistic track ballast closer to release time. For now though I'm working on the last spawnrooms and map boundaries.