Building track in mountainous regions?

[TheBonobo4]

Bit of a weird question really, but I often see elaborate track designs from screenshots posted on here and I often think to myself how can I do that? I play the game with the grid on and trees off when building tracks, but I'm sometimes amazed by the intricacy of tracks possible.

For instance where I might build a winding rail with a maximum gradient of 6 in some places I'll see someone post a screenshot of the same route with a maximum gradient of 4. I realise it's not always possible to have a maximum of 5 or less but sometimes I build rail thinking it's good but still have a slight patch of 10 or so if I'm building up a mountain and think there's no other way through.

Is it just a case of practice or is there something I'm missing? I try to only build tunnels and bridges as a last resort as they are expensive although quicker and easier to build. I don't have any screenshots of my routes on hand and I'd consider myself a good player and not one who just builds a shortest distance track like an AI, but it always amazes me just what is possible by some players.

As a quick example of what I mean, I think the Brazil map posted in the archives was very mountainous and required delivering to Santos, a coastal city surrounded by cliffs, and I had to use the shay because my track had gradients around 10 to 15!

[Gumboots]

It's mostly just a matter of practice, and trying things you think wouldn't work. Sometimes you just fluke it. Like when I got up the range on the Guatemala map with maximum grade of 4. I tried to do it again and just couldn't get it, so always had some short patches of 5%. But I'm sure if I practiced that route a few more times I'd have it down pat. And some maps just have terrible terrain. I haven't tried the Brazil map yet, so don't know how bad it might be.

Although there are times when tunnels and bridges really are the best option. In some cases the mountain goat track you'd need to get over a range without a tunnel ends up costing almost as much as the tunnel, so you might as well use a tunnel instead. Faster to build, and faster trip times. But playing mountain goat is fun sometimes too.

The way the track laying algorithm works is a bit touchy on steep terrain, especially around corners. You have to play with the radius you let it adopt, and see how it lays against the side of the cliff (if you're going up one of those) and around the ins and outs. It's a trial and error thing, but you get a sort of feel for it after a while.

[Cash on Wheels]

You can always adjust the terrain around the track of the land is to steep or uneven. Just like real railroad do! If I had a section track heights like 111122222468888111115555111 I'll get the terrain leveling tool, and make it large enough to cover that entire section. press it just once & section of track magical changes to 33333334553336443333333333!

[Firefly 2-2-2]

1. Use a lot of curves.
2. Build tunnels.
3. Use mountain locos like the Fairlie and the Shay.

[TheBonobo4]

1. Use a lot of curves.
2. Build tunnels.
3. Use mountain locos like the Fairlie and the Shay.

I love the shay to be honest. That little train climbs hills like no other. It will do 20mph up almost any slope. Even the Big Boy etc can't do that.

I think I'm generally quite good at track laying, just sometimes I'll miss something that gives a faster or cheaper route. You've watched my videos so you'll know what I mean.

[RulerofRails]

Some maps are smoothed heavily (on those, normally it's simply a case of extending the route a little with curves), but those made in PopTop style have low level roughness, which while not looking great, gives the most challenge. When shooting for a minimum grade it's mostly about precision of angles over the roughest parts. A lot of that has to do with the way the game fills in the track bed. We can only get as good as to "expect" roughly what the game will do. There is some practice in that for sure. It's just experimentation.

Tip: the game will meddle joins on grade. This is often a blip of high grade. Also, as tempting as it may be to start at the most difficult part (you can experiment, but always undo): ONLY lay in only a single direction. If you lay a little isolated piece across the worst part, things will go okay as you advance in one direction, but when you start to extend from the other end, the game often dumps some of the track bed fill settings that you so carefully selected. So experiment all you like, but do the final build in one go.

[Gumboots]

Tip: the game will meddle joins on grade.

Whenever this happens, just Shift+E into the editor (with the game paused) and select the terrain smoothing tool on smallest brush size. Centre the brush directly on the grade blip, and click once. This will usually do the job nicely.

I will sometimes use this to deal with small bumps in terrain too. If I've laid a really good stretch of mountain goat track but it has a couple of isolated lumps and bumps, I may give them a quick touch with the smoothing tool. This doesn't really make any difference to train trip times, AFAICT, but it stops the train bucking and looks better on train rides.

[TheBonobo4]

Some maps are smoothed heavily (on those, normally it's simply a case of extending the route a little with curves), but those made in PopTop style have low level roughness, which while not looking great, gives the most challenge. When shooting for a minimum grade it's mostly about precision of angles over the roughest parts. A lot of that has to do with the way the game fills in the track bed. We can only get as good as to "expect" roughly what the game will do. There is some practice in that for sure. It's just experimentation.

Tip: the game will meddle joins on grade. This is often a blip of high grade. Also, as tempting as it may be to start at the most difficult part (you can experiment, but always undo): ONLY lay in only a single direction. If you lay a little isolated piece across the worst part, things will go okay as you advance in one direction, but when you start to extend from the other end, the game often dumps some of the track bed fill settings that you so carefully selected. So experiment all you like, but do the final build in one go.

What is highly annoying is when I build a lovely bit of track, only to have it ruined by the unfortunate placement of a maintenance facility or service tower. Thanks game.

[Gumboots]

That's when you use the editor to smooth things out. It's generally regarded as legit gameplay to fix obvious bugs that the game throws at you. Building seeding borking your track in an obvious example.