Idea for Open Rails

[UP6706]

Here's an idea for working MOW equipment with the features they can do IRL like maintaining/inspecting railroad infrastructure and anything else MOW equipment was built to do and replacing the tracks too with newer ones for activities..

[CSRX]

Sounds like Century of Steam will fit the bill for you on that.

ORTS is designed as a train simulation, not MOW simulation. 😉

[derekmorton]

You need to understand who "they" are.
This is not a commercial venture with 10 programmers sitting writing code all day.

Open Rails is maintained by people who work for a living and have families and lives outside OR.
They give as much time as they can manage, and they give it freely for the enjoyment of others like you and I.

It is bad karma to say "they should".

The people who program OR do what interests them first, then what others wish for second.

[pwillard]

Also, to be fair, there are many other priorities on the to-do list before something like this would be considered.

[eric]

There is one thing ORTS could consider here... allow activities to include additional scenery assets not part of the main world files....

The DIY route in our library has a few scenes with MOW equipment, but they're always there.

Being able to build an activity with some animated construction vehicles along the path or {gasp} a derailment site with MOW equipment not on the rails might be interesting. Today, it it's not built into the route, it's not there.

There was already a thread on Elvas where that was requested, so maybe one of these days it could happen.

[wwhall]

^I've been suggesting what Eric just posted for years. I was hoping that there will someday be a feature in the TSRE Activity Editor that would permit that. Call such things "Activity Objects" tied to the .act file, sort of the way that loose consists are. I'm certain that was never contemplated in MSTS because the MSTS AE never had a capability of being able to actually see exactly where things were placed on track or terrain--one just had to make a best guess, then run the activity to find out.

[pwillard]

Well, we are one step closer with working turntables and container cranes... so there is hope.

[oper190]

I agree with this idea, but I did something like that years ago.

Granted it's not perfect, but I did this for MSTS, an early project done in TMS. A fire engine I made years ago as a wagon, but offset the shape off the tracks. Placing it in the Activity Editor as piece of loose stock, and it would sit on the side of the tracks. You just had to be aware of which side it would be sitting on so it won't be on an adjourning track.
Shape Viewer058.jpg

Edit - There was a trick to doing this. the Main or Parent piece is hidden under the tracks:
Shape Viewer059.jpg In my case I made a small cube centered on the track level and then deleted the top and sides so only the bottom face was drawn and so does not show in game. The rest of the object was then slide off center while the parent remains on the tracks.

[PerryPlatypus]

I'm sure it has been discussed, but the Donner Pass Storm of 1952 expansion activities made extensive use of "loose consists" placed in activities for adding activity-specific objects, including snow berms, avalanches, snow-clearing vehicles, MOW gangs, and yes, a derailment site 😱 This worked because the WAG files for these loose consists intentionally did *not* have "couplers", which meant you could place them in an activity and they would remain stationary, even if a train went through them. At some point along the way the OR devs decided it would be smart to add code where WAG files get couplers added to them automatically by the program, even if they were intentionally excluded in the WAG, so that no longer works now because your train will "couple" to the object and shove it down the track, completely defeating the purpose.

I don't recall how they got around the issue of the signal system not being affected by these WAG files being placed... or maybe those activities had the signals showing a restricting indication at those spots?... I don't recall. Much of the Donner Pass content (especially the cabforward steam locomotives and the rotary plows) are hopelessly inoperable in ORTS because of many special "tricks" used in the ENG files that worked fine in MSTS but are a mess in OR, so I haven't touched those activities in many years.