Utah Belt - New Route Build Problem

[Darkhorse427]

So for the past several months I have been working on a new Fictional route loosely based on the track plan for the Utah Belt model railroad that has been in Model Railroader magazine several times. I completed the trackwork for the original stage added signals and speed posts and mileposts. tested all of that from end to end before I started adding scenery. Sadly when doing all of that testing I did not change the default time and season in open rails so was always testing in summer at 12:00. Now that I have started adding scenery, starting with the southern end of the route at the town or Benton where the major yard is. I decided to do some testing in other seasons and times. That is when I discovered that the time is completely off.
in winter is it perpetually dark except for noon and about an hour before and after when the sun almost peaks above the horizon. and in the summer it almost goes down at midnight but not quite.
The starting location of the route was supposed to me in New Mexico north of Albuquerque. I thought I had set to the latitude & longitude of Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico (35'58"N 106'005"W) when the route was first created.

this is a shot at 2:00am in the summer time, I am assuming that this daylight issue if because Open Rails thinks this route is at the north pole or something like that.Open Rails 2025-11-19 04-04-44.jpgSSo I have a couple of questions for the more experienced route builders.
1. How do I verify the actual location of the route as it is?

2. If the location is not the above mentioned coordinates can this be corrected?

[wwhall]

Does your route's .env files have sunrise/sunset times specified in them? My understanding is that OR will use those times if they are present. Also, OR assumes that clock time is Standard Time, not Daylight Savings Time. OR used to have a tab where the user could specify local time zone by GMT + or -, but I think that has been removed. There has been discussion about that over at Elvas Tower.

[Darkhorse427]

Does your route's .env files have sunrise/sunset times specified in them?

Yes they do.

I made a new quick test route (created with TSRE V0.7012 just as I did with the Utah Belt route) using the start location of 35.58 & 106.05 placed some straight track down the middle of the tile. then tested is at 6am noon and at 9pm in the summer and the same in winter. the sun was just rising at 6am had just set at 9pm and was almost directly overhead at noon in the summer. in the winter same time was still dark at 6am and again at 9pm but was light at noon. I then backed up the .trk file and environment folder of the UB and edited the .trk file to use the same environment files at the test route and copied the test routes environment files over the the UB's environment folder. the results were that at midnight in the summer the sun is at the horizon when looking north, and just below the horizon at noon in the winter in the same spot looking the same direction.

[wwhall]

I assume that your route has the longitude set at "-106.05", not "106.05". Assuming that you have the lat/long set correctly, I would suggest filing a bug report over a Elvas Tower. I've seen a couple of routes the I've had for quite awhile display some "wonky" sunrise/sunset times, but not as radical as what you describe.

[Darkhorse427]

I assume that your route has the longitude set at "-106.05", not "106.05".

Nope it was set to 106.05 which turns out is is roughly where Guyaun China is not Santa Clara Pueblo New Mexico. 🙄

[ebnertra000]

Longitude shouldn't affect sunrise/sunset times, so even though OR thinks you're in China, that would be fine as far as day lengths goes. When you're in the route in OR, what latitude does the compass give you?

[Darkhorse427]

well that explains it... 😫 I didn't know you could turn on the compass in OR, I knew there was one in TSRE.

image.png
looks like the city of Benton is not just north of Albuquerque like it is supposed to be but is on the north east coast of Greenland.

So Is there a way to fix that? can the routes location be reset to where it is supposed to be?

[ebnertra000]

I'm not sure if there's a way to physically shift a route's location like that. It may be possible to do that manually, but it would be an incredibly painstaking process, not least because you'd have to get rid of all interactives and take all track and roads out of their respective databases during the move. And I'm not even sure that would work

[kapitaen]

Excerpt from the readme file of TSUtil (or RouteRiter).

+* - move : Shift complete route-definition to new longitude/lattitude (14)

14) Shift complete route-definition to new longitude/lattitude
This function ('move') shifts a Route-Definition a certain, definable number of Route squares in X
and/or Z-direction. All definitions (tile-files, world-files, TD definitions...) are adapted
accordingly and again provided. The new files are written to the directory '/new route ', which
is created in the Route-Definition.
To the exact proceeding also compare to the later fictous example.
TSUtil computes the maximum edge-length of the used tiles. The number of squares, the route is to
be moved, must be divisible through this number so that no overlapping will occur during move.

e.g. ProTrain 1: "java TSUtil -lC:\Logdat.log move C:\TRSim\routes\ProTrain_Rheintal -5120 -496"

Jan

[Darkhorse427]

Since I had already painted the ROW in TSRE, Route Riter crashes anytime I try to manipulate the route due to the TSRE using a "-" sign at the beginning of all the custom painted terrtex files. given the time it would take to remove all of the interactives (Mileposts, speed posts, crossings and signals) as well as reverting all of the tiles with custom painted terrtex back to standard ones I am inclined to just start over on the route.

[Darkhorse427]

UtahBelt_02-21-05.jpg UtahBelt_02-22-11.jpg UtahBelt_02-24-43.jpg UtahBelt_02-31-39.jpg UtahBelt_02-20-36.jpg Just a new years update, the rebuild of the Utah Belt route is now well past the point the previous one was at. here are some screenshots heading North/West from Benton working on vegetation and Forrest objects.

[haverfordwest]

Installed this route yesterday, fictional it may be. But it is very well crafted and gives a feeling of being prototypical.

Many thanks for making it available.

Mike.

[Darkhorse427]

You are most welcome Mike. Did you also download the locomotive light package update?