Tunnel Limits

[landnrailroader]

When essentially copying an existing real railroad into a simulator route, one issue that gave me fits for a long time was just how or where to place tunnel portals. No matter how good the digital elevation is, the terrain generated will never exactly match the real world, so the method I came up with, and which works for me is thus:

Lay the track through the tunnel until you are satisfied with the gradient and alignment. At this point it does not matter if you are using tunnel track pieces or not, I usually don't. Then place the portals, while hiding the terrain shape, and align them to the track. Then raise or lower them until satisfied that they are close to the correct height. Now turn on the terrain shape. If a little of the top of the portal protrudes from the terrain, you can adjust position, otherwise hide the terrain shape. Now use the Transform function to move the portal along the track until 1/3 to 1/2 of its length along the track protrudes from the terrain. Now you can do the same to the other portal and then fill in the distance between them with either tunnel track pieces or whatever tunnel shapes you use. See the image. Now the hardest part is making the tunnel opening and filling it with whatever. I have issues with that, maybe someone else can contribute ideas to this thread. FREE_HILL_35.jpg Jerry

[CSRX]

This is a good tip. Only tunnel I'll deal with creating, is the one on the old West end of Pan Am between East Deerfield, MA and Rotterdam Jct, NY, whenever I get to building that route in the 2008 time frame..