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…and why not?

Vistisen

Entry posted by Vistisen

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About five months since my last post. I am glad that I have waited. The new DCC concepts track is on the way. Indeed, the flex track has arrived and all the pictures I have seen make it look really good. I have been trying to find a copy of the book ‘main line to the west part 3’ which is like gold dust according to others on this forum, but there I was ‘panning away’ on google and lo and behold I found a gold nugget! It on sale for £30.
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It arrived yesterday and has more than doubled the number of pictures I have of Chard Junction. Not only that It has a couple of good track plans which I compared with the design I had made in Anyrail using the Tillig elite track. I was pleasantly surprised I had certainly captured the essence of the design.
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The main problem is that the whole station was on a gentle sweeping curve of about 70 chains. Which is about 18.5M in OO gauge radius. I looked at the photos and the curve is obvious, and that DCC stuff look gorgeous. But that means not using Tillig points and going back to handmade points for all the curved sections and as for the rest possibly DCC straight points when they arrive or something else.
The family were away for a week, and I was ‘working’ from home on the day job. So I looked in the mirror and told myself that as a system administrator no programme had ever defeated me, and that Templot was not going to be the first. Knowing that no one would hear me swearing, I did what Martin says one should and saw all, well most, well a couple of the videos. I Took a deep breath and had a go.
Having spent at a couple of hours playing at doing a simple point, I got the anyrail design imported as a background and started having a go at making the first crossover. I’m getting there. The shear bloody mindedness of some of the Templot controls still annoys me. For example, in ALL programs CTRL+Z is an undo command (it has been the standard since the late 80’s). Martin knows this as the program HAS code that handles this key combination, It pops up at dialog box that tells you that Yes he knows that you meant UNDO but that you need to press CTRL+U to do that in Templot. Look mate, if you have gone to the bother of creating the damm dialogue box for the key combination, just implement ctrl+z as undo like everyone else does!
Having said that, Templot does magical things with track work. the maths behind it is very clever. Whether I will be able to build the points remains to be seen. One of the other benefits of using handbuilt pointwork is that I can choose a more prototypical distance between tracks. If anyone knows of a program that can tell you minimum distance between tracks for curves of a given radius, when using coaches with a known size and end overhang it would love to know about it. I’ll upload a few pictures as the plan progresses, but as you can see I’m almost finished!
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  • RMweb Gold
martin_wynne
  • RMweb Gold

 

 

If anyone knows of a program that can tell you minimum distance between tracks for curves of a given radius, when using coaches with a known size and end overhang it would love to know about it.

 

Templot can do that, using the dummy vehicle tool. See this bit of video:

 

 https://flashbackconnect.com/Movie.aspx?id=r6BdZWxz5kk5ye1ek-P-Ag2

 

More notes about this: http://85a.co.uk/forum/view_topic.php?id=2872&forum_id=22#p20270

 

Click the dimensions... button to change the dummy vehicle size.

 

p.s. CTRL-Z undoes a delete from the storage box. To roll back changes to the control template, use CTRL+U.

 

p.p.s. Templot dates from 10 years before the late 80s. :)

 

Martin.

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  • RMweb Gold
Vistisen
  • RMweb Gold

Billiant thats a video I have not seen.

 

And the storage box concept is something else I must delve into.  At the moment I just make sure that I never overwrite anything and then keep opening things until I find one that looks right.  

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  • RMweb Gold
Vistisen
  • RMweb Gold

I know Martin is someone who appreciates precise data :-)  so I have just checked CTRL+Z dates from the Zerox PARC text editor from 1974

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  • RMweb Gold
martin_wynne
  • RMweb Gold

I know Martin is someone who appreciates precise data :-)  so I have just checked CTRL+Z dates from the Zerox PARC text editor from 1974

 

Thanks. smile.gif  And as I pointed out CTRL+Z does in fact perform an Undo function in Templot. It undoes the most recent template deletion from the storage box / track plan.

 

To roll back changes on the the control template asynchronously with that, use CTRL+U. But in fact the most convenient way to run to and fro on the rollback register is SHIFT+CTRL+MouseWheel, or click the blue arrow tool-buttons on the trackpad. There are 80 slots in the rollback register for the control template.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

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hayfield

Depending on whether you decide to build the turnouts in copperclad or chaired construction method, I would guess that after building the curved turnouts unless you are very time poor the straight ones will be a doddle.

 

Buying components rather than kits is so much cheaper (often the price of a RTR product) and if you are designing the track plan in Templot then you can build then to fit the space available and follow the gentle curve of the prototype

 

Will keep a look out for further posts as this project looks very interesting

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