Dogbone Traction, Part 3 (MSTS)

By Sanford Mace

The original "Dogbone Traction" article, now designated as Part 1, is at our sister site, V-Scaler.com.
-Ed.

As I explained in "Dogbone Traction, Part 2 (BVE)," Al Barten produced a Dogbone traction route and wrote about it in a V-Scaler article titled, appropriately enough, "Dogbone Traction." I read the article and liked the little route a lot. I wanted one. I am sure I could have asked for and received a copy of the route, but this is a Trainz route and I do not own a copy of Trainz. I do have MSTS and BVE though, so I decided to make versions for those simulators.

This is how I made the MSTS version. For those of you who did not read the first installment, here are the basic setup dimensions. If you read the first installment, skip the next paragraph.

The MSTS version of the route I created is available at the VR Downloads page. Please follow the instructions in the Readme file carefully.

The Parameters

Look at his original article and the screen shots. He is using HO scale, or 1:87. The length of his route is about 8.5 feet by 1.3 foot with 9” (.75 foot) radius curves. Or 740’ (225.5 m) by 113 (34.5 m) with 65 foot (20 m) radius curves. This will give a total route length of about 2200 feet (670 m). Note there is a lot of round-off error here; we are just trying to get an idea of what we want to build. This is a dogbone-shaped loop running North-South (not specified in the original article, but will make sense later). There are 2 sidings running south off the East track, a station siding and a freight house/maintenance shed. The overhead support is old North American roadside trolley/interurban wood support poles. This gives us our general parameters. We are not going to produce an exact model of the model. We are going to produce the same type of layout that is close to the look and feel of the original.

The Challenges

Now as to how to do this in MSTS. First a list of challenges:

1. MSTS does not like to do loops. The Route Editor will not let you connect end of a loop.
2. I have no idea of how to do this. I have never made a route in MSTS.

Let us address the second item first. There is a very good set of tutorials located at the steam4me web site. By following these, I was able to get started. I will refer to these tutorials throughout the article, but not quote them. If you want to read them, they are VERY good. I went from clueless to something that worked in a long weekend.

The first problem also had a solution. I dug though the forums at www.Train-Sim.com and found several old discussions on loops. The basic conclusion: A continuous loop must have a reverse loop in it, and the loop can not be the default route. There must be a signal entering and leaving the reverse section. You have to change a switch/turnout to go to the loop each time. There is a very good circle route demo in the www.Train-Sim.com Library called aipriori.zip by Maurie Daly that covers loops nicely.

We now have our basic design and parameters. The loop should look something like the graphic below.



Escape 1 lets us use the route clockwise; Escape 2 lets us use the route counter-clockwise. The red dots are the signals. You can travel the reverse loop from clockwise to counter-clockwise, but not the reverse. We will only be using this in a counter-clockwise direction. This applies to the AI or the train you're driving. Escape 1 will be the Station Spur and Escape 2 the Freight House Spur moved from the top to the bottom track.

The straight section should be about 200 meters long and the curves as close to 20 meters as possible. MSTS's tightest default curve is 25 meters, so we have about 300 meters of curve and 400 meters of straight, which is close to our desired 670 meters. As in the BVE route, these are round-off numbers to give us an idea of what to do.

Read and follow the directions in the steam4me) tutorial "An Idiot's Guide to Extracting A New Route" by Jim Ward to create a working space for our route. Use the name Dogbone. Make sure there is overhead electric wire and its height is 6.2 meters if you plan to use the Valley Transit traction (recommended). Choose only one tile. That is all we will need. Choose a location near where you are (it does not matter, but we have to pick somewhere). The place will determine how MSTS handles season day length, I think.

Then read "A Primer in Track" by Yuri and "An Idiot's Guide to Dynamic Track" by Jim Ward (both at steam4me). We will be using lots of dynamic track.

Laying The Track

Now open the route editor in MSTS from the Train Simulator Editors & Tools link on your desktop or Programs menu.

IMPORTANT: ROUTE EDITOR IS VERY FUSSY AND WILL BLOW UP FOR WHAT EVER REASON OR NO REASON. SAVE OFTEN, LIKE AFTER EVERY MAJOR ADDITION.

Choose the route you created. You should be in the middle of a flat plain with the ground cover you picked when creating your tile for the route. It should look something like this:



Now go to the placement menu and click on More. This will bring up a list or part of the list of what is available to build the route. We will be using mostly default objects. If you want access to everything default, read "Get Stuffed! - Adding All MSTS Objects to Your New Route" by Jim Ward (again, at steam4me).

Choose from the Dynamic Track section Dynamic Track Pieces. Click on More again and choose from the Track Sections A2T10mStrt. Continue and choose from Track Sections: A1tPnt10dLft, A1tPnt10dRgt and A1tUSBuffer. Your placement menu should look like this:



This is all we need to build the loop. Now choose the A2T10mStrt; then clock on the placement tool.



Now place your marker somewhere in your plain and click your mouse. Then click on the selection tool (the house in the top left of the mode menu) and you will see a 10-meter section of double track in the middle of your tile. This is our starting and anchor point, the middle of our route. It runs North-South. If you followed the first installment ("Dogbone Traction, Part 2 (BVE)"), you remember the time and effort we took to get the track parallel and spaced correctly. This piece of track does it for us.



The first piece and the two switches.

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Article and screen shots ©2006 Sanford Mace. All rights reserved.