Let’s Populate Those Small Stations

By John D'Angelo

I enjoy passenger operations and like to have my passenger trains stop at the stations along the way to load and unload passengers. While there are a number of very nice looking stations available in TRS2006 and TRS2004, I needed to have a station more in keeping with the small stations that are found on my railroad. Standard in Trainz is the Station CP, which also has two other models, Station CP medium lite and Station CP medium old. These are more reflective of the stations that were on my railroad in the early days. There was one problem with them and that was the fact that they were not passenger-capable.

Andi Smith (Andi06) has created the perfect way to make those stations active for passenger use. His solution is the AJS Station 1x50sq (KUID:122285:3335:5). This is an invisible station that has a short platform and can fit any small station situation you can find, even rural stations that have no platform. There are other great features of this item, and I’ll describe them as we build a passenger-active station using the CP station.


CP Station without passenger ability.

The station has been placed on the route, but still needs to be activated. I choose the AJS invisible station and placed it on the ground in front of the tracks, so I can adjust it.


Invisible station placed in front.


Invisible station moved into place.

Note that the crowd is more in keeping with a small rural station. After it is lined up properly, I will delete the track that is currently running through it.


The original track has been deleted.

Once this is done, then I move the ends of the existing track to the yellow circles on each side of the center area. As soon as the track joins, the center will fill with the same track. The green circles are for alignment only; you need to stretch the track to the yellow circle.


Track joining is complete.

When you look at the people at the station, you will see that they are floating in air. This is because the default altitude of the people is high.


People floating in air.

To correct this and set up the station parameters, go back to the object mode, choose the question mark option and click on the center section of the invisible station.


The station is programmed.

I set the height of the passengers at 60, which placed them correctly on the station platform. I entered the name that I chose for the station, Southold, and set the passenger peak to 20. After all, this is a rural station and 20 is a very good amount of people for peak travel time. The invisible station also has an option called Passenger Shape. By clicking through the choices, you can change the positioning of the passengers along the platform.


The train to Greenport pulls in.

Andi has a number of other invisible stations under his KUID number with longer platform lengths and stations with more than one track. The installation and setup procedure is the same, so this example is good for them as well. The main thing is that you can add passenger ability to just about any station you wish.

I hope this article is of use to you for getting passengers into those little stations along your route.

John

Article and screen shots �2006 John D'Angelo. All rights reserved.