The RR Track train simulator function is working perfectly now. Russ Becker found the problem was with "old" switches in the layout. It had something to do with their lantern location. By deleting the troublesome switches and then reloading them from the library, the problem was solved. It not only lets you build trains and run them, but it also has a timer that runs which lets me know how long of a run can be had without retracing steps. I was able to size the sidings and passing sidings, plus it let me practice switch alignments which is some cases with this design can be tricky. I'll have several months to practice running before I have real trains on tracks. Here's a screen print of the layout with a passenger train with two FP40s on the lead. I gives you an idea of how tight curves and clearances will be.
I did some playing around with the scenery. The town is elevated, but the station and factory area is not. I had to realign the main street that was going north. I had forgotten that the rear track is elevated 5" so the road would have to have risen 10 or more to give it clearance. This would have looked silly, so I rerouted the streets to quickly come down to the lower level. One street leads to the train station, and the other to the industrial zone. I may change this whole thing again. Other than taking some time, making at this stage costs nothing. I imported the RR Track bitmap into Coreldraw to draw the inclined roadways since I know of no way to do this in RR Track. Perhaps Russ will give me some pointers about how he renders inclined surfaces.
The slopes are clearly too steep, but most of this is a fantasy since the whole layout isn't much more than a 1/3rd of a mile long. One loop around the outside is only 3/4 of a mile.
If you're interested, go see my post in the Real Trains forum. We were in LaGrange, KY today to go to an Arts Fair on the Courthouse Lawn. For those who don't know, LaGrange has the CSX mainline running right down the middle of Main Street. It's a rare thing in today's world. Rich Melvin tells me he's driven the 765 down that street. It's so cool that I may redesign the entire village concept and have the trains run down the middle of the street. It's busy... 3 trains in an hour. The roadbed is very solid... you don't feel vibration in the buildings.
