I made a thing. (4 way Overhead Rail intersection).
Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2024 8:25 am
I really love theory crafting, I find it helps a lot managing my mental health and the depression.
I also have Dyspraxia, which gives me issues with motor skills, so I tend to gravitate towards building games (Minecraft, Factorio etc) or turn based games (Pokemon), because it just allows me to do things as I am able to do them. The Dyspraxia gets worse with stress, on good days you wouldn't notice it, except for me constantly dropping my keys and small things.
I am also Australian, so my rails are left-hand side driving.
I was thinking about how the overhead rails would affect the intersection designs, so this design can easily be flipped.
I started off sketching a possible intersection, the idea was that each possible outcome; left, straight, right - would not intersect other tracks, and there would be no U-turn available.
This is because if a U-turn is required, it should be placed before the intersection to keep train traffic outside of the intersection.
I came up with that design, the right was the second go, followed by bottom then the top left.
Forgive my messy scribbling, I struggle with motor skills when stressed and life is like that at the moment.
I went to the FFF #377 and #378, and counted all the tiles to figure out the curves, and what would theoretically be possible.
I then went to Officeworks, and bought a book of 5mm graph paper, which worked out really well as the darker lines are 10mm, which is 2 tiles wide, the same as train tracks in Factorio. I sat down and started drawing in the curves only to realize after cutting them all out, that I had counted each 10mm square as one tile instead of two, so I had to do it all again.
This is the end result;
I included a train for scale.
I am curious for opinions regarding this, there are many people in the community far more intelligent than I am, and I value your input.
Is this a decent design, can it be improved?
Can we make it smaller and more compact?
I wish to try and design 4 and 6 track intersections as well, but I thought I would start with the 2 track first.
I just blu-tacked paper onto the graph paper, so I could move it around whilst trying to figure out how compact I could make it.
I know it isn't much, but I am pretty proud of it.
For what it is worth guys, thank you for your Friday Facts, it is honestly something I constantly look forward to every week, this is the first time in a very long time that I have been excited for an upcoming game/expansion, the last one being Dark Reign in 1998, it is a nice feeling to have, thank you.
I also have Dyspraxia, which gives me issues with motor skills, so I tend to gravitate towards building games (Minecraft, Factorio etc) or turn based games (Pokemon), because it just allows me to do things as I am able to do them. The Dyspraxia gets worse with stress, on good days you wouldn't notice it, except for me constantly dropping my keys and small things.
I am also Australian, so my rails are left-hand side driving.
I was thinking about how the overhead rails would affect the intersection designs, so this design can easily be flipped.
I started off sketching a possible intersection, the idea was that each possible outcome; left, straight, right - would not intersect other tracks, and there would be no U-turn available.
This is because if a U-turn is required, it should be placed before the intersection to keep train traffic outside of the intersection.
I came up with that design, the right was the second go, followed by bottom then the top left.
Forgive my messy scribbling, I struggle with motor skills when stressed and life is like that at the moment.
I went to the FFF #377 and #378, and counted all the tiles to figure out the curves, and what would theoretically be possible.
I then went to Officeworks, and bought a book of 5mm graph paper, which worked out really well as the darker lines are 10mm, which is 2 tiles wide, the same as train tracks in Factorio. I sat down and started drawing in the curves only to realize after cutting them all out, that I had counted each 10mm square as one tile instead of two, so I had to do it all again.
This is the end result;
I included a train for scale.
I am curious for opinions regarding this, there are many people in the community far more intelligent than I am, and I value your input.
Is this a decent design, can it be improved?
Can we make it smaller and more compact?
I wish to try and design 4 and 6 track intersections as well, but I thought I would start with the 2 track first.
I just blu-tacked paper onto the graph paper, so I could move it around whilst trying to figure out how compact I could make it.
I know it isn't much, but I am pretty proud of it.
For what it is worth guys, thank you for your Friday Facts, it is honestly something I constantly look forward to every week, this is the first time in a very long time that I have been excited for an upcoming game/expansion, the last one being Dark Reign in 1998, it is a nice feeling to have, thank you.