Drawing Straight Track and Switches

To draw straight track:

  1. Choose the Straight Track tool  .
  2. Press the mouse button where you want one end of a track segment.
  3. Drag to where you want the other end, release the button.

You have a point-to-point railroad!  If you wanted to, you could add a train and start operating.

  1. Position the cursor on one endpoint, so it highlights with a little green square (see picture above right).
  2. Press and drag.
     

You now have a continuous section of road with a bend in the middle.

  1. And so on.  You can draw segments in any order and any direction -- they'll join together as long as the highlight square is showing when you press or release the mouse button.

To draw a switch:

A switch is automatically created whenever three tracks join.  This happens when you begin or end drawing a segment at either an existing junction or a point along an existing track. 

To draw the switch shown here:

  1. Draw the mainline in two segments, A-B and B-C.
  2. Draw the branch in either direction, B-D or D-B.  Junction B highlights when you begin or end drawing the branch.

OR:

  1. Draw the mainline in one segment, A-C.
  2. Draw the branch in either direction, B-D or D-B.  The track segment AC highlights when you begin or end at B.  Junction B is created by this operation, chopping AC into two parts.

As soon as you release the mouse button using either method, the switch is created and the stop/go lights appear.  You can test the switch by clicking at B.

 


To draw a multi-way switch:

Simply draw more than three segments to a switch.  Whenever more than three segments join, a multi-way switch is formed with more than two routes through it.  Each throw opens a different route.

In this picture, the current open route is A-B-D.  The first throw opens route A-B-C; the second, E-B-D; the third goes back to A-B-D.


To draw a crossing:

Draw tracks which cross but do not join.  In this example, AB and DC cross each other, but there is no junction in common, so trains cannot go from one track to the other.