Gradients and Elevated Sections Using Bridge Piers
I signed up for Premium to try adjusting track elevation and checking gradients, but since I’ve come up with some additional features I’d like to see, I’m submitting this request.
When you select a track and specify an elevation (set an anchor), you can adjust the elevation and set the gradient; however, if you do this on a standard track, it ends up creating terrain, which affects the surrounding tracks as well. However, when I perform the same operation on tracks with viaducts (such as TOMIX Finetrack N parts 182X [straight] and 187X [curved]), the bridge piers appear, and only those tracks (and the parallel double-track lines) are elevated. First of all, is my understanding correct so far?
For example, with TOMIX Finetrack N, double-track rails (181X (straight) and 188X (curved)) or double-track slab rails (106X (straight) and 1116X (curved)), or wide PC rails (omitted due to the wide variety of part numbers), you can install bridge piers by adding the appropriate optional parts and treat them as elevated tracks. However, even if you set the height (anchor) for these tracks, they do not become elevated tracks supported by bridge piers; instead, they are treated as ground modeling.
Therefore, I propose that when setting the height (installing anchors), users be given the option to choose between “ground modeling” and “elevated track.” This would allow users to display bridge piers when they want to treat a standard track as an elevated track, while still being able to treat it as ground scenery as before when ground scenery is desired (for tracks with built-in viaducts, simply selecting “Elevated Track” from the drop-down menu would suffice). Furthermore, I believe that making it easier to switch between ground-level track and elevated tracks will increase the flexibility of layout design and enable the creation of more realistic model railroads. I hope you will consider this suggestion.
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comments · 6
Sign in to comment- tok5. November 2026
Hi Georg, Just a thought on this: Could you perhaps even offer a feature that allows the tracks to simply float? After all, how they’re supported or anchored doesn’t really matter when laying the tracks and checking the grade. This would be especially helpful on slower computers, since terrain modeling apparently requires a lot of resources. Best regards, T.
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- Georg Wächter5. November 2026
Yeah, that's a good idea! I've also noticed that there are a lot of situations where this automatic landscape generation tends to get in the way. I’m actually working on the tiles with different heights right now, and I’m thinking we could let players toggle the terrain per tile—OFF (manual only) and ON (automatic track embankments). What do you think of the idea?
I’ve really ramped up the terrain modeling over the last few days, but it’s still an issue on very old PCs or tablets...
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- tok5. November 2026· edited
That sounds like a good plan at first. Still, it would be nice to be able to see at a glance which tracks aren't at 0 or aren't directly on the slab. The benefit would be that you wouldn’t have to click on each track again or switch to the 3D view just to see whether a track is flat, at an incline, or above (or below?) 0.
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- tok5. November 2026
Ideas for visualization:
- 3D: simply vertical "bars" (thin lines) between the slab and the track
- 2D: [ I don't have any helpful ideas right now ]
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- Georg Wächter5. November 2026
@antimon2 What would work better for you? One setting per panel for the landscape, OR one per elevation anchor, as you suggested?
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- antimon25. November 2026
After seeing the exchange between tok and Georg, I agree with the idea of “setting each panel individually to match the landscape.” I’ve been experimenting with various approaches since then, and I’ve started to realize that configuring each anchor is both difficult and impractical. I also agree with tok’s proposal for “a feature that allows the tracks to simply float” and his opinion that “how they’re supported or anchored doesn’t really matter.”
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