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Posted: 06 Feb 2004 12:16
by hovering teacup
hmm I know a bit about japanese rails and I think I can help in selectioning vehicle types to be included in the set, though my knowledge is far from encyclopedic espacially I know nothing about steam engines.

speaking of "contageous powering" take care that japanese EMU's are not all motored, but only half within a consist (models before 80's) or less. shinkansens and DMU are all or almost powered though.
which means, in composing EMU trains you got to dose motored and moter-less wagons, if EastAsian set is to keep the feature of reality.

Posted: 06 Feb 2004 12:38
by Raichase
SHADOW-XIII wrote:I am very happy that East Asia will restart ... I was expecting much from it in the past
I'll second that... It sounded interesting, but it proved too much. I hope something can happen :)).

Posted: 06 Feb 2004 14:46
by Dinges
Is this still running? cool...

I could contribute some graphics for you, only you'le have to bundle them yourself :roll:

Posted: 06 Feb 2004 15:17
by krtaylor
I think the way the power will work is, on Shinkansens where they're all powered, it's easy - use contagious power. On locomotive hauled trains, again it's easy - leave them be. On alternating powered EMUs, I think the simplest thing would be to make the "contagious" amount be half what it really is - that way, every car would be powered, as opposed to every other car with enough power for two. Mathematically it works out the same, and is lots easier.

We'd love to have graphics from anyone. Actually, bundling is a problem, I don't know who is going to do that. I don't know who knows how, particularly since we will be using the advanced features like contagious-power that we don't know how they work. There's an FAQ for drawing new trains but I haven't seen any instructions for how to properly program the information into the GRF. Can someone who knows, start writing? Both the US set and the East Asia set will have this problem.

Looks like I need to put my link back in my sig.

Shinkansen series0, prototype

Posted: 07 Feb 2004 23:50
by Sanchimaru
Hello everybody!!

Here you are my 1st release of the Shinkansen 0 series. You may make an idea what it would look like in the game.

However it hasn'y still benn tested in game, so the proportions and/or perspective could not be right.

Keep in mind this is the very first release for this one, son additional changes are expected.

Let the work go on

Sanchimaru

<> _ <>

Posted: 07 Feb 2004 23:52
by Sanchimaru
Ah, here are the pantographs:

_______>
<' """""""""
------------

^_^U

I'll work on them

Posted: 07 Feb 2004 23:53
by SHADOW-XIII
very nice, I like it ... can't wait to see it's wagons :o

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:09
by krtaylor
The wagons are there, on the second row.

Where are the pantographs? If I remember correctly, they are at the back of the head end (locomotive). You need to put them on to remind everyone that it's an electric. But otherwise, this is great to see!

Until we have Owen's new tool, Shadow, do you know how to encode a GRF file so we can see what this looks like for real?

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:17
by SHADOW-XIII
oh, right ... only one ... well I think it will be only passenger ... maybe mail to ... but as far as I know it does not have any pantographs does it ?

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:23
by krtaylor
Sure it has pantographs, it runs off of overhead caternary. It's electric, and goodness knows it isn't 3rd rail.

In real life Japanese passenger trains don't carry mail, but to conform to game convention there will be a matching-livery mail car. It'll just look the same as the passenger car. Some of the DBset ones do that too.

As an aside, the original plans for the Shinkansen had it carrying fast freight at night, but the passenger demand turned out to be so heavy that the tracks are full of passenger trains at all hours of the day except for required maintenance.

However, I should mention that the East Asia passenger suite will include a double-decker car, since almost all of the Japanese trains have them sometimes. So all the relevant trains will have a double-decker livery-override as well. In the cases where the train doesn't actually have a double-decker, we'll use something else that looks different - sleeping car, cafe car, Green (first class) car, observation car, who knows.

Shinkansen Information

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:27
by Sanchimaru
Hi, everybody!

If anyone is interested in knowing more about the bullet train, just take a look around here:

http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~dajf/byunbyun/index.htm

There are a lot of pics. It's the place where I'm taking the pics to draw the shinkansen graphics from.

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:30
by krtaylor
Since you can read Japanese, as an aside, what's the "Doctor Yellow" Shinkansen for?

The Yellow doctor

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:35
by Sanchimaru
Well, looks like "doctor yellow" are trains conditioned to monitor high speed tracks.

Therefore, there are doctors of any kind of shinkansen.

However, I haven't too much information about that, I could check it out...

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:40
by krtaylor
Oh, so they just run them round sort of randomly, in regular passenger service except they have special equipment and engineers on board to check the readings and make sure the track is OK, and make note of anything that needs fixing. What a cool idea, having a special colored train for that. Only in Japan...

Re: Shinkansen Information

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:45
by SHADOW-XIII
hey with that page you can creat great maglev/monorail set :o

200 series

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 00:58
by Sanchimaru
Hey, people:

I'm taking a look at the 200 series shinkansen pics...

Looks like there are several models inside the 200 series: some resemble more the 0, some the 100 series, and there's even one that looks absolutely different...

I'll begin working on the 300. But, in the meanwhile, tell me what do you think about it.

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 01:20
by krtaylor
If you look on my trains table (see the link in my sig), you'll see that I had originally called for only three Shinkansens: the 0 series, the 300 series, and the 3E4 Max. This is because those three look the most different from each other. If you did ALL the Shinkansens, you'd have a lot that look almost identical at the scale of TTD, which is a waste when you have so many other great trains in Japan to do. Also, Japan is heavier into passenger service than TTD tends to be. So I'd recommend doing only those 3 Shinkansens and then starting on the other equipment. If you really wanted, you could do the 100 series, that should be able to be distinguished from the rest.

more trains

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 01:26
by Sanchimaru
OK, I think it's true, it's enough with these at the moment. Anyways, the 100series is already done, (it didn't take much work to remold) so it could be used if desired.

When I'm done with the 300, I'll look for something more different (maybe the 115 semi-fast)

100 series

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 01:32
by Sanchimaru
Still working on making the "nose" look more conic at the side view.

Posted: 08 Feb 2004 01:36
by krtaylor
Hey, you did the 100, it only needs a little tweaking, we might as well use it. It fills in a gap between the 0 and the 300 anyway.

The ones after the 300 are totally different, with that funny bulbuous nose, so we'll need one of those. But I certainly want some non-Shinkansen ones too.

There are some others that I haven't had an easy time finding information about, since I don't speak Japanese. So they aren't on the list, but maybe they should be. There's some information about them here:

http://www.jrtr.net/jrtr13/pdf/photo.pdf

Also, there are some classic sleeping-car trains I remember, but can't find.

One decent resource is the TOMY Plarail line, they offer about everything and it's easy to look, see which ones look nice, then research what they look like in the real world. The website used to have a complete catalog, but they just redid the site and it isn't there anymore. :evil: There are other resources but very hard to use if you don't read Japanese. Here's one that might be useful.

http://t-ushiogi.hp.infoseek.co.jp/remodel1.html