Placing trains
Drag a vehicle from the object panel onto a track. As long as the pointer is over the track, the whole train sits there exactly as it will land once you let go. Releasing sets it down.
- Direction of travel: the direction you drag in. If the train faces the wrong way, drag it back a bit.
- Gauge: the train takes on the size of the track it stands on. Dragged from the H0 main line onto an H0e branch line, it becomes smaller.
- Starting point: wherever you set it down is where it starts after every reset and the next time the plan is opened, see start point.
The first train in the plan automatically becomes the active one, for the cockpit view and for following. You pick up a placed train the same way and drag it elsewhere; a plain click only selects it.
Vehicles you build yourself
What makes something a vehicle is the chassis in it, and nothing else. The ready-made wagons in the object panel are a group of solids with a chassis grouped in; build your own the same way and it is a vehicle too. To run it, save it to your vehicles.
You get one from Insert ▸ Railway ▸ Add Chassis: place it, group it with whatever solids make up the body, and you have a vehicle.
The chassis carries the numbers the vehicle runs on, such as the track gauge of the prototype and the length over buffers. They are prototype millimetres, so one body serves every scale — the vehicle is rebuilt for the gauge of the track you put it on.
Gap when pushed and Gap when pulled, among the chassis's details, say how far the vehicle stands from the one coupled to it — for a screw coupling, buffers touching and 10 cm. A coupling between two different vehicles takes the mean of theirs.
Gangway gives the vehicle its passage to the next: rubber rolls as on a UIC coach, or a bellows. Which ends have one, and its size, show once one is chosen.
Coupling says what the vehicle is coupled by: a Screw coupling, which is what a vehicle has unless it says otherwise, or a Centre coupler. Between two vehicles with None there is nothing to click to part the train.
What it stands on is the Axle groups list: one entry per bogie or single axle, each with its position along the vehicle, how many axles it has, how big its wheels are and whether they are driving wheels. Add and remove them there; the list keeps them in their order along the vehicle by itself.
What the vehicle wears is three more lists of the same kind. Lamps says which end a lamp is at, how high and how far out it sits and what it shows — a lamp with the direction of travel is white at the end that leads and red at the end that trails. The lamps light with the train's Headlight switch, and only at the two ends of the train. Chimneys says where smoke leaves the vehicle, and Pantographs where a pantograph stands, which way it folds and whether it is raised.
The vehicle runs where its chassis stands, so the chassis belongs under the middle of the body. To fit it by hand, enter the vehicle's group and open the chassis with a second click: handles appear for the length, the buffers, each axle group and a bogie's wheelbase, and each lamp, chimney and pantograph. A lamp you drag stays on the face of the body, a chimney or a pantograph on its roof — you only choose where.
Fit chassis to body in the context menu of the vehicle or of its chassis does all of it at once: it moves the chassis under the middle of the body, makes it as long as the body plus its buffers, keeps the axles at their share of the length and puts the lamps, chimneys and pantographs onto the body.
My vehicles
A vehicle you build runs once it is one of your vehicles. Its context menu offers Save to my vehicles…, which asks for a name; once it is saved, Put on track sets the vehicle down as a drag from the object panel does. Your vehicles are listed in the object panel ahead of the ready-made ones and are kept where your own modules are: in the browser or on your computer and, while you are logged in, in your account. A name has to differ from those of your other vehicles.
The group on the plan stays your workbench for the vehicle. Once you change it, its context menu offers Update "name": every train of the vehicle in the open plan is rebuilt with the new version, and Put on track is offered again. Save as new vehicle… keeps the changed one under a name of its own and leaves the saved one as it was.
A right click on a vehicle in the object panel gives you a copy to work on, which you put down on the plan: Edit for one of yours, which the copy stays linked to, and Edit a copy for a ready-made one, which becomes a new vehicle of yours when you save it. Remove from my vehicles… deletes one of yours; plans that use it keep their copy. Earlier versions… brings back one of the last ten saved versions; the current one goes to the trash in turn.
A plan takes along the vehicles of yours its trains are made of, so that it runs the same wherever it is opened — also for someone who does not have them. It keeps the version its trains were built with until you update the vehicle. While the plan is open, its vehicles are listed in the object panel too.
When you open a plan with vehicles you do not have, Raily asks whether to add them to your vehicles or keep them Only in this plan. For one you have in another version, it offers Keep both, Take the plan's version — which replaces yours — and Use my version, which rebuilds the plan's trains with yours. Closing the question changes nothing. What you leave as it is, Raily remembers for these two versions and asks again only once one of them changes.
Coupling and derailing
If a train runs into another one slowly, Raily couples the two into one, without asking. Your view then jumps to the remaining train. To separate them, stop and click the coupler between the parts.
If the approach is too fast, at least one train derails. The cockpit bar then shows the buttons that bring it back to the start; B does the same.