Rail display
How a rail is drawn — with bedding, with sleepers, with a center line, with a name — is not a fixed property, it's something you can adjust. And on two levels, at that, which you need to keep apart:
| Where | Applies to | Stays in the plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rail display | A rail's context menu | the selected rails | yes, it's saved |
| Display settings | View → Display overrides… | the whole plan | no, only the current view |
The first is how your plan is meant to look. The second is how you want to view or print it right now, without touching the plan itself.
The rail display settings.
Individual rails: Rail display
Select one or more rails and use the right mouse button to call up Edit Rail Display….
Typical reasons: highlighting a stretch of track, a power circuit, a service track, the part that's being built next.
For a stretch of track: use a highlight instead
A color on the rail applies only to the rails you currently have selected. With a 2D highlight you mark stretches of track independently of the individual rail elements.
Lines
- Line width in millimeters. 0 means hairline: always one screen pixel, no matter how far you zoom out. That's the default, and it's usually right — a line with a true width disappears in the overview.
- Line style: solid, dashed, or dotted. Dashed is the simplest way to tell planned track apart from track that's already built.
Filling
Bedding and Sleepers, each with its own color.
Markings: the symbols the catalogue draws into an element: insulated and uncoupler track, rerailers, a turntable's pit, the outline of a module board. On by default; turn them off where they clutter the picture.
Name
- none / short / long: whether and how fully the element name appears on the rail.
- horizontal text: keeps the label horizontal, instead of letting it rotate with the rail.
More on that under Track labels.
Rendering
- 3D: draws the rail as a solid body instead of flat lines.
- Rusty rails and Rusty running surface: the weathering. On the prototype the running surface stays worn bright while the rest rusts; that exact combination gives the most realistic impression.
Use for new track elements
The Use for new track elements checkbox makes the display you've set the default for everything you place afterwards. The way to build a whole plan in your own look throughout, instead of matching every rail one by one.
The whole plan: Display settings
View → Display overrides… lays a layer over the whole plan. The stored values of the individual rails stay untouched — they are only overruled for as long as an override is active.
Every option has three states:
| State | Effect |
|---|---|
| if enabled in plan | doesn't interfere; whatever is set on the rail applies |
| always | forces the option for the whole plan |
| never | turns it off for the whole plan |
Colors, line width, and text height additionally know leave unchanged: then the individual rails' values apply again.
What can be overridden: Center line, Track lines, Bedding lines, Bedding, Separators, Connections, Sleepers, Markings, Line width, Line style, Rail names, Horizontal text, 3D, Rusty rails, and Rusty running surface.
Presets
At the top of the dialog sits a bar of presets. Three are built in:
| Preset | What it does |
|---|---|
| No overrides | everything back to "if enabled in plan" |
| center line, separators and markings on, track lines, bedding and sleepers off, short names, the readable blueprint | |
| Animation | 3D on, rails rusty down the sides with a bright running surface, names and markings off, the attractive picture |
You can also save your own combination alongside them, name it, and load it again later.
The fastest way to a usable printout
Choose Print, print, then No overrides. The plan itself hasn't changed in the process.
When something doesn't show up
- Bedding turned on but not visible: an override is probably set to Bedding: never. Check the override dialog first, not the rail.
- Turntable pit or track symbols gone: Markings is set to never, which is what the Animation preset does. Choose No overrides to get them back.
- Lines too thin when printing: the hairline (width 0) is one screen pixel, and comes out correspondingly fine on a high-resolution printer. For printing, specify a true width in millimeters.
- Names missing: the rail name is set to none, either on the rail or through an override.
See also
- Track labels
- Print dialog
- Track annotations in detail: mark sections instead of recoloring them
- Layers