Flatcars Hauling Trailers

[CeeBee]

Right now there is only in game engines so it will depend if any others are added. Wikipedia says the first containers were used in 1956 but there is one other option. Having a version 2 car with piggybacks and then switching to containers in v3. Piggybacking has been around a long time but really took off after the war in the late 40's-early 50's. Do we have any flats with piggybacks modeled? As for engines, up near the top of this thread I posted a few that are already in the engines r us list.

[snoopy55]

Ya, we got them right here: viewtopic.php?p=8578#p8578

In playing with that I came up with this one, primary work:

trailer on 55 flat.jpg

Or this:

UPS on flat.jpg

For the 40's and 50's I think the 55 FT Flat w/trailer would be best. The trailer you see is half of a NifBlock taken from the 85 footer, so it will take a bit of Blender.

The trailer you see in that one is 80% of the size on the 85 footer. We can leave it as that or do up a longer flatcar. Do you have any idea what length the single trailer flats were?

And I take it that prior to the trailers on flats we would be doing boxcars?

[CeeBee]

yeah, boxcars before. Those piggybacks look good

[snoopy55]

OK, I need someone to test out this CK for me. I think I got everything OK, but it really needs to be checked out. And yes, I could do it myself, but I could work around something that should be repaired and not even think about it.

And I even added some material to work with!

trailer on 55 flat.jpg

Flat_Car_W_Trailer_Construction_Kit.7z

sunkist_Trailer 2.7z

To bad we don't have a dual truck flatcar, we could do this load for the map:

heavyduty-flatcars.jpg

[snoopy55]

And away we go!!!

I played around a bit and got this:

Dual on long flat.jpg

I then did a search for 'Trailers' on the forum and found NSrailfans 85' flat with trailers:

85_Long_Flat_Trailers.jpg

Since we are looking for a 40's t0 50's car, I shortened it a bit to approx 60':

Dual on long flat 2.jpg

Looks a LOT better than mine! And the trailers are to scale whereas mine are ~65% in size. It could be shortened a bit more to maybe 55', but then I'd have to mess with the trucks and I don't think I want to do that right now. I like the 5th wheels he has on his. I think I'll 'Steel' them for mine and dispense with the blocks. I have to adjust the UV for the shortened traincar, maybe do up a surface for the bed of the traincar. The dummies have to be adjusted also.

There is a single shadow set for the two trailers. I can do up a dual shadow set for it and different skins can be done for each trailer. The room is available on the DDS. I'll set it up so it can be a 'copy and paste' if the Modder only wants one skin for both.

[snoopy55]

I found a nice pic of a model flat with trailers and decided to play with it a bit.

BN ts_121689_19.jpg

60_Long_Flat_BN.jpg

The ridges running down the floor of the car can be added with no problem. In working with the pre-CK I found I'll have to make some minor adjustments so that, like the containers, trailers can be interchangeable between flats. No real problem. I'll add them to the others also.

This thread can be used to post pics of interesting trailers as possible models and materials to skin them. Here's one I posted on the other thread:

sunkist_Trailer.jpg

sunkist_Trailer 2.7z

Lets see where this goes.......

[snoopy55]

I have a 40 ft flatcar with trailer worked up:

40 flatcar w trailer.jpg

I left the flatcar alone and shortened the Trailer and made the dualies to single wheels. I added the runners to it also.

And here is the 60 ft flatcar:

60 long flatcar w trailers.jpg

So, an early boxcar as V1, the 40 ft Flatcar as V2, the 60 ft Flatcar as V3 and the Container Flat as V4. Each of the other traincars used will need 2 extra KFMs added to account for the added versions. Nothing hard. Set the engines to change the versions and by all logic it should work fine. But then, this is SMR.............

When the CKs are posted they will be V1 and V2.

[snoopy55]

I skinned the 40' flat trailer:

SP_Trailer.jpg

but when I ran it the trucks were on the track and everything else was everywhere else. I think I had this happen a couple of time quite a few years ago.......

If someone could look at it and see if it could be put back the way it should be........

[CeeBee]

nice looking piggy backs.

[slider38]

Hey Snoopy, I think I need to understand the goal here. You've got half a steel car and half of a lumber car. Are you trying to use the sound effects from the lumber car? I think this car can probably be fixed, but it would be much simpler to use one or the other. As it is, you have a car with a trailer and a bunch of log nodes.

Log_nodes.jpg

The car has no wheel nodes.

No_wheel_nodes.jpg

The nif has no NiMultiTargetTransformController (Line 5) so I don't think anything would happen anyway. If it were me, I would take a steel car, throw it in Blender and add your runners to the car in there and get rid of the extra Trishape in the nif. Start with a clean v2 steel car. Make your adds under CarLayer/b-base. You should be able to add the fifth wheel easy enough, set the trailer up as steel beams. You have to get the stuff back in the nif that Blender knocks out.

If you want the log car included in this nif for some reason, you have to get rid of all the extra log junk if you can, but I think you're fighting an up-hill battle trying to combine the 2 cars. Anything else I can do, let me know.

[snoopy55]

Ya, that was the first thing I grabbed when tossing the idea around. Just before I posted the request I restructured the Steel car and added the needed trailer parts but in NifSkope it came out like this:

Steelcar Trailer.jpg

Looks fine in Blender. I even took the time to rebuild the brake wheel a bit. I was flattening out the sides to look a bit more like this:

MSL trailer.jpg

And was going to use the ribs from the steel car to make the fishbelly structure. My mistake was most likely pulling the trailer material out of Blender as a Nif because Blender refused to allow it to come out with the steel car. The Nif I got contains the log nodes also, so that is most likely the reason for the rearranging of the trailer.

I started messing with one of our gondolas, dropping the sides to get a flat car that would be a bit longer, but gave up on it due to confused thoughts. I was looking for the car to be stretched out a bit as the log and steel cars look to be a bit more like 30 foot. I don't think I've had any success at adjusting trucks in Blender or NifSkope. A flat with smooth sides and a length of the Gondolas and grain/coal cars we have. Sides like the steel cars but spread out a bit more would be good also.

Another thing, if you or NSrailfan are interested, take the trailer from NSrailfans flatcar ( viewtopic.php?p=8578#p8578 ), take one of the wheels and enlarge it and reshape it to make to nose of these trailers:

prrpiggyback 3.jpg

This would make the problem of joining them unneeded and should be a bit easier since the curve is already there.

A search for 'piggyback trailers' has a lot of this style that would make interesting skinning. One site lists these trailers as 35'. This gives the trailer a height of 12'. An O gauge site lists them as 28' which gives them a 9.5' height. This would make the work as a dual trailer on a 50' or single on a 40'.

Site - https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/printer-f ... -flat-cars

If you want to take my steel car attempt or go for yourself, I'm OK with it. The trailer is an idea to be worked or not. I'll do the CK skinning of whatever you come up with.

[slider38]

Give this a try Snoopy. It worked in my test.

Trailer_car.jpg

[snoopy55]

Ok, aside from replacing the Dummies file, which needs a bit of adjusting BTW, what did you do? You either removed the log nodes, or replaced the Steel car blocks with the ones from the log car Nif.

And thanks CeeBee. I've got the decals for a Cotton Belt to do also.

[slider38]

I went for easy. I took a working steel car, swapped your tridata shape for the one on the steel car and then just added the truck as the steel beams load. I was in a hurry last night and didn't have a lot of time to get too creative. I just added the runners as an add-on in the nif. I put your car in blender and removed everything but the truck and saved that. That way, I had the truck as a separate trishape to use as the load. I renamed the diff and other files to include v2, assuming that a v3 might come down the pike. One interesting thing, I joined the trishapes for the fifth wheel and the truck. However, when I ran it on my test map, the truck unloads, but the fifth wheel remains on the car. Not sure exactly how these traincars actually work, but it seemed a reasonable thing to me. If you want the fifth wheel to disappear and load as well, that will take a bit more work. I used the steel car kfm, so there is nothing in this file having anything to do with logs, wood, lumber - that stuff is all gone.

I would adjust the couplers a bit. I think the cars are a little close together. That will require an adjustment to the dummies file. The file I used as just the standard steel_car_dummies file.

[snoopy55]

I'll work on that. I was working on a trailer with a round front. I got the idea worked out and the shape done, but laying it out on the UV just is not worth the time.

nose trailer.jpg

I'm going to leave them as the square front. I'll resize the parts in the DDS a bit and skin them. I have around a dozen pics to work from.

[snoopy55]

Here is the 2nd trailer skinned:

Prr Trailer.jpg

I reworked the flatcar a bit, adding a fishbelly to it (for lack of a techy name). I still want to lengthen the car a bit, I'm just not to happy with the foot rungs this thing has. I wonder if I could transfer the car body from the log car to the steel car..........

[snoopy55]

Number three......

[snoopy55]

I wonder if I could transfer the car body from the log car to the steel car..........

Oh, I forgot, Slider already did that......... ( viewtopic.php?p=13345#p13345 ) I'll have to see what I can do to edit that a bit. I think I can get rid of one or two Blocks. I can copy a few surfaces from the car and make the runners out of them. Shorten the runners so they are only at the rear of the trailer. I got pics to work from. Might be able to make the fifth wheel from parts of the trailer, that way when the trailer goes, it goes too.

[snoopy55]

Now, after a bit of editing I have it down to two Nif Blocks... but.... I cannot get the trailer to come and go at loading and unloading... it just sits there. I know I've done this before, many times, but that little bell is just not ringing. And no, I don't have a hangover from New Years celebration..... at 5 after I noticed the clock and said to my wife, "whup-whup".

Whoever takes a try and fixes it, please post what was wrong and how you fixed it. Thanks.

[slider38]

Hi CeeBee. Sorry I don't have time at the moment to test this, but I think I know what your problem is. You are missing the NiAlphaController line within the NiAlphaProperty for the trailer. If you look at most any goods car, you will find this line within the TriShape of the good to be moved on and off the car, whether it's steel beams, goods, whatever. You need to open the steel car nif and do a Block>copybranch on this line and then paste the branch onto the NiAlphaProperty in your trailercar nif. Here's where to find it. Hope this will fix your issue - I think there's a good chance it will. I should state that this image was taken from the trailer car that I did, but yours should look about the same.

CeeBee_trailer.jpg