Old Continent Railroad?

When I joined in '06, I bought my first plot of Mainland in Achemon in the gorgeous Zen Garden behind the multi-sim railroad. At that time, the railroad was working and you could hop onto the two car train at various stations whenever it would pull in.

I just got a 512 in front of the Great Wall behind that same railroad on Jubata but I have not seen the train running at all.

Has the SL railroad gone the way of most RL USA railroads and is no longer functional? Anyone know the story behind why it no longer runs? I'm guessing one of two "LL" answers: lag or laziness.

Bumped back to the first page...

A new railway system was being worked on by Railway Mole - unfortunately he left and the project came to a standstill.
There is a new monorail project underway in Zindra. Once that is completed Michael Linden has mooted that work may resume on the SLRR.
Timescale? - your guess is as good as mine

The SLRR hit a snag around when Havok 4 came to the grid, which drove a nail into all the trains on the grid. The LDPW, thanks to Railway Mole, had been just about ready to launch the train service again (I was fortunate enough to be on many of the test runs) -- but then LL changed the residency requirements for Moles and Railway had to take a powder.

There has been some very slow work being done by a new mole on the trains, though the focus has shifted form getting the SLRR running first to getting the monorail in Zindra running, followed by the ferry for the Blake Sea and -- until the priorities shift again -- the also-borked Nova Albion Trolley. Then, again presumably, the SLRR.

Also unfortunately, much of the Mole workforce has been puled from public improvements for some other major "sekrit project." That and their last major "sekrit project," Ursula/Zindra keep "lower priority" projects like the railway, the roads, and upkeep on existing Linden projects very much on the back burner.

So that's where things currently lay with trains and other such services. I wish it were much better news! The SLRR was originally supposed to be ready by Summer 2009.

P.S.: The Zen Gardens in Achemon is still there, but last I heard they needed a hand or two. Might be worth checking 'em out again.

Thanks to you both for your answers. I know the Gardens are still there and their talented creator, Kyubi David. Wish I could lend a hand but I'm limited by the time I can spend inworld because SL likes to melt my macbook pro's graphics card.

Guess I'll pimp a post I made to the discussion blog, https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/19455#19455, casting about at the possibility of somehow fitting the new Community Partnership Program to the Mainland road and rail networks. Right now this is very abstract and possibly square-peg-round-hole, but honestly, there's nothing I know that could be as effective as a working railroad for building a Mainland community and offering opportunities for fun and social engagement.

Of course, as long as region crossings are problematic, rail (and road) travel will remain difficult, so even a perfect community approach could be thwarted by technical hurdles. Still, it's such an appealing objective that one has to hope *something* will finally break the recurring logjam and get some trains riding those rails again.

If I had three days clear, *all* the mainland lines would run rather well.

But no way am I doing it, because 3 days of work is, well, three solid days and I'm busier than a bee as it is.

If you want to see a working rail system, you'll have to come to a private estate where rail lines have been running for years. *cough*

Nothing like a private estate baron to make the trains run on time, mmm?

grins


Edit: to put this in perspective: It's Friday. With access and motivation to do it, all trains would be running Tuesday morning, gliding in and out of proper stations and making region transitions as good as is technically possible. No joke.

Nothing like a gaggle of Lindens to make sure they don't.

Well, there are no automated linden trains, if that is what you are asking. But do a search on SLRR and there are several folks making engines and cars that work with them. I just recently bought a diesel engine and made the complete circuit around the continent with the inland sea, past the Hobos and on to the Bhaga station.

It seems its mostly been taken over by railroad enthusiasts, and to me that's far better than semi-functional mole/LL content. (not too long ago, one of the moles with linden backing wanted to take out the center rail and break the user created railroad content. Thankfully that didn't happen).

If anyone wants to have the same capability to restore the line that I do, grab a copy of the Caledon National Rail setup and scripts by Barney Boomslang.

It's free and Creative Commons licenced. You can find it at the Guvnah's Mansion, Victoria City, near the front door just outside. Which is in the southeast corner of Caledon Victoria City, you can't miss it.

It's a notecard driven system, and the trains/textures/everything are all full mod. While I obviously have some experience making it work, it's not difficult, and anyone with basic scripting abilities (not even advanced) would understand it quickly.

Even if you have no scripting ability at all, you can still read the docs and get it going.

* * * * *

Finally... and here is the naughty part: one could probably get the entire line running without any Linden Research permission _at all_.

Simply by having a friendly parcel near the starting point shove the starting prim into position via a simple script, and then rezzing the first train every X hours or so. After that, the system will take care of itself. And if any regions go down, thus eating the train, the train rezzer will fix it after so many minutes.

If anyone gets "stuck" trying to attempt such a thing, just email or notecard me.

i have 2 Linden Railtracks backing onto or cutting through my Mainland SIMs (Webworm & Lutra)...never seen a Linden train go by. Shame really !

I had to settle for a model railway that tours the entire sim of Webworm...even have a little station with platform



.

If anyone does plan to give it a go....rezzing a new train at regular intervals is the only way to go. SL will swallow them - for various reasons.
I operate a small ferry fleet and launch hourly which equates to about 120 boats a day.
On a good day I will lose 3 or 4....on a bad day 20 or more.
I have monitor boards at my ferry base for all the boats, and a moving map display showing what is currently afloat.

Find someone to set the course for Caledon National Rail and you'll be dizzy with all the trains that go by, depending how often you set them to.

It's about as easy as reading off coordinates of where you want the train to be, and how long you want them to stop at the stations, and just keep doing that for X number of regions. E.g. just put a train where you want it, and read off its XYZ coordinates, with "more" for curves and just a few for straightaways.

There's a region border crossing command (simple, just cut and paste it) and a 'die' command, because you want to bring the train home to a barn and de~rez it, and launch a new one eventually ~ this is how you keep the system running even if the train gets eaten by the grid once in a while.

Put the data in the really straightforward notecard format, stuff it in a train and you are almost done. A second prim and script launches a train every X minutes. The launching command initiates the engine, cars and all that.

You could build a rail spur and then have the train roll out onto the main line ~ it won't care whose land it is so long as it can enter the parcel. All this would have a side effect of making you a major train station, as the trains go around, swing back through and so forth.

All I gently request is that you change the train texture ~ it is literally ONE 1024 x 1024 texture with complex atlasing to meet the needs of the engine/cars (remember: easy region crossing is important!) ~ you might want to make it Mainland Rail or Rene Rail or something, not necessarily Caledon heavy iron rolling out.

Caledon's trains are very low prim; you might want to make something fancier. We've also got particle smoke, train sounds, a whistle command and a text "tour" narrative built in if you want to use any of that ~ on mainland you might want to tone these down a little, because the complaints won't go to me any more


Edit: Susie we found out the same thing, and it handles all that.

The SLRR track is doing fine.

There are no Linden trains running, so all trains are resident-rezzed.
Up to a few months ago, one had to divert up to a section of the Great Wall. The landowner then donated the necessary railbed land to LL and the line is unbroken now.

I've done the trip between Tuliptree and Bhaga quite a number of times. For the most part, the sim crossings have been smooth.

Last night was a bit of a disaster though.
Dougie Flossberg organised a railfest with a parade of trains along the length of the system.
I ended up stuck at a sim corner three times.
It was probably mostly due to my Net connection, which is having "issues" at the moment. Other trains completed the trip without problems.

Another factor would have been the simultaneous presence of a number of trains in a single sim.
The trains are kept on the track (mostly) by sitting over an invisible raised centre rail. That's a lot of physics collisions going on.


The Caledon system is completely different in tech nature. It is designed for automated trips, although the motion is jerky. The prims get moved incrementally along a predetermined route. It's quite easy to set up the notecards that control it.

It's quite possible to smooth out the Caledon National Rail as much as desired. I leave it a little bit rough as it's a lag tradeoff.

My comment on the jerkiness was not intended as a criticism.

As you say, the jerkiness can be reduced by having a greater number of smaller distances - and that's a tradeoff.

The physical centre rail of the SLRR is great for trains that are driven by an avatar. I'd love to be able to drive on the roads without having to expend so much effort to stay on the road.
On the SLRR, I can put the train on cruise control and cam about the surroundings.

The Caledon system is the best for automated trips. The train moves along a series of x,y,z coordinates. The worst that can usually happen is a sim-crossing issue.
The SLRR trains slide along a physical centre rail. As well as the same sim-crossing issues, they can also jump the rails if they attempt a curve at too fast a speed. Once off the rails, lord knows where it will end up - if there is not a driver to bring it back on track.

Sounds great! Where do you rez the trains and where do you purchase them?

A gaggle? I thought the term for more than 1 Linden was a 'cluster'?

You can rezz trains at Tuliptree and Bhaga stations.
I think you can rez at the other stations too. I've never needed to.
My parcel at the west of Tuliptree os build for all, as is my platform on the Southern end of Torva.

You can buy trains at Tuliptree.
Mine is a Westpoint 1831 made by Jer Straaf.

Just for the hell of it, I just tried that route again.
Tuliptree to Bhaga took me 40 minutes.
That's a trip through 63 sims.
Only on 3 sim crossings did it leave the tracks.
For that, the train has a chat command to automatically put it back on the track.

The scripts are good, taking account of sim lag and adjusting the speed to suit. It also slows at sim crossings.
As on the roads, the secret of sim crossings is to take you hands off the keyboard and wait for any bumpiness or apparent spiralling off to settle of its own accord. Trying to 'fix' things while the sims are still handing over can be fatal.

There are a lot of creative builds along the route.
As for travelling by road, it's a great way to see stuff that might not ever be noticed otherwise.

Thanks for the tips Desmond.....i've taken a few rides on your Trains in the Caledon Region over the years

sounds like a great adventure. I just hope my graphics card makes the trip...