Behind the scenes of Cargo Loading
Adam Lucas, one of Rail Simulator’s Designers, talks about details that went into the creation of this feature:
Cargo loading adds a whole new dimension to yards and freight scenarios. As part of our aim to bring the Rail Simulator world alive we included the ability to handle freight.
Our freight system is derived from the basic requirement to load coal, water and diesel. You will be able to refuel your engines as necessary, all with the appropriate animations.
We extended this system to allow freight loading. You can pull up to a loading crane that spans across the track, and load containers onto flatbed wagons. The containers will fade in at ground level, be lifted by the crane and placed onto the flatbed wagon. These containers then stay with the wagon as the train moves and can be unloaded at another crane facility further down the track. When a container unloads it will be picked up by the crane, moved over to ground level where it will fade out. Loading cranes within Rail Simulator will never run out of cargo to load!
As with all features in Rail Simulator cargo loading is fully configurable. You can specify as many different assets as desired for the cargo crane to load - anything from containers to cars! Any rail vehicle can have up to 3 load points specified on it. Typically you would put combinations of 20ft, 30ft and 40ft containers onto flatbed wagons but with a bit of imagination you could do a wide variety of cargo loading scenarios.
Although we have described cargo loading in detail, this is just one part of the freight system. You will also be able to load bulk freight such as coal into wagons; with this you will see the level of coal in the wagon rise. Bulk freight can also be unloaded and the level in the wagon will fall. Again, this is fully configurable using the Professional Developer Tools.
Rail Simulator Team