DakotaLove39
Always Improvising
Heyo fellas. So my friend convinced me to start playing Minecraft, despite my year's worth of reisisting. He made a very convincing argument:
Traincraft.
Anyone familiar with Minecraft will know that the point of the game is to mine. Dig into the ground, get the goodies such as iron ore, etc., and make stuff to survive in a hostile world.
The standard game already had minecrarts to help you, and user-placeable tracks to go with them.
Instead of using minecarts, the Traincraft mod allows you to run full-blown trains. As Minecraft is a game originating in Europe, the locomotive selection is pretty much half Euro and Russian, and half US loco's. The strange part of this is that seemingly most of the rolling stock to go with them are cars from the US, but the game is not specific enough to care about coupler types.
They are rather cutesy looking, but I have definitely been having my share of fun with my new virtual model railroad. If you had to figure an actual gauge for these trains, it's about 2 1/2 to three feet. (Each minecraft block is supposedly one meter cubed.)
The quick rundown of stock is as follows:
SD70ACE BNSF
GP40 Alaska Railroad
GP7 Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range (best as I can guess, see pictures)
SD40-2 ATSF warbonnet (Unfortunately the graphics on this loco are screwed up. Only one side displays properly)
American 4-4-0
American Mogul
American Forney 2-6-0
USFL98 (Unfortunately this one does not look as good as other steamers, and has no matching tender.)
Extensive list of american rolling stock including three types of tank cars, grain hoppers, open hoppers, three boxcars, stock car, flat cars, log cars, lumber cars, woodchippers, gondolas, cabooses, passenger cars, intermodal car and piggyback car.
German BR80 tank engine
German BR01 steam loco
German KoF Diesel
German V60 Diesel
Matching passenger, mail and freight cars to go with these.
British steam locomotive
British diesel shunter
USSR 0-5-0 steamer
USSR VL10 Electric loco
USSR CHME3 diesel loco
There's several other electrics and steam locos I didn't mention.
Now, the locos DO require fuel, and the amount of cars strung up to them does affect their top speed. Players can use the train cars to carry items they pick up in the game, but stuffing 400 pieces of cobblestone into a hopper seems to affect the car's weight also, although not by much.
Also with Creative mode, you can pick up animals and monsters with the stock car. Random villagers may also board your locomotive (if empty) or passenger cars if they stray onto the tracks.
Yes, there are sheep in my stock cars.
Now, unfortunately there are some parts of the mod that are, in fact, broken. Traincraft is a fairly old mod for Minecraft, and used to work better a few years ago. Format changes to the core game have resulted in no sounds for the locos, no smoke/exhaust, and automatic loading systems will no longer load or unload the train cars. Honestly in my couple weeks of playing with this stuff, none of these missing aspects have bothered me. The trains are sometimes prone to strange visual glitches, but otherwise work fine.
If you also get ahold of the mod called Railcraft, you can get fancy new tracks to use, a tunnel boring machine, as well as user-defined signal blocks! They're quite picky and do not like curves, but clever use of signal relays, control boxes and receiver boxes mean you can work around it as I have. Minecraft also allows you to build some fantastical bridges and tunnel systems.
I won't get into the 'crafting' side of Traincraft, as building a locomotive is VERY extensive and you need a lot of materials to make one.
Also in my version of this mod, I am not able to craft anything. The train crafting tables are broken and sadly will not produce anything, which sucks because as far as I know all of the american locos can be crafted with different paint schemes.
Diesel fuel can be crafted using coal and sugar cane and placing it into a mod-included Distillation tower (I haven't made sense of this yet either..) and electric trains can use batteries and other electric generators included in other mods. (IndustrialCraft comes to mind here)
Some stuff about Railcraft signals:
Like I said, you cannot have a signal block which goes around a curve track. The signals are set up to only read a straight line of track between eachother, but using "distant signal" relays can solve this problem.
I'll also point out passing and holding sidings here, which are made with signal blocks.
In this picture, the GP7 is approaching me after just having rounded a curve inside the tunnel. The top signal on the dual-head shows the status of the track the loco is on (duh). The light just below that shows the status of the far track around the curve. On the left side is the signal block that controls the passing siding. Trains leaving the tunnel have to take the passing siding, as the approach to the tunnel is downhill.
So, the signal controller boxes automatically trigger the switch to divert exiting trains onto the passing siding. If the main line is occupied beyond the passing siding, the controllers also activate a special track that stops the train in place until the main is clear.
I am working on a couple other parts of my railroad that take advantage of automated traffic control, including one really nasty junction on the other end of the tunnel pictured above.
Before I forget! I mentioned the Railcraft mod adds a bunch of special tracks. All but two require a Redstone power source (magic electricity) to operate. These include coupler and uncoupler tracks, booster tracks (increases speed) elevator tracks (not applicable to trains) launcher tracks (not for trains) and a large variety of tracks which stop trains when unpowered. If I knew how to work the detector modules and tracks included in Railcraft, I could probably build something similar to a hump yard..
Anyway I seem to be rambling on, now. To wrap it up, this has been, and still is, a blast to operate. I love the traffic control features provided by Railcraft, and riding BNSF SD70's through the mesas around my tower is alot of fun.
It's not entirely perfect, but it is definitely fun.
Traincraft.
Anyone familiar with Minecraft will know that the point of the game is to mine. Dig into the ground, get the goodies such as iron ore, etc., and make stuff to survive in a hostile world.
The standard game already had minecrarts to help you, and user-placeable tracks to go with them.
Instead of using minecarts, the Traincraft mod allows you to run full-blown trains. As Minecraft is a game originating in Europe, the locomotive selection is pretty much half Euro and Russian, and half US loco's. The strange part of this is that seemingly most of the rolling stock to go with them are cars from the US, but the game is not specific enough to care about coupler types.
They are rather cutesy looking, but I have definitely been having my share of fun with my new virtual model railroad. If you had to figure an actual gauge for these trains, it's about 2 1/2 to three feet. (Each minecraft block is supposedly one meter cubed.)
The quick rundown of stock is as follows:
SD70ACE BNSF
GP40 Alaska Railroad
GP7 Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range (best as I can guess, see pictures)
SD40-2 ATSF warbonnet (Unfortunately the graphics on this loco are screwed up. Only one side displays properly)
American 4-4-0
American Mogul
American Forney 2-6-0
USFL98 (Unfortunately this one does not look as good as other steamers, and has no matching tender.)
Extensive list of american rolling stock including three types of tank cars, grain hoppers, open hoppers, three boxcars, stock car, flat cars, log cars, lumber cars, woodchippers, gondolas, cabooses, passenger cars, intermodal car and piggyback car.
German BR80 tank engine
German BR01 steam loco
German KoF Diesel
German V60 Diesel
Matching passenger, mail and freight cars to go with these.
British steam locomotive
British diesel shunter
USSR 0-5-0 steamer
USSR VL10 Electric loco
USSR CHME3 diesel loco
There's several other electrics and steam locos I didn't mention.
Now, the locos DO require fuel, and the amount of cars strung up to them does affect their top speed. Players can use the train cars to carry items they pick up in the game, but stuffing 400 pieces of cobblestone into a hopper seems to affect the car's weight also, although not by much.
Also with Creative mode, you can pick up animals and monsters with the stock car. Random villagers may also board your locomotive (if empty) or passenger cars if they stray onto the tracks.
Yes, there are sheep in my stock cars.
Now, unfortunately there are some parts of the mod that are, in fact, broken. Traincraft is a fairly old mod for Minecraft, and used to work better a few years ago. Format changes to the core game have resulted in no sounds for the locos, no smoke/exhaust, and automatic loading systems will no longer load or unload the train cars. Honestly in my couple weeks of playing with this stuff, none of these missing aspects have bothered me. The trains are sometimes prone to strange visual glitches, but otherwise work fine.
If you also get ahold of the mod called Railcraft, you can get fancy new tracks to use, a tunnel boring machine, as well as user-defined signal blocks! They're quite picky and do not like curves, but clever use of signal relays, control boxes and receiver boxes mean you can work around it as I have. Minecraft also allows you to build some fantastical bridges and tunnel systems.
I won't get into the 'crafting' side of Traincraft, as building a locomotive is VERY extensive and you need a lot of materials to make one.
Also in my version of this mod, I am not able to craft anything. The train crafting tables are broken and sadly will not produce anything, which sucks because as far as I know all of the american locos can be crafted with different paint schemes.
Diesel fuel can be crafted using coal and sugar cane and placing it into a mod-included Distillation tower (I haven't made sense of this yet either..) and electric trains can use batteries and other electric generators included in other mods. (IndustrialCraft comes to mind here)
Some stuff about Railcraft signals:
Like I said, you cannot have a signal block which goes around a curve track. The signals are set up to only read a straight line of track between eachother, but using "distant signal" relays can solve this problem.
I'll also point out passing and holding sidings here, which are made with signal blocks.
In this picture, the GP7 is approaching me after just having rounded a curve inside the tunnel. The top signal on the dual-head shows the status of the track the loco is on (duh). The light just below that shows the status of the far track around the curve. On the left side is the signal block that controls the passing siding. Trains leaving the tunnel have to take the passing siding, as the approach to the tunnel is downhill.
So, the signal controller boxes automatically trigger the switch to divert exiting trains onto the passing siding. If the main line is occupied beyond the passing siding, the controllers also activate a special track that stops the train in place until the main is clear.
I am working on a couple other parts of my railroad that take advantage of automated traffic control, including one really nasty junction on the other end of the tunnel pictured above.
Before I forget! I mentioned the Railcraft mod adds a bunch of special tracks. All but two require a Redstone power source (magic electricity) to operate. These include coupler and uncoupler tracks, booster tracks (increases speed) elevator tracks (not applicable to trains) launcher tracks (not for trains) and a large variety of tracks which stop trains when unpowered. If I knew how to work the detector modules and tracks included in Railcraft, I could probably build something similar to a hump yard..
Anyway I seem to be rambling on, now. To wrap it up, this has been, and still is, a blast to operate. I love the traffic control features provided by Railcraft, and riding BNSF SD70's through the mesas around my tower is alot of fun.
It's not entirely perfect, but it is definitely fun.
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