Modding a railway station

[ParramattaPower]

Hello All,

I have a simple question that may not have a simple answer. I have been snooping around the various mod sites hosting Sim City 4 content and I just couldn't find a rail way station with 3 pairs of tracks and 1 or more of them being a terminus platform (and is at most 4 tiles wide). I want to ask, what is the difficulty factor in actually designing a rail way station. I am just aiming for functionality here, not looks.

[cogeo]

The definition of what you want is not very clear: "a rail way station with 3 pairs of tracks and 1 or more of them being a terminus platform (and is at most 4 tiles wide)"? Esp this "1 or more of them being a terminus platform" is too vague. Will it be 1 or 2 out of the 3? And will the rest will have platforms (with through running tracks) or not? Please give us some more details, or better yet a simple drawing.

What you are aiming for is definitely feasible to make, and the reason why such a station hasn't yet been made (and released) is that it's just too custom to be interesting to a considerable number of players.

There are many rail stations released on the LEX and the STEX, some have through-running tracks (like my Semitransparent Train Stations), some others are trackside (like the simple Maxis station) and there are some large "Terminals" too, like St Pancras or Gare Du Nord (these have a problem with train automata stopping and fading when the reach the end of the track, so UDI missions with such stations don't work well, but this is a needed compromise as trains in SC4 are not reversible). You may also find the ingame "Grand Rail Station" (a reward lot) interesting.

Otherwise you will have to find a proper model for the station building first (it must be narrow enough, to be fitting in the 1-tile-wide stripe remaining) and mod the lot using the SC4Tool (for pathing) and the Reader.

[mattb325]

Hi ParramattaPower

What you ask is not too out of the ordinary based on real life, although it is rare. This bat (http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/18184-ndex-its-langstrath-central-station/) while not exactly matching your request, is as close as I am aware of.

Otherwise, what you would want to do is use one of the handful of custom terminus buildings available (these will have the tracks finish at the station building), and then increase the lot size in the Lot Editor so that 'through' tracks can be run alongside the terminus building. There aren't too many small terminus buildings available, but I have made one that is simply a double-track width.
Then, to these 'through' tracks that you have added alongside the terminus in the Lot Editor you would probably add the station platform that came with the Maxis grand central station. Then you would adjust the traffic flow using the reader and the SC4Tool as the previous commenter advised.

Good luck

[ParramattaPower]

The definition of what you want is not very clear: "a rail way station with 3 pairs of tracks and 1 or more of them being a terminus platform (and is at most 4 tiles wide)"? Esp this "1 or more of them being a terminus platform" is too vague. Will it be 1 or 2 out of the 3? And will the rest will have platforms (with through running tracks) or not? Please give us some more details, or better yet a simple drawing.

What you are aiming for is definitely feasible to make, and the reason why such a station hasn't yet been made (and released) is that it's just too custom to be interesting to a considerable number of players.

There are many rail stations released on the LEX and the STEX, some have through-running tracks (like my Semitransparent Train Stations), some others are trackside (like the simple Maxis station) and there are some large "Terminals" too, like St Pancras or Gare Du Nord (these have a problem with train automata stopping and fading when the reach the end of the track, so UDI missions with such stations don't work well, but this is a needed compromise as trains in SC4 are not reversible). You may also find the ingame "Grand Rail Station" (a reward lot) interesting.

Otherwise you will have to find a proper model for the station building first (it must be narrow enough, to be fitting in the 1-tile-wide stripe remaining) and mod the lot using the SC4Tool (for pathing) and the Reader.

Thank you guys for the replies and yes, essentially the the train station I am aiming to mod will have either the left-most or right-most platform as a terminus and the other 2 as through tracks. Something like this:

  T T   3 4  5 6
||x x||x x||x x||

where T indicates a terminating track and x denotes a railway track and lastly || denoting a platform. So essentially from my understanding, I would just need to grab the default grand central station available in the game and muck around with the SC4 Tool to achieve my goal. I have never done any modding in SC4 before so this will be an interesting challenge... See how far I go with this.

UPDATE: Doesn't seem like I will be able to do this at the moment with my lack of knowledge about using the mod tools people have kindly provided.

[ParramattaPower]

Hey All.

I tried to edit the Maxis Central Station using the SC4 lot editor but it kept saying: "The lot you have chosen cannot be edited because it uses items from SimCity plug-ins or expansion packs that are not installed in this machine". Strange, seeing as how this is a default LOT. I must be doing something wrong but I am not sure.