How I tame the elevation gremlins

[RhB_HJ]

Chaz,

I do use vertical transitions - not all the time and they're certainly not correct easements. As a ruls I ease into a grade if the constant grade is 2% or more e.g. use a .7% for the first track segment, the next one at 1.4% and then the grade if it is around 2%.

[Jeff]

@David,
That would be good, but what we need to do is clarify the way setting height works. HJ is right about that. Track should stay at zero unless changed by the designer. That will do us worlds of good. Yes, you should be able to select any number of pieces of track and set their height or Lock the height.

@Chaz- The prototype railroads DO have easement grades, in effect. They have found that the easiest way to get heavy trains up grades is by having a 'hump'. What that means is that the train builds up speed on a fairly flat stretch; then the engines (the heaviest part-per-foot of the train) go up and over the hump and onto a less-steep grade; then the rest of the train gets dragged up over the hump. It makes sense, but I can't think of any modelers who actually do it like the real thing. I guess the opposite way would work as well- set up a long lowangle gradient with a hump at the end...

[N Scale Pete]

How about a setting that allows us to assign a slope that new pieces of track with have?

It's tedious to have to adjust heights at the ends of the section to get the smooth slope I want if it's below max.

What about being able to pick a grade percent and then all tracks added will have that slope until we turn off the feature?

[RhB_HJ]

I suggested that a while back. But that was when AR would do some "funky" stuff in the grade department.

As it is now it works reliably/predictably. I still use the "lock height" feature in most cases when I want to assign a specific grade to a certain section. As stated much earlier, the cat's meow would be to select either a given height between end points or the grade between the end points.