Thoughts on route merging

Since it has resurfaced recently, these are my thougths on route merging in a nutshell: Basically, plan first instead of being sorry later, it is actually pretty easy, as you will see.

If you create a few route fragments just yourself, and there is a remote chance that they ever get merged, simply make one route blueprint, with one route origin, and use that for all your projects.

As long as you don't go 100 miles east or west from the origin, any projection issues do not really become an issue and even then I bet you won't notice too much, unless you compare your route to different precise sources. Therefore, I bet that the main station in your favourite town makes a fine route origin for all you projects. Or any point in that town, or anywhere else in the region. The important thing is only that you don't start a second route with any other origin, unless it is in another country.

This origin defines nothing more than the location of your tile 0/0. You need not even populate it, and you can move the scenario marker of the freeroam scenario where you want. So, really, just get along with your personal standard origin.

Merging two routes of yours will bring along quite some problems, but at least the tiles will fit together.

If you are serious about considering a merge, you will have used the same track rule in all candidates, or close derivations thereof.


If you are considering a team project, you need to discuss a lot anyway, our you will not reach your target for sure. One of the many things is the route origin, the track rule, and who becomes master of trackwork. In theory, it is possible to merge different tracks.bin files. But there is risk associated to it. Any you need to understand the details of the XML structure.

Even more important, I believe that trackwork developed by different people will look different and going over it later will show the difference. Also for the signalling, if there is no one with a master plan how to signal the route, and if this same person does not check each signal location for himself (read: do it himself in practice), then scenario authors and/or drivers will be ungrateful later. So, while it might be tempting to lay the track together with the scenery, I feel that this is one of the many occasions where as a serious route developer you must not let the cosy toy feeling of the World Editor carry you away.


Further reading: A thread at UKTS, over a year old but still current, containing one of Adam's best posts.

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