Second Life Railroad/SLRR standards

Description

Second Life Railroad uses a standardized railway track for vehicles to run on. On this Page you find the standard measurements and information associated with the railway track.

In the future a description of an open source switch point will also be made available here.

Open Access

There are now several standard gage railroads in SL, some on private land, some on Linden land. Some SL residents have expressed an interest in operating trains on these railroads, much as anyone can operate a car on the roads in SL. Should this be allowed, standardization of the guidance, control and track will help residents develop suitable vehicles.

Guidance

Guidance is the actual way the vehicle "knows" where the track is and uses it to steer itself.

The existing system involves a non-phantom (invisible) center rail, called Guide. The trains initially running on these tracks use this rail as a physical steering mechanism. A vehicle linear motor pushes the vehicle and collisions with the rail steers it.

Other vehicles use a sensor and target system to steer, collision is unnecessary.

Control

Control is the way the rail network as a whole works safely. At the moment (10-2009) there is no such system in place.

Problem description: If multiple user trains are allowed on a track traffic control will be necessary. Something like the block section control system should work, using llSay on a negative channel, phantom alpha detectors on the track, and signals for realism.; A larger problems is what to do about traffic in the opposite direction. Block Section control could work with a passing siding for each section. Which leads to...; Another problem - switches. If the center guide rail is retained, then it could me turned and moved to divert a train. If a flat or phantom guide rail is used, names can be switched to change which rail is active.

Gage

Gage is the width of the actual vehicle / track combination.

This is not very important, as it is for appearance only, but it would be good to have a standard that builders can use.

Railbed

Railbed is the actual track design.

Theres is presently:

Flat - cheap for prims, does not look so good, good for sliding on.
3-D phantom - costs more prims, looks good, good for sliding on.
3-D non-phantom - costs more prims, looks good, not so good for sliding on?

Standards

SLRR track standards

Gage: 1.96M Guidance: 'Guide', 0.5x0.5M, Alpha, non-Phantom. Railbed: 3-D partly phantom Land Owner: Govenor Linden Operator: LDPW

Source

The above information was collected by the Second Life Railway Consortium (SLRC) Tuliptree (107, 131, 30) with the help of Stryker Jenkins, Moundsa Mayo. Qie Niangao and Kitto Flora.

The LDPW is currently the "owner" of the SLRR track. The SLRC only collected existing data for these wiki pages, but did not set these standards. They evolved over time as the Linden Lab employees constructed the Second Life Railroad.

Also See

Second_Life_Railroad (main page)