Best way to prevent ‘bumps’ at railway crossings?

[DirkSchwa]

When creating a railroad which crosses a road, the game sometimes creates a ‘bumpy’ crossing, where the trains dives a little up and down. This disturbs me a lot, so I go out of my way to prevent it.

The only way I know is to create a flat surface, where the track and road will cross each other and then create the track and after that the road that crosses said track. But this method somehow does not seem failsafe.

Can anyone advise me better or easier ways of getting smooth railroad crossings?

[Tsubame ⭐]

Usually for me the issue are the other way around, bumpy roads.

Usually this occurs on uneven terrain.

The way I do it is to demolish the tracks and roads near the place where I want to build the crossing, smooth and flatten the terrain, and then rebuild both networks. I get best results building rail first, and then rebuilding the road again.

[Metacritical]

delete the road, build track, re-add the road. the road will be bumpy but the track will be flat. i usually bridge or tunnel it as level crossings are annoying; depends how busy the road is, every road that has one of my lines on it is bridged/tunnelled

[wabbithunta]

One of the annoying "features" of this game is level crossings, and bumpy roads/tracks.
You thing it's all hunky dory, but after laying them you can sometimes get an annoying bump in the track/road.

As Tsubane, and Metacritical both said. level/smooth the ground to make track laying better.
Lay the track first, and then add the road.

For me I found it's better, for a level and even track, and road too, is to add the road in short sections and lay the road out from the centre of the track for a short distance, and ensure it's flat and level and set it in place, and then repeat it for the opposite direction, as sometimes laying road across a track, even when level can sometimes create a bump in the road if the ground isn't flat/level.

This mod helps a great deal too, for flat/level roads and tracks
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2298331429

[Vimpster]

I like level crossings myself. But they do indeed need to be level. The ground does not need to be level at all so long as you force the track to be level where you intend to have a road crossing it.

But if you are finding that it isn't consistently working then it could be that you aren't actually forcing it to be level properly. I think a lot of players misunderstand how to properly force a grade or level when using the rail/road tool. It has to be done in 2 steps. You use the force grade arrow, locking the grade to what you want, then you build that section, then you build another section off of that last one, maintaining the locked grade. It is only the second part that will actually be level, the first part built is a transition piece where it curves from the grade it had to the grade you are forcing on it, while the second piece will be that locked grade from end to end.

Unlike rail crossing on roads, rails over rails, like switches and such, can be done on any incline without bumps so long as you have a consistent grade.

[RadiKyle]

Just to clarify the Why... "Level" is the key word, meaning both tracks and/or roads must have 0% gradient where they cross. This is because the game will not "tilt" a road (or track) laterally towards one ditch or the other to match the gradient of the road/track that it needs to cross (which would cause the vehicles to lean to one side). So both are forced to be level with 0% gradient in the crossing/intersection.

Understandable, but it leads to those lumpy crossings/intersections on hill slopes. As above, over/underpasses are another workaround. Cheers

[DirkSchwa]

Thanks all for your replies. The mentioned mod is already part of my toolkit, going to keep an eye on it even more when creating level crossings. My suspicion was what RadiKyle has worded nicely, so it's a part of the game, which needs to be dealt with. All of your tips are useful for that. I do hope the devs will somehow be able to fix this in the future. As for now, it will stay an annoyance that people like me will have to deal with now and then.