Question About Incline

[Empty1958]

When dealing with track incline we now also have a neg indicator. I thought I had this understood. But now I see this is not the case. As I move a track point up/dn I have seen it go from - to zero to - without changing the direction of movement. And the same has happened for positive (no sign). I would expect it to change signs when passing zero. Anybody understand the -+ thing?

[Overheal]

You're laying the track from A to B, so it's in relation to your starting point, as naturally a negative incline, traveled backwards, will be a positive incline.

So this can help you especially plan out rural freight lines, eg. a coal mine up on a mountain, you don't necessarily care that it has a 6 degree negative slope into town, because that's downhill freight, it will return empty and run uphill fine. But you DEFINITELY want to avoid fully laden freight traveling uphill on your way into town, or it will craw for days or weeks at a time.

This also helps you know generally if your track is very level or hilly: if I have %'s of 0/0/0/0, I know I'm perfectly level, express speed stuff, but if I have 0/+1/-1/0, I have a hill in my track, or a trough if I have 0/-1/+1/0. How you manage your hills and troughs is up to you, for freight a downhill slope the whole way makes sense, on an express line a route of -1/-1/-1/-1 will be fast on the way there but slow on the way back, but a +1/+1/-1/-1 is going to be the same speed in either direction (they both meet at the same hill at the midpoint)

Hope that makes sense.

[Empty1958]

Yes, but I'm still left with one thing that does not make sense. If I pick a track point and it is at a negative value and I raise it to zero and I keep raising it should go to a positive value. But it goes back to a negative value. The track point starting low and raised to level and keep raising it to low again.

[Overheal]

Originally posted by Empty1958:

Yes, but I'm still left with one thing that does not make sense. If I pick a track point and it is at a negative value and I raise it to zero and I keep raising it should go to a positive value. But it goes back to a negative value. The track point starting low and raised to level and keep raising it to low again.

Illustration/a youtube clip would be really handy there,

Let's say you have points A and C, A is at a (slightly or moderately) higher elevation than C. And you pick some point B which is their midpoint,

At some point it's predominantly level on average 0%, ie. as much downhill as it is uphill.

But if the point is slightly higher, then the segment A-B might be uphill and B-C would still be predominantly downhill,

And if the point is slightly lower, the segment A-B might be downhill and B-C would be predominantly uphill.

But in either case, it maths out that your train is still predominantly traveling down hill.