Paved Road Mod

[Strontium Dog]

Hi

Just thought I'd post this other Mod that I've been working on. Its a little flakey in places but I'm not so sure thats down to the Mod rather than the way in which CMBO strings the road bitmaps together. Anyway it works pretty well and is basically a combination of paved and dirt roads to give a paved road with a dirt shoulder. I think it looks a little better than the plain straight edges of the paved roads in CMBO but I guess thats a matter of personal taste.

Its designed to work with Tom's Field Road Mod in the sense that where paved and dirt roads intersect I have only included one option for bitmaps 626 and 627. i.e the dirt road matches Tom's mod at this point.

You can download it here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/digidog/CMMods/SDogRoad.zip

There are a few screenshots below as well.

Please feel free to make changes etc. or to make them CMMOS compliant or whatever.

Let me know what you think.

Strontium Dog

[Philippe]

I did some repair work once on a road mod for my own private use. What I found was that it was fairly hard to get all the pieces aligned if the road was running in a diagonal direction. The author of the road I was repairing had clearly given up and not bothered.

Yes, the CMBO method is annoying, and yes, it takes a certain amount of extra work, but after spending one rainly Sunday afternoon fighting with it, I was able to make all the pieces fit together. The trick is to take notes, not to expect to get it on the first three tries, and be very careful about what goes where. After doing the roads I was so inspired I took a crack at double-track railroads: that is more difficult by a quantum leap. At the time I didn't have the tools or the technique, but next time I have a rainy sunday and nothing better to do...

[Gyrene]

Originally posted by Philippe:

I did some repair work once on a road mod for my own private use. What I found was that it was fairly hard to get all the pieces aligned if the road was running in a diagonal direction. The author of the road I was repairing had clearly given up and not bothered.

Yes, the CMBO method is annoying, and yes, it takes a certain amount of extra work, but after spending one rainly Sunday afternoon fighting with it, I was able to make all the pieces fit together. The trick is to take notes, not to expect to get it on the first three tries, and be very careful about what goes where. After doing the roads I was so inspired I took a crack at double-track railroads: that is more difficult by a quantum leap. At the time I didn't have the tools or the technique, but next time I have a rainy sunday and nothing better to do...

Phillippe, did you email me a while back about a double track rail mod? I never did get into converting my existing mod...

I'll see what of it can be used for CMBB or even if it's need there at all.

Gyrene

[Kilgore]

SD,

The road mod is a keeper

I've often thought there was something missing from the paved roads, but couldn't quite put my quite put my finger on what it was.... Now I know

Thanks a million...

[lcm1947]

Very nice Strontiim Dog. Excellent idea and looks great. Too cool. These little extra's really help the game in my opinion. I really like it thanks for doing it.

[OGSF]

Looks very good. Thanks for the effort, I'll be using it.

OberGruppenStompinFeuhrer

[Flesh]

Great mod!!! Goes really well with Tom's dirt road mod too. I was actually looking for a paved road mod that would fit with Tom's mod.

Keep up the good work. Hope to see more mods from you...

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Gyrene:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Philippe:

I did some repair work once on a road mod for my own private use. What I found was that it was fairly hard to get all the pieces aligned if the road was running in a diagonal direction. The author of the road I was repairing had clearly given up and not bothered.

Yes, the CMBO method is annoying, and yes, it takes a certain amount of extra work, but after spending one rainly Sunday afternoon fighting with it, I was able to make all the pieces fit together. The trick is to take notes, not to expect to get it on the first three tries, and be very careful about what goes where. After doing the roads I was so inspired I took a crack at double-track railroads: that is more difficult by a quantum leap. At the time I didn't have the tools or the technique, but next time I have a rainy sunday and nothing better to do...

Phillippe, did you email me a while back about a double track rail mod? I never did get into converting my existing mod...

I'll see what of it can be used for CMBB or even if it's need there at all.

Gyrene</font>

[Philippe]

Just to clarify, the original discussion of railroad tracks was always in the context of Western Europe. It's very strange to see a single track line in a heavily industrialized environment, even if you're in the middle of farmland. The only time you get a single track is on a siding, usually to service some business near the main line.

I don't know about single tracks in Russia, but my understanding was that the Germans simply couldn't convert the lines to their guage fast enough. There are hybrid solutions involving carriages with two sets of wheels, but I thought those things only worked over short stretches and were apparently not that satisfactory given how much needed to be moved.

[Gyrene]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Double track was in the minority in the Soviet Union - one of the large downfalls of German logistics - I have read - correct me if I'm wrong - that the Germans laid single track in their own guage without bothering to double the tracks...though there were a few hundred miles of double track that did exist?

Mike, you are probably correct about the single track issue, and I remember reading in a couple of places that the Germans adapted their rail cars to the Russian gauge, until they could convert the Russian tracks to the German gauge.

Here's a quote from US Army history site:

The initially established supply depots were to remain in operation until the Russian railroads could be converted to normal gauge and the supply bases advanced into the zone of operations. Then, as supply depots farther to the rear would be dissolved, their security forces could be made available for employment in forward installations. Another possibility for the release of security troops on an even larger scale would arise as soon as a previous zone of operations or an area under military control was taken over by a civilian administration. The police forces of this administration were then to assume the former duties of the security troops.

This seems to support the German replacing of Russian track.

On a side note, here's a funny quote on why US rail track is the gauge it is:

The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So, who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, they were alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derived from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.

Specs and Bureaucracies live forever. Therefore, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.

So maybe I won't re-do my tracks for CMBB after all.

Gyrene

[Soddball]

That is very, very funny. Not too far from the truth, either

[Guest Stuart J. Vincent]

SD,

Excellent work, Looks really good.

[Strontium Dog]

Hi guys

Good to see that there are a few rough-edged road lovers out there

Thanks for all the info Philippe. In the end I think I worked out most of the road stuff by putting blobs of coulour all over the place but it was a bit trying. I don't think I'll bother messing with the railway tracks (not unless I'm feeling particularly masochistic ).

Gyrene, enjoyed that quote you posted

SD