Caltrain Gallery cars and F40PH-2 (pre-rebuild)

[kstabell]

Hi everyone, I just joined the forums after hearing of it from a friend, mainly about the Caltrain project that's under way and I thought I would share the work I've done in this area. I am still working on the equipment as far as textures, lighting and possibly modifications to the shape files I'm working off of but other than that I have a fully functional set from the '97 period.

Here's the gallery car:

The shape file I belive to be a slightly outdated version of the current file used with the MASW Metra gallery cars currently found on their site. (the shape file itself was obtained from a seprate pack of Metra cars from the train-sim.com file library) Currently the only thing that doesn't match the prototype on this is the number of bells on the horn and position of it, as well as the font type for the numbering which I have yet to find a good template for.

And here is the F40PH-2:

note that in this version that sence I don't have any shape editing programs (one reason why the horn isn't correct on the gallery cars), I chose to follow the fact that this shape includes the dynamic brakes and thus left out the SP emergency light origonaly found on the nose of the units. This unit was also edited from a shape file of a Metra engine found in the train-sim library and I am still currently tweaking some of the texturing to line things up correctly.


Aside from the problems already listed I am having some trubble getting the light coding to work correctly as a push-pull train. I haven't done any editing with it in the base simulator as I started fiddling with the lights on this unit after I installed MSTS-bin.

[gt3corn]

can't wait till it's released

[Kurt K]

You might want to contact John at MASW, for he does have an updated 8500 Metra gallery car that has yet to have been released (for lack of a proper horn recording).

Good luck with the F40PH though - both authors of it have since left the community - one of which was effectively ostracized from it after developing an .S file converter. Best of luck getting in contact with 'em.

-Kurt

[drewster]

I like those older 90s gallerys, i remember back in the day watching caltrain come in my home town with those mars lights flashing away. I did some modern painted ones myself

[santafe3751]

Cal train had at least one GP9 #3187 some should do a repaint af one. the image address is: espee.railfan.net/nonindex/oddsnends/3187_caltran-gp9p-rob_sarberenyi.jpg
this aparently not my pic

[lonewolf2777]

Bring that pic over to Mophouse/MLT Forums they might want to give this try to.

[kstabell]

Hi, I'm back after a long break from the sim community, I'm begining preperations to restart the project starting with the bin lighting.

Oh, Drewster, if you would like I could send you the cars I'm using them and update the paint job, I'm not sure if the textures are compatible with the newer model but I do know that the windows you're using off the metra cars arn't the right shape. The cars I'm using have the same shape for the windows accross the entire fleet of the older cars.

Edit: Hey kurt, I read over your post again and I was wondering if you're still working on the F40PH-2Cs, if you are, a somewhat simple modification to the main body could be made to make the standard F40 so I don't need to deal with the current model (which has a non-standard shape file to work with).

I could give you pictures for both versions of the loco both before and after the rebuild. As I've said before, for the era I'm doing the dynamic brakes should be gone, and in both versions there are no strobe lights. If you do deside to make one I would like to request the fixture for the SP style emergency light be put into the model without the dynamics.

The main reason why I went with this model is because it's the only one that had the correct fixture for the gyra lights as apposed to the one NALW made for the amtrak versions which have the inset horn, making the fixture not fit properly.

This model also lacks the rear railing fixture which is also absent on the caltrain locos. I would also like to model the F40PH-CATs if I can but I haven't found a correct model for them either.

Basicly you take the standard F40 and extend the shell back to cover the rear walkway in favor of the HEP generator housing.