On the right track

To get you going: follow these steps and you have your first stretch of layout within a few minutes.

1. Choose a library

Open the track drawer in the side panel (the icon). At the top is the library you are using, with beside it. Click that and choose the make and the scale you want to build in.

The list fills with that make's track pieces.

2. Make a table

Go to the Room tab and click Draw a table. You get a table of 1200 by 600 millimetres. That is a shelf you can reach across: deeper than an arm's length does not work in real life.

You can also lay track first and let TRAX make a table around it afterwards — see Making tables.

3. Lay your first piece of track

Drag a piece from the list onto the table and let go. The piece lands on the ground, exactly where you released it.

At both ends you now see a dot. One of them is red: that is the selected end, and the next piece goes there.

4. Add a piece

Double-click the red dot. A new piece is joined on — the one selected in the list at that moment.

Double-clicking a row in the list does the same, and then you decide which piece it is as you go.

Repeat that a few times and you have a run.

5. Make a second run and join them up

Drag another piece to a different spot on the table and build a second run there.

Now take a dot of the second run and drag it onto a dot of the first. Let go: the two runs are joined, and the second has been turned neatly into line.

6. Save

Go to the Project tab and click Save to the cloud. TRAX takes a photograph of your layout as it does so; you see it again on My projects.

That is the heart of it. The basics has the rest.

With these moves you build most of any layout.

Starting a new run

• Drag a piece from the list into the workspace. Over a table the piece rides along the terrain, so you see at once where it will land.
• Or double-click an empty spot in the workspace, away from the tables. The piece selected in the list is put down there.

On a table double-clicking does not start a run: there a double click opens the table's shape. So on a table, dragging is the way.

Adding a piece of track

There are three ways:

1. Double-click a dot. A new piece is put at that end — the one selected in the list.
2. Double-click a row in the list. That piece is put at the selected end, the one with the red dot.
3. Drag a piece from the list and drop it on a dot.

Selecting

• One piece: click it.
• Several pieces: hold Ctrl while you click.
• A whole run: double-click a piece. Everything joined to it, directly or through its neighbours, is selected.
• An end: click the dot. It turns red; that is where the next piece goes.
• An area: click on the Project tab and draw a box around the pieces you want.

Whatever you select, a tab appears on the right of the ribbon with the buttons that belong to it. See The context tabs.

Moving

Drag a dot at the end of the run. Everything joined to it comes along.

If the run is locked ( on the Item tab), the dot stays where it was. Turn the lock off to free it again.

Joining two runs

Drag a dot of one run onto a dot of the other and let go. The runs are joined and the one you dragged is turned into line.

Turning

A turnout or a crossing can be turned round so that it joins on differently. Select the piece, click the dot you want to join with, then click Turn the connection on the Item tab.

To turn a selection through an angle, use the field in the Turn group on the Item tab, or switch the turn gizmo on with on the View tab.

Which way a curve bends

The Track tab has the Direction button. It decides which way a new curve bends. Click it to flip before you insert the curve.

Deleting

Select what has to go and press Delete, or click on the Project tab.

Undoing

and on the Project tab, or Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y. Every action is one step: a whole brush stroke over the terrain, a whole drag, filling in a whole landscape.

Copy and paste

copy, cut, paste. At the moment only track travels through the clipboard; trees, buildings and roads do not yet.

Escape

Esc is the universal stop button. It puts down the tool that is on, stops a line you are drawing, leaves a shape editor and drops the selection. Not sure what you are in the middle of? Escape.

The moment you select something, a tab joins the ribbon on the right. What is on it depends on what you clicked, and the tab's name tells you what that is: Straight, Curve, Turnout, Table, Water, Platform, Object.

There are seven of them, and they are all built the same way: information about what you selected on the left, the buttons you can let loose on it beside that, and a waste bin on the right if the thing can be deleted.

The Item tab: track

The tab for a piece of track or a selection of pieces.

• Info shows what you have: the article number, the length, the radius and the angle. For a selection, the number of pieces and the total length.
• Turn the connection turns a turnout or a crossing so that it joins on differently. Click the dot you want to join with first.
• Height is the field that sets the selection's height, with the button beside it that takes over the height of the ground underneath. See Heights and grades.
• Lock comes in two: the first pins the whole run down so nothing about it moves, the second pins the height relative to its neighbours, so a yard goes up and down as one.
• Kind of track: on the ground or in a tunnel.
• Or on a bridge. TRAX takes that into account when it fills in the terrain.
• Turn is the field for the angle.
• Legend gives the selection a colour. See Advanced track planning.
• Parallel lays a second track beside the one you selected.

The Table tab

• Move: the move gizmo and the turn gizmo.
• Shape: moving the table, or editing its shape.
• Collect the track hands every piece above this table to the table.
• Lock the terrain, so that filling it in automatically leaves this table alone.

See Make room.

The Line tab: roads, fences, hedges and walls

Width, height, the spacing of a fence's posts, a road's middle line, a retaining wall, a hedge's density and how well it is clipped, the texture, and editing the shape. See Roads, fences, hedges and walls.

The Water tab

Kind of water, level, depth, width, current, swell, walls along the banks and the bank protection. See Water.

The Platform tab

The texture of the deck, the edge, the height above the rails, a side as a ramp, and the shape. See Platforms.

The Object tab

For a tree, a building, a stone or a patch:

• Moving and turning.
• Scaling.
• Or the exact scale, height, heading and tilt as a number.

The CAD tab

That one does not belong to a selection but to the look: choose CAD and it joins them. See The drawing.

Nearly every make has flex track: a piece you bend yourself. In TRAX you use it in three ways.

1. A curve to measure

The Track tab has Insert a curve. Fill in the radius and the angle first, then click the button. You can click it several times in a row to make more curves.

beside it decides which way it bends.

This is how you get a curve no make supplies — a curve of 743 millimetres through 27 degrees, because that is simply what fits.

2. A straight to measure

Straight does the same for a straight: fill in the length and click.

3. Shaping it freely

Put a flex piece down the way you put down any other: drag it from the list or double-click a dot. After that you shape it with the mouse.

Drag the dots at the ends. The track runs smoothly between the two.

To steer the bend yourself, double-click the piece. Two extra handles appear, with a red line from each end to its handle. That line shows the direction in which the track leaves the end. Drag the handles to change the bend.

If an end is joined to another piece, the direction there is fixed — the track has to meet its neighbour properly, after all. If the end is free, you can turn the direction as well.

Which flex piece

The Track tab has the Flex track list, with the flex pieces from the library you are using. That piece is what a straight or a curve to measure is made from. If the library has no flex track, those buttons are off.

And a fourth kind

When TRAX works out parallel track for you, it uses flex track wherever no stock piece fits exactly. Flex track inserted that way has a fixed shape you cannot adjust yourself.

A layout that is only ever flat is a layout without a story. In TRAX you give track height in three ways.

Remember as you go: height 0 is the top of the rails, not the top of your table. Every height is measured from that line.

1. Filling in a number

Select a piece or a run. The Item tab has the Height field. Type a value into it or use the arrows beside it.

TRAX does not lift that one piece alone: the track joined to it climbs along, at the steepest grade you have allowed. That gives you a rising stretch by itself instead of a break in the track.

Those maximum grades are in the settings drawer of the side panel, separately for straight track, for curves and for the rest. In real life two per cent is a lot; three per cent is hard climbing.

2. Taking the height of the ground

With this button on the Item tab the selected track takes over the height of the terrain under it. If you have several pieces selected, TRAX does it for each piece separately, so the track follows the landscape.

3. With the gizmo

Switch the move gizmo on with the View tab. Click a dot: arrows appear along the axes. The vertical arrow is the height. Drag it up or down.

The ground comes along by itself

This is the great difference from the old days: you do not have to adjust the ground separately. Lift a stretch of track and the ground under it comes along — as an embankment. Lower it and the ground digs itself in — as a cutting. Move the track away and the old ground comes back the way it was.

The same holds for roads, walls, platforms and buildings. See The landscape.

The elevation lock

The Item tab has a second lock: the elevation lock. A piece with that lock on keeps its height relative to its neighbours. Set the neighbour's height and the locked piece shifts by the same amount, and its own locked neighbours behind it too.

That is exactly what you want for a yard or a station: it lies level and has to go up or down as a whole, not piece by piece. The loose track beyond it then follows by the ordinary grade rule again.

Tunnels and bridges

If your track runs through a mountain or over a valley, say so with and on the Item tab. TRAX takes it into account when it fills in the terrain: over a tunnel it puts enough mountain to make it a tunnel, and under a bridge it digs a valley instead of throwing up an embankment. A piece on a bridge also gets a wide band along the rails, so that you see it at a glance.

Parallel track

TRAX can lay a second track beside an existing one.

1. Select a straight, a curve or a flex piece. The Parallel group appears on the Item tab.
2. Click . A parallel run is worked out and shown in red.
3. Set the spacing, and with choose which side it goes.
4. Click to insert it for real, or to leave it.

Wherever no stock piece fits exactly, TRAX uses a flex piece.

There are standards for the spacing between two tracks: NEM 112 in Europe, NMRA S-8 in North America. In H0 you usually end up around 46 millimetres on straight track, more in a curve.

The legend

In TRAX you can give track a colour to show what it is for: a yard, a freight route, the part you have already built.

• Select the track and choose a colour from the Legend list on the Item tab.
• adds a colour. Click the coloured square, pick your colour, give it a name and confirm.
• edits the colour that is selected.

The legend belongs to your layout and is saved with it.

The lock

On the Item tab the lock pins a whole run down. Every piece joined to the selected one is locked, and then nothing about it can move: the dots stay where they are, the gizmo does not take hold of it, and turning does not work. Click again and the whole run is free.

That is meant for the part of your layout that is finished. Heights are not covered by it — the elevation lock is for those.

What TRAX watches for you

TRAX knows the NEM (MOROP) and NMRA standards and uses them itself:

• Over a tunnel it lays at least twice the loading gauge in mountain, plus a tunnel wall. Under a bridge it keeps at least one gauge clear.
• Plants and objects you spray keep out of the loading gauge. A tree does not grow between the rails.
• Platforms are set at the distance from the rails the standard prescribes: 1650 millimetres from the track's centre.

A screen that warns you about curves that are too tight and grades that are too steep is coming; the arithmetic is already in there.

The NMRA standards are on nmra.org in English. The NEM standards are on morop.eu in German, French and Dutch.