October 2026
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New
The build plan: analog block protection
Running analog and want the trains to keep their distance by themselves? Choose analog block protection in the build plan. It works out which way the trains run on every track, where each signal stands with its stop section, and where the contacts go that set the signals to red and back to green. The book explains how it works and draws a wiring diagram for each row of blocks, with the parts for your own track system.
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New
The build plan: testers wanted
TRAX3D can turn your layout into a build plan: a book made for that one layout, with the benchwork and its cutting drawings, the roadbed and its risers, the wiring with blocks, feeders and signals, the steps in the order you build them, and the lists of parts and materials -- plus the drawings as loose sheets. Before it goes on sale we are testing it. Would you like your own layout worked out, in return for telling us what you find? Write to us through the support form, choose "Especially for testers" and pick the layout.
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New
Community Creds: taking part will count
What you give the TRAX3D community is going to count: the layouts you share, your posts and answers on the forum, the likes you receive, your donations, and the newsletter and weekly digest you keep switched on. Together they are your Community Creds, and at a full score a build plan costs you half. Everything counts for less as it gets older, so what counts is taking part now. Where you stand is in your account, under Community Creds.
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Better
Your layout's own page, rearranged
The page of a layout in My Projects now shows the layout itself -- its picture, name and story -- beside its housekeeping: who may see it, sharing, a copy, handing it on. With it stand the four steps a layout goes through: plan, view, build and run. The manual has a new chapter, Building, about the layout plan on paper and the parts list.
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Fixed
A building stays where you put it
Laying track beside a building, or under its roof as in a loco shed or a goods shed, took the building away. A building over the track is a choice, so it stays; trees and loose objects still make way for the rails.
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New
Your layout as a drawing on paper
The Project tab makes a PDF of your layout: a drawing to scale, a page per level, with the tables and their sizes, the track with its article numbers, buildings, water and roads, and the measurements and labels of the CAD tab. It carries a scale bar, so you can measure on it with a ruler.
September 2026
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Better
Märklin C: slim curved turnouts and the slim double slip
The Märklin C library gained the slim curved turnouts 24771 and 24772 and the slim double slip 24720.
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New
The parts list
What does this layout cost me, and what do I have to order? The Project tab now has a parts list: every article you have laid, with how many of them, grouped per track library so a layout built from two systems gives you two lists. There is a line per table as well, for anybody building in modules. Save it as a file your spreadsheet opens, or print it and take it to the shop. Buildings, trees and the rest are counted too, and the list says plainly that those have no article number yet.
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New
Say where your stations and yards are
On the CAD tab you mark a group of tracks as a station, a halt, a yard, a staging yard, a depot or a siding, and give it a name. The place is drawn as a band along its track with a name plate and moves along with the track; select it and you have all of its track, to move, copy or cut a whole emplacement at once.
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New
Mirror your layout
The Track tab has a mirror button: the selected track, or the whole layout, is mirrored from left to right. Every turnout is replaced by its counterpart article, so the plan can still be built; where a library has no counterpart, TRAX says which pieces those are and mirrors nothing.
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Better
Tables snap to each other
A new table lands beside the ones that are there instead of on top of them. A table you drag snaps to its neighbour, in height too, and two tables no longer slide into each other.
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Better
Ends that nearly meet now join
Two ends of one run that lie a few millimetres apart used to be refused, where real track takes that up in its joiners. How far apart they may lie is a setting now, in the settings panel: 5 mm and 2 degrees to start with. On the N layouts we measured, most of the joins that would not close do so now.
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New
Copy a layout, throw it away, or give it to someone
In My Projects every layout can be copied and removed, and you can offer it to another member: they find the offer at the head of their own projects and accept or decline it. The layout only moves when they say yes.
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New
A signal for a good post
A discussion and every reply on the forum can be liked, with the same semaphore the layouts in the showcase have: "this helped" in one click instead of a reply nobody needed to write.
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New
A bell for what the editor tells you
Everything the editor says is kept behind a bell at the top right of the work area, with a counter for what you have not read yet. An explanation is shown once and can be read again there; an error still comes every time.
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New
TRAX asks whether your layout may be shown
Almost nobody puts a layout in the showcase, and it is not for want of layouts: sharing is one checkbox on a page you have to go looking for. So TRAX asks. Have you laid more than a hundred pieces of track, dressed your layout with tables, trees, roads, water and buildings, or spent more than three hours on it, then after a save a card appears in the corner: show it? One press and it is in the showcase, and you can take it down again whenever you like. It is asked once per layout, whatever you answer.
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Better
Why the whole layout moves with it
Raise a piece of track and much of the layout may come with it: a piece may only climb its own length times the grade, so a difference of a few centimetres needs metres of track to run out in, in every direction. That is not a lock and nothing said so. TRAX now explains it once, with the figures: how many pieces moved, the grade, and how much track this difference needs.
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New
Share what you built
On a shared layout, and on the page where you describe it, there are buttons to hand it on: Pinterest with the layout's own picture, Facebook, WhatsApp, email, and the address itself to paste into your club's group. Nothing is loaded from any of those networks until you press a button.
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Better
Finding a model while you type
The search box above the building, plant and object lists filters while you type, whatever the case and in any order you put the words. A model is also found by words that are not on the card: its category, its species and the name of the file it came from.
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Better
The piece you just laid is where you carry on
Drag a piece out of the library and one of its own connections is selected, so the next piece joins on with Space or a double click. The library list also follows what you drag, so the same article is laid again.
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New
A wish in the forum can be voted for
Write a wish in Ideas and feedback and it can be turned into a feature request: the discussion stays where it is and keeps its replies, and a vote is added to it.
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New
A quick menu over your layout
The buttons you reach for the whole time -- the two gizmos, the curve direction, 2D/3D and the shortcut drawing -- stand at the top of the work area on every tab, so you no longer go looking for a tab first. Which ones stand there is your own choice.
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New
Shortcuts, and a drawing of the keyboard
Space joins the chosen piece of track to the connection you selected, D turns the curve the other way and W turns a turnout about its connection -- the three you need the whole time while laying track. Shift + ? draws the whole keyboard over your layout, with every key carrying the icon of the button it belongs to, and the same sheet is in the manual as a PDF.
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Better
A buffer stop looks like a buffer stop
In the track list a buffer stop is drawn with its beam, its buffers and its frame, so you can tell it from a short straight at a glance.
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Better
Fleischmann piccolo: the curved turnouts fit
The curved turnouts 9168/9169, 9174 to 9177 now end exactly where the maker says, so a pair gives two parallel circles with level ends. The adjustable straight 9110 is in the library too, and takes the length of the gap it closes.
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New
Open a .trx file from TRAX2
A layout you downloaded from TRAX2 can be dropped straight into My Projects; the same file again replaces the copy instead of making a second one.
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New
A guide for your first layout
Open a new layout and a departure board offers a few short lines: looking around, your first track, the landscape, heights, the checks and sharing. Each station says where to look, what to click and what it gets you.
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Better
A ribbon that reads at a glance
The ribbon is redrawn in one weight and one set of icons, and Alt+Shift+T makes the whole interface half again as large.
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Better
The side panels are windows of their own
Every panel opens as a window you can drag where you want it, and more than one can stand open at a time.
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Better
Small pieces take their own click
A short piece of track can be selected again, and the arrow keys walk from piece to piece along the track you are looking at.
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Better
A layout opens as its own picture
Opening a shared layout puts you in the view its picture was taken from, instead of somewhere above the middle.
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Better
The landscape stops burying your track
Near a tunnel the ground used to climb over the plain track leading to the portal; it now rises away from the rails instead.
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Better
Old article numbers are found again
A library knows the numbers a maker used before, so a layout from years ago still finds its track.
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New
The layout checks itself
In CAD, TRAX3D checks the grade, the loading gauge, the smallest radius, the clearance under a bridge, the track spacing, whether you can reach every part of the table, reversing loops and the distance to the edge. Every sign says what it measured and what to do.
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New
Every layout keeps its history
The server keeps older versions of your layout: go back to how it was yesterday, or last week, with its own picture beside it.
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Better
Raising track no longer makes steps
Changing the height of a piece follows the grade round a loop and meets its neighbours again, instead of leaving a step in the rails.
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New
Bring your TRAX2 layouts along
Fetch the layouts from your old traxeditor.com account in one step; they open in 3D and keep their name.
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New
Two looks: realistic and CAD
The same layout as a lit world with shadows and wind, or as a clean drawing with outlines, labels and a grid.
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New
Water
Lakes, seas, rivers and canals, with waves that ride the surface, a current that carries its ripples, foam at the shore and bank protection on a canal.
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New
Roads, fences, hedges and walls
One line tool for all four: a road with its middle line, a fence with posts and rails, a hedge of foliage that rustles, and a wall that can hold back the ground.
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New
Platforms along your track
Draw a platform along a run of track: it follows the rails and the grade, takes a surface and an edge, and a side can be a ramp.
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New
Buildings and objects
Stations, sheds, houses and Western buildings, dragged from the list onto the table, plus stones, rubble and clutter to spray around them.
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New
Trees and bushes
Six species, 74 models, placed one at a time or sprayed over an area, and each one can be moved, turned and scaled on its own.
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New
Grass and flowers
Growth you plant with a brush: grass, tall grass, flowers, wheat, reed and heather, each tuft standing on the ground and bending in the wind.
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New
Ground textures
Nine layers of ground -- earth, gravel, rock, sand, snow -- painted automatically by slope and height, and by hand where you want them.
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New
The landscape builds itself
One button fills a table from the track that is on it: a cutting through a hill, an embankment across a dip, a valley under a bridge and a hill over a tunnel.
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New
Tables with real terrain
A table carries a landscape you sculpt with brushes: raise, lower, smooth, flatten, a trench, noise and a slope. One stroke is one undo step.
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New
127 track libraries
Every library carries a drawn picture of each piece, so you can see what you are laying before you drag it onto the table.
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New
A manual written for TRAX3D
Eight chapters with pictures taken from the editor itself, so what you read is what you see on your screen.
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New
The editor speaks your language
Every word in the editor is translated, so the ribbon, the panels and the messages come up in the language of your account.
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New
A new trax3d.com
The site is rebuilt from the ground up: the showcase, your own layouts, the forum, the manual and the donations, in English, Dutch and German.