Loading Products by John Whelan

Loadable products are new to TRS2004 and TRS2006. They actually can be used in a number of ways. The first way is the way that we use to load a van body onto a generic conflat to make a UK van. A second way is to modify the config.txt file to allow an invisible load to be carried, an example of this is that TrainzObjectz will modify coaches to carry invisible passengers. The third way is to allow a visible load to be transported such as coal in a coal wagon.

To go beyond this and have farms producing products that get carried by rail wagons, vans, and boats then get consumed by bakeries etc. we to need ensure that the grain produced by the farms is recognized as grain by the wagons and factories. As far as Trainz is concerned each different kuid of type product means a totally different product which means it must be added to each config.txt for the farm, wagon and factory.

LARS, LARS2 and ProtoLARS were created to address many of these problems and bring some order into products. For more details visit trainzproroutes forumwhere there is a dedicated part of the forum and tutorials that explain how it works.

For many users all they need to know is that LARS means they can produce, carry and consume products without worrying too much about how it works. However visible bulk loads, such as coal, scrap iron are interesting in that they use the same mesh created by the wagon creator and just apply a texture. Thus for some wagons all these loads are flat and for other wagons all these loads are slightly heaped. If the wagon is partially filled then the load appears at a lower level. To check if a wagon is loaded you can use "" on the wagon to see the quantity of the load. If the amount is very small the visible bulk load does not appear.

Many of the reskins on this site, especially the ones created after 1 September 2006, have been configured to carry a number of LARS products, specifically: Coal; Bauxite; Casting sand; Copper ore; Gravel, loose; Iron ore; Iron pellets; Kaolin pulver (China Clay); Kaolin slurry (China Clay); Limestone aggregate; Limestone solid; Malt; Oats; phosphate fertilizer; potash; Scrap iron; Stone, crushed; Tin ore; Wheat; Zinc ore; and Zinc sulphate. The DLS has others produced by LLJ.

The down side of this is that you may find your colliery wagons picking up China Clay, if this does happen and you wish to stop it you can just remove the China Clay kuids from the acceptable loads for the wagon. Conversely if you wish to load something else add in the appropriate kuid in the config.txt file or you can change the acceptable loads in Surveyor.

It's recommended that you down load "LARS2 Basic Industry Pack" from the DLS, search for "BI2 fuel" Basic Industry Fuel and use the BI2 fuel for loading and unloading coal etc. BI2 General should be used for scrap metal. These are found under buildings in Surveyor.

To get a better idea of how they work I recommend reading through this tutorial, if you are route building then you really should read through it:

trainz proroutes tutorial

Also available here:

World of Trainz Tutorial

Note that specific products are loaded at industry tracks, and there are a number of these available, besides a kit on Trainzproroutes to create new ones.