Real Track Cant

Real Track Cant brings real superelevation to Transport Fever 3. Every railway track can now bank in its curves, exactly like a real line: the outer rail rises, the transitions curve in smoothly, and the trains lean with the track. And because cant is real physics, it is not just for the eyes: on a canted curve, trains are allowed to run faster.

What it adds to the base game

In the base game, every track stays perfectly flat, even in the tightest curve at 300 km/h. Real Track Cant adds a Cant setting (No / Yes) to the construction menu of every track: base game, DLC and tracks from other mods, with nothing to configure.

• Banked curves: the track tilts around its inner rail, the outer rail is raised, rails, sleepers and ballast follow the cant piece by piece.
• Realistic cant: worked out from the speed of the line and the radius of each curve, like on a real railway, from 60 mm on slow lines up to 200 mm on high-speed lines.
• Smooth transitions: the cant builds up and fades out along S-shaped transitions, longer on faster lines.
• Everything on rails leans with the track: locomotives, coaches, wagons, articulated multiple units, tilting trains, trams and tram-trains, from the base game or from mods, bogies included, roll exactly with the rail under them, keeping all their own animations.
• Faster curves: cant compensates part of the centrifugal force, so the speed allowed in a curve goes up, typically by 10 to 17 %.
• Each track keeps its own look: its own rails and sleepers, and its own ballast for the base game, French Tracks and any track mod that provides banked ballast pieces (other mods get the base game ballast), without modifying any file of the game or of other mods. The original catenary is kept.

How to use it

1. Open the track menu and pick any track.
2. Set Cant to Yes in the toolbar. The choice stays when you switch to another track.
3. Build as usual. While you draw, you see the normal track, perfectly aligned with the tracks already in place. As soon as you stop, the curves bank on their own.

With the upgrade tool and Cant set to Yes, you can also give cant to tracks that are already built; set to No, the tool turns them back into normal tracks.

Everything is automatic

• Straight lines stay the normal track: only the parts that really bank are redrawn.
• Switches and stations stay flat: segments touching a switch go back to flat automatically, and station tracks are never canted. When the switch is removed, the line banks again.
• Bulldozer: one click removes the whole segment, exactly like a normal track.
• Electrification: the electrification tool, catenary portals shared by parallel tracks and electric trains all work as on normal tracks.
• No extra cost: you only pay for the track you build.
• Ground and weather: the ballast keeps the ground texture of the track, no grass grows through it, and it takes snow like the normal ballast (works with Just More Weather).

The physics behind it

In a curve of radius R, a train at speed V needs a centripetal acceleration of V²/R. Canting the track lets gravity provide part of it. The equilibrium cant, the one that would cancel the lateral force completely, is 11.8 × V² / R (cant in mm, V in km/h, R in m).

• Cant laid: 80 % of the equilibrium cant for the line speed, capped at 40 + 0.46 × V mm (between 60 and 200 mm). For example 114 mm at 160 km/h, 141 mm at 220 km/h, 187 mm at 320 km/h.
• Transitions: about 1.2 × V metres long (between 40 and 240 m), in a smooth S.
• Speed in curves: the game limits the speed in a curve with its own formula, which we take as the speed without cant. The cant adds exactly the lateral acceleration it compensates (g × D / 1.5 m): V = √(V₀² + R·g·D/e). Tilting trains keep their own advantage on top of it.
• The line speed stays the limit, as on a real railway: cant raises the speed allowed in curves, it never lets a train go faster than the line.

Compatibility

• Works with every track of the base game, the DLC and other mods.
• Made to go with French Tracks (Voies Françaises), which provides its own banked ballasts.
• Track mod authors can provide banked ballast pieces (their_mod::/devers/ballast/<ballast material name>_v0.mdl, _v1…) and non-selectable copies of their rails and sleepers (their_mod::/devers/nosel/…), see the mod's files.
• Can be added to an existing game. Do not remove it from a game in which canted tracks have been built: those tracks need the mod.

Languages

English, French, German and Spanish.