5 Tips to Make your Railways look SO much better in Cities: Skylines | No Mods

Today I show you how you can improve your railway system with 5 simple tricks in Cities: Skylines

1. Gentle Slopes
2. Better Bridges
3. Embankments instead of endless Bridges
4. Cool Railway Junctions
5. Detailing

#citiesskylines #railway #vanilla

[williamhuang]

Calculating percentage slope grade.
3m every 12u or 96m is 0.03125 or 3.125%, already pushing it (but it's pretty good for vanilla)
3m every 10u or 80m is 0.0375 or 3.75%, nearing the limit for your average (loco-haul) train (4% is the recommended maximum but multiple units could probably do better)
3m every 8u or 64m is 0.046875 or 4.6875%. Probably fine for multiple units but you're pushing it.
3m every 6u or 48m is 0.0625 or 6.25%. This is beginning to get steep even for multiple units, though there are some railways which go past this, but they are rare.\
For the lols, your average vanilla train track is 9m every 6-12u or 48 to 96m, or 0.1875 to 0.09375 (18.75 to 9.375%, steep to the point of being absolutely frivolous).
In general try to keep your grades below 4% (3m every 75m or ~9.5u) for loco-haul lines, 8% (3m every 37.5m or ~4.5u) for multiple unit lines. Try to get slopes as low as the terrain allows. For instance, I have a few 6% or even 10% slope lines which go up challenging terrain.
If you're building an earthen embankment, when the contour lines start fading together, the slope has reached a grade of approximately 2% or 3m every 150m (~19u)
And with the rail junctions, not only do they look nice, they are also crucial for very high traffic lines.

[ryguy]

I like these tips already, and I do in fact have some more:
- Avoid tunnels whenever practical
They're just as costly as bridges and look kind of bland...
- Leave space for trains to queue between junctions
Junctions in rapid succession are more susceptible to jamming.

[RustyWalker]

One more thing:
when road and rail are both being built new, the height for one to cross the other can be split between them, with one being sunk and the other raised. relative to the terrain The material cut out for lowering one into a trench serves as the material to build the embankment for the other.

[rbasket]

Hello everyone, very good video, congratulations to Imperatur, but I would like to put, that for me should be #1 Tip for realistic railways:

Railways in real life are build with just two shapes, very large straight (as much as terrain allows) and big curves (but not that big neither). So if you want to create a realistic railway lane, you should first build the big straight sectors and then connect them with the curves tool. Do not use the Bézier (Spline) option as everyone tend to use (I always used that, but real railways arent like that, now I use this strategy).

As roads, but even more in this case, try to follow topography while designing the paths. Try to avoid slopes and build them if necessary like Imperatur showed.

And the last part of the TIP around designing: ALWAYS design railways with preference over roads, always. If you want an organic looking city, railways will be always the ones that kinda makes the shape of the rest of infrastructure. Think about this, train is more than twice older transportation than cars, railways have been there much more time than roads and highway. So build of prethink railways and then adapt roads to them, because thats how cities growed over the last 2 centuries.

Check any European town/citie (easier to see in medium towns) to see what I mean. Railways are the number 2 in hierarachy, after historic center. And they always try to make them straight as possible.

[terrellrogers]

Here is an idea also for fencing, if you make rail junctions in a more dense urban neighborhood, I use the airport fence, I’ve been utilizing that for a few of my inner city areas and seaport areas in game on PS4

[DW_]

Actually, for HST you want the flattest possible ramp as well since they use continuous welded ballalestless rails

[Albert_Dudkin]

It is better to raise or lower highways, because highways can be built with a 4-6% slope, while railways can only be built with a 2% slope.

[RobBossOne]

These tips are great! Even though I often am aware of these simple intersection problems, I tend to avoid these practical solutions for the sake of saving time. Seeing how easily they can be setup in almost the same amount of time is inspirational.

[twocflyer]

Great tips as always! I don't really play vanilla, but I still love your tips and tricks as they still usually apply. and they are always informative, smart, funny and pleasant to watch!!!

[LeeHawkinsPhoto]

Preach it, brother!

Everything looks more realistic when it’s properly sloped 😊

[maxx]

One of the best landscape artists for CS.
I've learned so much from imperatur.

Soft setting and small tool tip for landscaping goes a long way.
Decorations bring an area alive...

[yearsout]

Dang it, great ideas as always, off to restart my city build for the 10, 245th time.

[IceDree]

Neat!

The one way trick is very helpful.

[adisetyadi]

one thing that i haven't really done much are using slopes to make bridges. I only discovered how beautiful it is recently when i was making on/off ramp for my elevated highway.

this video definitely inspires me to make more use of slopes! nice video!

[tgfcj]

The gentle sloped bridges can be made into an enbankment. Just add dirt underneath them and use the road converter (the !) to change the roads to their ground level versions.

[jamesnotfound]

Okay the first part of this video was tooo funny 🤣🤣🤣🤣 thank you for helping us vanilla builders out there!

[christianluis]

Wow this is really helpful! It makes me want to make a train line in my city even though I just have 10, 000 inhabitants lol, Thx so much

[paquettemd]

This was very helpful for my huge city build I’ve learned a lot of tips form you #1 best YouTuber of city skylines

[yuwuhaotai]

Just noticed that the transitions of each tips by using Berlin S-Bahn system :3

[mariusmark]

Wow you blew me out of the water again!! This is beautiful detailing especially in vanilla, and coming from Berlin this vid just hit right home :) Will definitely apply this in my vanilla build! Kudos <3