Tail Lights

Decided to add a little variety to my catalogue and make a wagon. My choice was a departmental rigid, to keep things simple, the ZUV Grampus.

 It was reasonably successful and, with the help of Ben Yates, I managed to re-skin it into a few variations.

 When I showed the WIP to the UKTS forum I received a request for a Shark ballast plough and, unable to resist a challenge, modeled the van in three colour vaiants.

While beta testing them, Ben asked if I could add tail lights, which I thought was a good idea, so started to use the one's provided by Dave Brindley, which are available through UKTS or you can add them even easier by using RWTools.

However, I wasn't very happy with them as you have to make a separate model just for the tail light and it has to be the right way round, so back to the drawing board.

I eventually came up with an answer that seems to work ok. I added an AddATex plane to the back of the model and called it "1_0128_light_fwdtail". This is the technique for adding tail lights to loco tenders. I then added a script which tells the consist to pass any messages along the consist to the end. So, when you switch the lights on, on the loco, it sends a message to switch on the tail light that travels along the consist until it reaches the last wagon, where it turns on the light!

So, I no longer need a special wagon just for the end of a consist and the light goes on and off at the same time as the loco lights. Result!

There are a couple of minor issues when doing this. The fwdtail must be modeled in the correct orientation and facing the right way when the wagon is attached to the loco.