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These kits let you draw pictures of your own layouts and trains. You can use them however you like, print them out, use them as screen backgrounds, design your own layouts. Please read the Terms and Conditions below.
I have completed Version 2.0 of the Train Depot Track Designer for Windows 95. If you want to draw layouts then you won't want to mess with these track kits, Track Designer makes it ten times easier!
Would you like to make a drawings of your own layout designs? I have put together these track kits for the various types of LEGO® railway. There are plans for the buildings for the 9V system including some of the structures that come with train sets. There is one system that I haven't included, the blue rails with the 12V conducting centre rails. I don't know how popular this was, I've never seen them.
To download the kit you want just click on one of the pictures in the table below. When your browser has downloaded it, you can save it to disk. With Microsoft Internet Explorer you can just right click on it and save it as a bitmap (BMP) file. With Netscape Navigator you have to save it as a GIF file and then use a program that converts GIF files to BMP files.
| System | Parts Kit | Preassembled Kit | Building Plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.5V (Blue) |  |  | Not Available |
| 4.5V (Grey) |  |  | Not Available |
| 9V |  |  |  |
| 12V (Grey) |  |  | Not Available |
I use Microsoft Paintbrush from Windows 95 to put together my track plans. All the bitmaps have a white background, which is the default transparent colour in Paintbrush. This makes it easy to cut and paste them together.
I'm sure there are some more advanced paint packages out there that you might prefer, some allow you to define bitmap objects that you can click and drag. Also, Paintbrush cannot rotate by other than 90° so if you need the buildings at strange angles you will need a more advanced package.
The 9V track pieces are designed to overlap by 1 pixel, don't simply butt them together otherwise you'll have problems with alignment. The other systems (4.5V and 12V) are designed to overlap by a whole sleeper.
To make it easier to put together layouts, I've supplied some drawings of preassembled sections of track. This is especially useful for curves, since it's a bit fiddly joining all the curved pieces together, and not immediately obvious exactly how they should overlap. Don't use the pictures from the track plans I've drawn as preassembled sections. I've made some corrections since I drew them and they're not strictly compatible with these kits.
If you build complex layouts with track at different angles you may find that you have alignment problems even though you've followed my rules above. This is because of rounding errors. A straight is 32 pixels long when at 0°, but it's 22.627 x 22.627 pixels at 45°. If this happens you will need to use your paint package to make slight adjustments.
So far I have only completed the train kit for the 9V system. It has side views of all of the 9V train series.
Here is a kit of bird's eye views of some of the trains. These were done by Thomas Burger, I haven't tried them yet but they look compatible with my track kits. If you want to tell Thomas how cool they are email him at ber00439@berk.com.
