TS 2017 ROUTE BUILDING #2 - Railworks Folder Hierarchy

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TS 2017 ROUTE BUILDING #2 - Railworks Folder Hierarchy


Most often, the Railworks installation directory is located in C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam Apps\Common\Railworks. Yours may differ somewhat, depending on your computer configuration.

Within the Railworks root folder (also called a parent folder) you will find a number of other folders. The only ones we need concern ourselves with are the Assets, Content, Dem, and Source folders.


ASSETS
Within the Assets folder you will find the folders of all the Providers to your installation. Inside the Provider folders are the Products supplied by that Provider. Within the Products folder are all the files and folders pertaining to the assets of that particular product. A inside of a typical Product folder might look something like this:
  • Audio
  • Environment
  • PreLoad
  • RailNetwork
  • RailVehicles
  • RouteMarkers
  • Scenery
  • Stations
  • TemplateRoutes
  • TimeOfDay
  • Weather

You will also find in there, a file called Blueprints.pak. This file is created by Railworks and it refers to the cache that is removed by the Clear Cache button in the Settings/Tools menu. Railworks will write a new cache when the assets are first accessed again.


Some Product folders will not contain any folders at all, but rather they will have a singular file with the .ap extension. This is a compressed file extension used by Railworks in order to keep file sizes down to a minimum. To extract the contents of an .ap file simply change the file extension from .ap to .zip. You can then unzip it using your conventional zip programs.

CONTENT
This folder contains another folder called Routes, along with some other cache files. We are interested in the folder called Routes. Within the Routes folder are all the routes available in your TS installation. They are identified by a string of letters and numerals assigned to the route upon its initial creation in the route editor. These identifiers must not be altered in any way! Your route will be assigned its own unique identifier when the route is initially created in the route editor. The identifier is not configurable.



DEM
As previously mentioned, the Dem folder contains only the SRTM data for the route. Once your .hgt files for the route are stored in this folder you need never look at it again, figuratively speaking.

SOURCE
This folder is used by those who are creating their own assets. It is within this folder structure that files relating to models, textures, and exports to the Blueprint Editor are stored. I will not be going into any detail on this folder as it is not applicable to the creation of routes for Freeware Distribution or Personal Use.

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