How to contribute

Traffic - the 20 years old Windows program - is built around 2 main data sets:

• the list of the drawings (vehicle pictures, commonly used picture parts, animation phase pictures as moving wheels of steam engines, pantographs, doors, connections between vehicles at least in their both end positions and background elements - landscape, buildings, vegetation)
• the instructions, how to build trains from single vehicles, how to build backgrounds from the background elements and what to do with them - how to move them on the screen: how to build single scenes, and how to organize - to group, and to line up the scenes.

This WTraffic and Picture Collection site is also built around these two data sets. The server reads the Stock list file (in .stb format, but that is not essential) and the Timetable Files - exactly the same files Traffic is using.

Extending, correcting the drawing set and the trains, scenes are made on the home computer, in the Traffic program.

Of course, it would be technically possible for the users to upload the images into the Stock List, and to edit the timetable files themselves. But to implement the direct upload into the stock list is not planned in the near future, neither the usage of a source control system for the timetable files.

I find it more important, that for everybody it's possible to use their own pictures and to let run their own timetable fragments to create and test new scenes.

We have several hundred thousand pictures already. Do we really need more new pictures ?

Yes, sure. Of course not the sixth drawing of a german 'Silberling' in era 4 in the scale of 1 pixel = 10 cm. What about some freight cars from the 19th century? Steam engines from the beginnings of the railways ? Or anything from Africa, South-America, South-Asia ? Or the newest advertising livery of a private train operator, presented only yesterday? Or drawings in double size 1 pixel = 5cm ?

If you are new in this field, do not start with an animated steam engine, your first target should be something simpler.

To draw a vehicle, you not only need to play with the pixels. An even more complicated task is to get enough information about your target. Sometimes the research to get blueprints - or at least to find authentic data of the main measures and a good side view photo -, to get to know the approximate color of a vehicle scrapped a century ago is more difficult, consumes more time, then the actual drawing. A single black-and-white photo from an oblique angle is not enough to create an accurate, high quality drawing. And yes, an accurate, high quality drawing is the best to have. But what to do, when that is impossible ? If there is no chance to get more information in acceptable time. Is an approximate drawing better, as no drawing at all ? The opinions differ. I think: if there is no good drawing about the vehicle, an approximate one is better, as nothing, if it substantially differs from the other, already drawn vehicles. But one should do the homework: to check the internet - Google is your friend - and to try to determine the main dimensions. If a window is a few pixels away from it's correct position is forgivable. If a 20 m long vehicle is drawn as a 26.4 m one, or vica versa, the drawing has more or less doors or windows as the model, a pantograph is missing or is 1-2 more there, than rather wait until you have more accurate information about the vehicle.

In the old times the most railway companies used standardized colors, having already a vehicle from that company, that time simplifies the choosing of colors.

The actual times present different challenges. At last the separated 'small kingdoms' of the state railways in Europe broke up, The technically same locomotive type runs with dozens or hundreds different liveries at several railway companies in numerous countries.

Copyright, using existing pixtures for new drawings

Our small drawings - especially single ones - are probably no targets for processes in the courtroom, nevertheless preserving a good mood among all artists with this hobby is the best way. If everybody is satisfied, nobody will leave the hobby because of frustration.

Follow the rules here:

Try to reach out for the original outhor.

If he answers, accept his decision.

If you cannot get in touch with him/her, but he is still active, publishing drawings somewhere ( on private homepage / on a collection site / in the social media ), then let it be, don't use the drawings.

If it seems he/she abandoned the hobby, does not publish drawings any more, then use them, but give credit for the source. Of course, if you find somewhere explicit copyright instructions, then follow them, until they become really old ( 5 - 10 years) without any activity from the author's side.

And how to publish it ?

As described above, there is no direct way for you to put the drawings yourself on the site. Registering and logging into the site won't help either - logged in users can perhaps edit accompaniing information, but at the moment nobody (not even the webmaster) can add new vehicles or update existing drawings directly on the server. This editing happens offline, using the good old Traffic screensaver, and the .stb Stock List file together with the changed .tvl files are uploaded to the server.

You have the following possibilities:

• To contact me by e-mail, and send me the drawings directly. They will be published at the next update - usually within 1-2 weeks, maximal a month. * You can send individual files, you can choose among several file formats - for example: GIF, BMP, PNG, TIFF, PSD, WEBP. Do not use file formats with lossy compression, the JPG format is a nightmare for line drawings and carefully created pixel drawings. Similarly, using the WEBP format one have to choose lossless compression.
• If you are a Traffic user - you have installed it, and you are familiar with it, how to insert new pictures into it, then you can create a small *.stk and *.tvl file by the Export selected ... menu entry of the stock list window, choosing the Create TVL selection of the Pictures tab. This is the preferred format, if you have created pantograph, door animations, additional random window pictures or other fancy effects too. In this cases you probably want to see the result anyway, so it is definitely worth adding your new drawings to your own Traffic's picture set first.
• If you are not familiar with Traffic, but you are/were using another similar screensaver, as MM&MM, Bahnland, Railway32, Trains or the javascript packages Opaku's TranKit or a TrainGif set, than you can send me your new pictures in their formats too. They differ in how transparency is indicated, and how the position-dependent animations (the wheels of a steam engine, the rods of older diesel and electric engines, the spoked wheels of the carrieges) represented. If you test your drawings in their 'home' screensaver, they surely will be correct in Traffic true, when I include them in the picture collection.

• To publish your drawings on Bahnschranke . The name is german, means railway barrier. Bahnschranke is both a publishing possibility for the screensaver vehicle drawings (preferable in the scale 1 pixel = 10 cm or 1 pixel = 5 cm), and a forum about the drawings and about the screensavers. It is mainly german speaking, but english speaking people are welcome too, and can write their forum posts in english, expecting english comments, answers. If you post your drawings there, they are visible and downloadable immediately for the public, and they will be collected later, and included in the picture collection of this site. There is a similar site for swiss vehicles - where the members also discuss about the drawings during the preparation, and the first drafts: MM-Forum Ch

Lots of pictures were drawn only to present them, not to run them - not to use them in animated scenes. Cars, buses, aeroplanes and even trains belong here.

The main task is to make the drawings transparent, and to remove everything not being the vehicle - name, description, author data, copyright notice. in Traffic both the pictures and the author records have general text fields, where, for example, copyright notices can be placed. Description items come preferable to the attached Technical data section of the vehicle drawing, also in text form, in order to show them on request, eventually to be able to translate the most of them automatically (as the real information in case of technical data are numbers, the titles - the names of the categories - are common for many vehicles).

If the original picture contains multiple views, place each view (right side, left side, front, back, top …) into a distinct image.

(W)Traffic aimes to use the drawings in scenes, to let them run together. Therefore we need the drawings in uniform scale. For airplanes and ships the requirement is mostly different, they usually do not travel on established routes, depending on the distance of their way on the sky or in the see they have to be small or even smaller. In usual scenes they have to be shrinked by an arbitrary factor. But even for ships - a scene about a canal - or for airplanes - rolling on the airport's runway - do exists cases, when the uniform scale is required.

But that is often not, how we find them. If the author draws them only to present them, they are often brought to a nearly uniform size instead of uniform scale - both a minibus for transporting the disabled and an articulated bus fill the same width.

Small drawings - below the Double scale, 1 pixel = 5 cm - are better not to resize, the result will loose too much quality. They either fit to one of this site's scales, or not. Above the Inch scale , 1 pixel ≈ 2.5 cm - , and especially by jpeg-compressed pictures, or if it is obvious, that the input picture is already resized, resizing them to a uniform scale does not further deteriorate the quality.

Often these pictures have white or black background - but exactly the same color is contained on the vehicle too. Even worse, if the picture is stored in a lossy format - for example, jpg . A line drawing in jpg is a nightmare: the same solid color will be dispersed to hundreds or thousands similar colors. Contours of the vehicles cannot be found easily, they are blurred.

When processing an original picture with white or back background, the best practice is to change the transparent pixels to a rarely used but garish color. The Traffic program uses the color 0xF300F3 (R=243, G=0, B=243), a brigth purple color (but not the trivial 0xFF00FF) as the background color: pixels with that color will be easily converted to transparent pixels, and are well visible, the areas already transparent inside the drawing (for example, areas between steel wires on a ship, pixels inside an open platform's lattice door) can be recognised easily, that are really white or black, or already set to transparent.

If somebody is willing to deal with the preparation, to cut out the vehicle pictures found elsewhere - on other homepages or blogposts, forums - and to make them transparent, please first contact me. If you like this job but don't have anything to start with, I have discovered already many such blogs, homepages with vehicle drawings (mostly buses, but also aeroplanes and ships). First contacting me also important to crosscheck, that only one person is working on a source, and also to discuss, to check the format of the pictures you intend to send me. It is worth to be sure, the work to do gives the correct result, the pictures can be placed into the collection and used in scenes quickly, without much additional work.

Where to place a vehicle ?

The main purpose of the collection is still that scenes can built using the pictures. Therefore, the vehicles that are most likely to be used together are near to each other. The other aspect is that it can be quickly found in the case of a new vehicle whether it has already been drawn, in order the avoid to have duplicates (to have exactly the same drawing multiple times), and to have the different versions of the same vehicle near each other.

If we have half a dozen drawings of an african railway company, they are near each other - it's simple. But what to do with european freight cars in the era 4 ? The most of them were used in multiple countries, they formed a common pool with reduced usage fees. So, several thousand freight car drawings had to be sorted. One can always find a logical scheme - but it needs a deep knowledge of the categories, numbering/designation system, usage modalities of the cars, which I do not have. (Both the european and north-american freight cars were ordered by James McDonald more, than a decade ago).

If we have a system for a given type of vehicle drawgins in a scale - (typically in the 1 pixel = 10 cm scale), the same system can be followed at the other scales, if the number of similar drawings in that scale crosses a certain limit.

There are still two different types of tasks to do.

• The number of some types of vehicles has recently increased so much that it is no longer possible to review the collection more closely. Such blocks are, for example, the polish, czech and slovak passenger coaches. If somebody knows them deeply enough - or is ready to learn about the topic - can create a new, more logical structure, for example, based on the factories, workshops, where the coaches were produced, or based on their comfort, equipment, etc.
• There were picture sources with transparent pictures almost ready to use in scenes. They are mostly without a logical name - usually the picture name is only a number after a common prefix -, but with additional information somewhere, as label before the drawings or as comments attached to the drawings. They are in small scales: Train Banner (1 pixel = 15 cm), mostly japanese trains and buses and JBSS Bahn 1x, 2x and 4x drawings, mostly european trams, trains and buses. They have to be named according to the naming convention used in most part of the collection and organized in a similar structure, as the drawings in the a pixel = 10 cm scale, creating the label tree for them. For JBSS Bahn it is enough to deal with one scale from the 3, the structure for the other 2 scales can be copied by program (but some drawings are missing from the 2x and 4x scales).

To be helpful with this tasks you have to be a user of Traffic (to have the Traffic program installed on your Windows computer), reorganize the actual stock list - to open at least two stock list windows, and with drag and drop of the selected vehicle groups, and with creating a new subtree of labels to create the new order, an than to send me either the whole stock list file ( in .stb format ) without the picture libraries (without the .tvl files) - after all, rearrangement does not involve adding new images or modifying the images.

Of course these reorganization works need a thorough discussion in advance, in order the result fits into the actual structure of the picture collection, and also technically I can take over the delivered files. If you are interested in such a work, contact me at

Yes, that is the original purpose of this whole thing built up here.

In order to have diverse but authentic trains in the scenes, the timetable is built up using two kind of train sets:

• There are $POOL collections with trains from each country or country group, with flags showing era, type (passenger/freight train), traction (steam/diesel/electric engine, multiple units), and if the described movement is a simple run through, or stopping or an even more complex operation. Simple 'run through' timetable lines can be used almost everywhere, but complex operations are limited to railway stations. Timetable lines getting their trains by a POOL= ; parameter name the $POOL, from which the train or the movement is selected, and additionally can limit the set of possible trains / movements by specifying some flags, chossing trains from a given era, with given traction type, train type and operation.
• There are several foreground/background pictures, which have their own, limited trains sets, which either also travel there in reality, or bound to the background otherwise. If multiple, similar scenes exist, they can have their common, yet dedicated $POOL-s (for example, toy trains before a toy village, or Star Trek / Babylon 5 ... starships before a starry sky).

There are many different kind of scenes already.

• The MM&MM-Style: the trains passing through before a black background. A common, simple rail and a single line as catenary serve as the environement.
• Small steps further: the trackbed and the catenaries are more real, drawn objects.
• A low photo background with vegetation, eventuel with buildings of a village or town, sometimes with a station building and other railroad objects. The background is built up randomly, the trains are selected according to the characteristics of the landscape - trains from Netherland won't run before snowy, rocky mountain peaks.
• Higher picture segments as background photo, still randomly constructed: in reality there is no railway track there.

All these scenes are imaginary scenes, the trains may be real, but the places not.

• Photos of real railway tracks, often with elements before the railway track too - trees, bridges, buildings.
• Drawn foreground and background pictures of real places - for example, different stations and tracks from the Stadtbahn Berlin, or several japanese bridges and landscapes around that bridges.

The most welcome new scenes are photos of real places - meadows, hills, mountains, bridges, etc. . The railway track should be strict horizontal - if there is a few pixel difference, you should either rotate or distort the photo by a little amount. The optimal is, when the photo was made strictly from the side, the viewing angle is 90 degrees. If there are no large depth differences, a few degrees deviation of the viewing angle from 90 degrees can be corrected too, but but large surface sides of houses or bridge piers cannot be corrected ( = removed ) frm the pictures with simple methods.

The meticulous work is the trimming of the objects in the foreground - in front of the railway track. One should either create a separate foreground picture, where all pixels being in the on the original picture are transparent. A technically better approach is to create a mask picture: a picture with only two colors, one coor denoting a pixel position in the background, the other color in the foreground. Neither a full-colored foreground picture with transparent pixels, nor the mask picture have to cover the full area of the photo, it is enough to cover the path, where the trains run: starting from the top plane of the rail to the height of the overhead line. In case of several tracks, when there are objects between the tracks too - typically a station with several tracks and platforms inbetween - the mask picture can have multiple colors, for each each plane - for each place between two adjacent tracks - a separate color.

Scenes are better tested in Traffic, or if you are a user of BahnLand, Railway32, or one of the JavaScript packages, they can be tested there too. In this case, please include the scripts of the named programs.

Sending scenes - with or without train definitions, timetable segment, possibly with new vehicle drawings for that special line, railway company - is the same as sending vehicle drawings: you can send me them directly withou prior consultation, or you can upload them to Bahnschranke, in the Other / Misc. category.