RR track program for MACS

Rail modeller is a mac program
see railmodeller.com for free sample program without save and print options.

John,

I run RRTrack on my iMac or Macbook with VM fusion.

Thanks guys for the tips.
John

John-

If you want to use RR track software you have the option with the mac to use a program called parallels, which allows running windows aps under the mac as a task (rather then boot camp, that boots the mac as a windows pc, this runs under the mac os).You would need to install a copy of windows once parallels is in place, but it does work. For apps where there is no native mac version, that is a way to run it. Most programs will run fine under parallels/windows on the mac, can't guarantee rr track would be one of them but it should be ok.

http://www.railmodeller.com/

I "third" the railmodeller suggestion...when I was first starting on a layout design, I used the trail version to experiment. The interface is really easy to use, and the results are great!

Ed

Railmodeller is a super program and rediculously easy to use... but, last I checked, they did not have a scaletrax library and their Ross library lacks some very important switches(#4, #6, 11 degree Y, all curved switches).

I bought a cheap second-hand Windows XP laptop just to run RR-Track. I prefer not clutzing up my Mac with Parallels and Windows and all that stuff. For the price of a Williams engine you can have a dedicated layout design computer!
Bob A.

I am not impressed with Railmodeler. I have run the Demo and it is okay. The RR Track printouts I have seen on the layout forum look better.

I have VM Ware on my mac with Windows 7, I really have got away from all windows based software in the last 2 years and have no desire to go back. I have an older Dell Laptop laying around, so now I just have to convince myself to spend the money on the software.

Railmodeler just got updated. They reworked how grades are done.

Empire Express by Haddon Software is a Mac based layout design program. I have used extensively to design several layouts including my 3 rail layout. It is a good program.

I am using an earlier version that has a limited track library. I used the Atlas 2-rail library to design my Atlas 3-rail layout. It wasn't perfect but it was close enough. I just checked. They have a full Lionel track library including Fastrack.

I do recommend this software for Mac users. You can do accurate benchwork, building design, etc., and the Atlas track design is close enough. The G&O Outdoor Railroad was designed with this software.

Here is a link: Empire Express

Joe

Uggh John, it was bad enough with your Scrapple fixation, now MACs? Gads!

LOL, hope you've been doing well back there in Georgia old friend.

I used rrtrack and it worked well.

sorry I made a mistake , I used railmodeler for mac and it worked well.

To the MAC users out there... there is a free windows emulator that runs windows program without having to install a virtual machine (vm). It is called WINE.

Here is a very good tutorial:

 

http://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/

 

You should be able to just run RR Track with this.

That's an interesting application shell. I've been considering a MAC for the past couple of years. The Windows issue was the wrinkle since there are a few Windows-only applications I need to use (RR-Track being one of them.) Of course, since I'm a Windows Administrator at the office, I'd have to keep the MAC in the closet.

 

BTW Pignatelli, we miss you out here at AGHR. We're short of Pennsy motive power.

 

I too have left most Windows programs in the dust in favor of their Mac counterparts.  But for the small handful of Windows programs that I need to reach for once in awhile, I'm running Parallels with Windows 7 on a new Mac Mini.  And RR-Track runs just fine there.  Life is good! 

 

David

Just a tip for power-users with Macs -- Parallels and VMWare Fusion both work great for running a virtual "Windows PC inside your MAC" especially if you make the Windows installation just a virtual machine. This is perfect for running RR-Track and similar programs.

 

Macs also have a feature called BootCamp that lets you put a full Windows installation on a partition on your hard drive, and it allows you to boot up the machine exclusively in Windows, and switch back and forth between MacOS and Windows when you reboot. This is great if you need to run software that needs full access to things like video and audio hardware acceleration, which can't be done in a virtual machine. I use this for V-scale model railroading with Microsoft Train Simulator, for instance.

 

The tricky bit is that both Parallels and VMWare Fusion both have a feature that lets you load your BootCamp partition while the MacOS is running, as if it were a virtual machine. It works very well, but I discovered it loads a surprisingly large layer of drivers in each operating system to make it work so seamlessly. Enough that it affects the performance of the Windows installation, even when you boot it up all by itself. The drivers still load and take up memory, which wasn't the best thing for my V-scale setup.

 

So, if you use these virtualization systems along with Boot Camp, I'd recommend not installing the BootCamp integration features unless you only use Windows for simpler programs like RR-Track and business/office software. The drawback is that you'll have two Windows installs -- one in a virtual machine on the Mac side, and the other a "real" installation on a bootable partition, and different copies of files stored on each. If you use one bootable Windows installation only, you'll have to reboot each time you want to use it. In this configuration, MacOS and Windows can ready each other's files, but can't write to each other. You can "pull" files into your booted OS, but not "push" them into the one that's not running. If you use the integration feature, you can move files back and forth more easily, and have the option of booting Windows or running it in a virtual machine window, but you lose some Windows performance because of the extra software overhead.

 

WINE is nice because it lets you run Windows applications without any Windows installation at all -- Which means no need to buy a Windows disk and/or software license. The only issue is that WINE, at least in the past, needed a configuration for each application you run (Called a WINE "bottle" -- cute, eh?) that has to be set up. There were preconfigured "bottles" for lots of popular applications, but sometimes you had to build one from scratch for an obscure program. Not fun unless you're comfortable with software and Windows configuration. Does anyone know if there's a preconfigured "bottle" for RR-track, or a generic one that's sufficient, or if WINE can figure out the configuration for itself well enough now?

EricF,

Last time I tried WINE there was no preconfigured "bottle" for RR-Track.

I use Parallels on my iMac.   The new version of Parallels has a number of improvements, the biggest of which is taking advantage of the latest Lion OS.   I have found that any sluggishness went away after upgrading my parallels.

Here's a screen shot of RR Track on my Mac.   I was also working on a text doc at the same time.  I actually have a dual monitor setup, but dragged them together for the screen shot.