Validating against your trains

Beyond the green / yellow / red join signal, the planner runs loco-aware checks — does every curve clear your locomotives' minimum radius, and does the track have enough side-to-side and overhead clearance for your rolling stock? These checks need to know which train to measure against, and that's where your collection comes in.

Loco-aware checks (minimum radius and clearance) are a Pro capability. Without Pro the basic checks — closure, overlap, tight-curve, baseboard bounds — still run; the train-dependent ones stay switched off.

Validate against my trains

If you've marked trains as owned in the encyclopedia, the Validation panel in the Inspector offers a Validate against my trains toggle. It's on by default. When it's on, the planner validates the layout against the strictest of your owned trains that match the layout's scale:

• The tightest minimum radius of any owned loco — so a curve that's fine for a short shunter but too sharp for your big express is flagged.
• The widest and tallest clearance envelope across your stock.

The panel shows a one-line summary of what it resolved to, e.g. Strictest of 3 owned trains · min radius 438 mm, so you always know what's being checked. Only trains matching the layout's scale are considered; a blank layout (no scale yet) considers your whole collection.

If you created the layout with build for my trains, validation is narrowed further — to exactly the trains you picked, rather than everything you own in that scale. (Sell one of those trains and it simply drops out of the check.)

Grade checks

The same reference train drives a grade check: a ramp (or any graded piece) that climbs steeper than your trains can pull is flagged red. The limit is the strictest max grade across the trains being validated — so a 3% ramp might be fine for a light railcar but flagged for a heavy loco that tops out at 2.5%. The check is train-relative, not a fixed percentage: change which trains you validate against and the same layout can pass or warn. A piece exactly at the limit is fine; only steeper pieces are flagged.

Grade checks need a reference train, just like min-radius and clearance — without one, the check is skipped.

Seeing problems on the canvas

These checks don't just fill the issues list — the offending pieces are marked on the canvas too, in both the 2D editor and the 3D view, so you can spot trouble without cross-referencing the panel. A piece that fails a check — too steep for your trains, fouling another track, or a curve below your minimum radius — is tinted a loud red. A piece that only trips a warning, such as a tight overpass that clears but leaves your tallest stock little headroom, shows the same amber as a piece hanging off the baseboard. The tints read straight off the issues the panel lists, so the canvas and the panel never disagree. Selecting a piece still highlights it over any tint, so you never lose track of what you've picked.

Picking a specific train instead

Turn the toggle off — or if you own no trains in the layout's scale — and the Train picker returns. Choose any reference profile to validate against, independent of what you own. This is handy for "will this plan work for a train I'm thinking of buying?".

What counts as owned

The trains here come from your encyclopedia collection, which syncs to your account and follows you between layouts and devices — the same collection that powers owned-track pricing in the bill of materials.