Placing track

The Place tool drops one piece at a time. The piece you're about to drop is the ghost — a translucent preview centred on the cursor (you hold the middle of the piece, not its end).

The flow

Press P to activate the Place tool (or click Place in the left tool rail).
Open the catalogue dock on the left and pick a piece. Pieces are grouped into tabs — Straight, Curve, Turnout, Crossing, Slip, Flex, Ramp, Buffer stop, Accessory, Turntable — so a set's diamond crossings, double slips, end-of-track bumpers, extras (re-railers, uncouplers, transitions), and turntables each sit under their own tab. The ghost updates to match your pick.
Move the cursor over the canvas:
- If the cursor is near a free connector, the ghost snaps to it and aligns end-to-end.
- Otherwise the ghost floats centred on the cursor and respects the grid (when snap-to-grid is on).
Click to drop the piece.
Repeat. Press Esc to exit Place mode.

Sizing the dock

A single track system can carry a lot of pieces, so the catalogue dock is built to flick through rather than page one piece at a time. Cards wrap into rows and the dock scrolls vertically, so a whole system stays in reach. Drag the dock's top edge up or down to make it taller or shorter; the size is remembered per browser, so it reopens the way you left it.

Scales

The catalogue dock's scale selector lists every scale the catalogue carries — it isn't fixed to HO, OO, and N. Each entry shows the scale's ratio and rail gauge (e.g. "OO · 1:76 · 16.5 mm", with the gauge in your chosen units) so you can tell them apart at a glance. As new scales and systems are added, they show up automatically, and the editor's status bar reads each scale's real ratio (1:87, 1:76, …). The preferred-scale filter in your profile preferences draws from the same catalogue set, so you can narrow the dock to whichever scales you actually model. (Defining your own custom scale isn't possible yet — that's a planned step.)

Drag-and-drop vs click-to-place

There are two ways to place from the catalogue:

Drag-and-drop — press a catalogue card and drag it onto the board, then release. This places a single piece and drops you back to the Select tool: one piece, done.
Click-to-place — click a catalogue card, then click the board. Place mode stays armed, so you can keep clicking to drop more of the same piece; press Esc to stop.

Laying a run (insert many)

To lay several of the same piece at once, press and drag instead of clicking. With the Place tool armed and a straight or curve picked, hold the mouse down and drag across the canvas. Each piece previews as a ghost that snaps onto the one before it — exactly the way a piece snaps onto real track when you drop it by hand — so every ghost becomes the anchor for the next. Drag further out to add pieces; pull the cursor back to remove them. Straights make a line; curves make an arc that bends toward where you drag, and the chain's open end shows a green connector dot so you can see where the next piece will attach.

From an existing endpoint — press near a free connector and the run continues that track in its own direction.
From empty space — the run starts where you pressed, keeping the piece's previewed (flat) orientation; it extends along that orientation toward the cursor. A straight stays straight rather than swinging to the angle you drag.

If the run reaches an existing piece it isn't joining, it stops there: the colliding piece previews red and nothing past it is laid, so a run can't be dragged across track that's already down. Back the cursor off and the run shortens to the last clear piece.

Let go to drop the whole run; it's a single undo step (Ctrl/Cmd+Z removes all of it). A plain click — or a drag shorter than half a piece — still places just one. Turnouts, crossings, flex, and ramps stay one-per-click.

Snapping to existing pieces

When you hover near a free connector, the ghost rotates so its first connector mates with the target. Two connectors mate when they face each other (their headings differ by exactly 180°) and their connector_type strings match. That's why a Hornby Setrack piece won't snap onto a Jouef piece — you need a transition piece in between.

If the ghost won't snap where you expect:

Different connector type. The two pieces aren't in the same track system. Check the catalogue dock — the compatibility hint shows which pieces will join.
Wrong end facing the cursor. Press Shift+F to mirror-flip the ghost; the other end of the piece becomes the leading edge.
Auto-flip is off. The auto-flip toggle in the top bar makes the ghost pick the friendlier hand based on which side of the cursor the connector is on.

When the ghost turns red

A red ghost means the piece can't be dropped where it sits, and clicking does nothing. A hint at the bottom of the canvas spells out why — today that's "Overlaps an existing piece" when the piece would land on top of another it isn't joining. Move the cursor until the ghost goes back to its normal colour, then click. (Snapping a connector onto the piece you're overlapping is fine — joined pieces are meant to touch.)

Mirror-flipping

Curves and turnouts read as left-hand or right-hand depending on orientation. Shift+F flips the selected piece (or the ghost, if Place is active) across its local X axis. Straights are symmetric, so the flip is a no-op visually.