The 'era specific' function is a simple method for altering scenery to reflect the changes that took place between the 1950s and the 1960/70s onwards.
NB – the location of the era specific base assets has changed – they are now under ‘Manuals’ as this allows me to package them in the .rwp.
The function works by having parallel copies of some key scenery .bin files in four folders (under the ‘Railworks\Manuals\Era Specific’ folder). These are mostly prefixed ‘ZZ’ and placed in the ‘misc’ assets group to make them easy to find and apply during editing. Each cloned .bin file points at a different .geopcdx file which means that when rendered in the game they come up as different objects in the same location. It means that I can have a single blade of grass in the 1950s version that becomes a huge concrete building in the 1960s version (or vice versa).
To operate the function there are four simple batch files (‘Set-Era-to-1930.bat’, ‘Set-Era-to-1950.bat’, ‘Set-Era-to-1960.bat’ and ‘Set-Era-to-1970.bat’) in the root folder of 'Manuals\Era specific'. To set the scenery for one period or the other you just run the relevant .bat – you don’t need to come out of Railworks – just come out of the route to make the change.
The manual (installed in the Manuals\EN folder as 'Cambridge Lines and the ECML.docx') has more information on this functionality.