Line news July, 2006

• <31-Jul-2006>: Catching up:

• Australian Add-ons for MSTS has a range of 300 and 400 Redhen diesel railcars with destination boards - they'll fit in perfectly on the South Australia - Adelaide and Hills route: AU_sarRedhen_a_MSTS1_Setup.exe (14.9Mb, 27-Jul-06). Download from their own page.
• web•TrainSim's RE6 (Westfalen Express) Dusseldorf to Dortmund activity is ready for you to try. More traffic needs to be added to keep us on our toes during the last half-hour of the activity so that'll be done as soon as time allows.
• The RE6 Dortmund to Dusseldorf activity is yet to be tested and hopefully it will be available soon.

• <26-Jul-2006>: The editor has had words with web•TrainSim about not posting what's been happening so he's putting pen to paper, fingers to the keyboard, steel to steel, foot to the pedal, and so on.

• web•TrainSim noticed that Trenomania.it has version 2.2 of the ValTrenomaniaAV route (242Mb, 09-Jul-2006).
• A driver-familarisation version of the Evening IC (RE1) service, Dortmund to Koln activity is ready for you to try. It's web•TrainSim's fifth test version so you can see how much fun he's been having<G>. As with another couple of activities, he decided to try to be different and constructed driver/player paths that weren't as straightforward as in early activities (this idea came from an article he saw in a train magazine last year which reported that 4,000 new paths were being asked for during the World Cup). After some loud crunches (web•TrainSim's pleasant word when MSTS freezes and/or crashes. Ed.), the driver consist was changed, some services were removed (one should never have been used since its path crossed other traffic paths (Ahem. Didn't web•TrainSim write a rule about that a while back? Ed.), and awful frame rates in winter rain, everything finally worked. Now all that's left is to put in some more traffic at the end of the activity to keep us on our toes. In the end, things worked out much as web•TrainSim was hoping when traffic is heavy and the driver train has to swap between the slow and fast tracks.
• As soon as there's a spare minute, web•TrainSim will pack and upload another driver-familarisation activity, RE6 Dusseldorf to Dortmund.

• <09-Jul-2006>: web•TrainSim is around, still battling the Activity Editor and MSTS' AI traffic manager.

• He noticed a couple of interesting models at Train-sim.com: Peter Harvey's U.K. War Department 2-10-0 No. 90775 in British Railways Black, wd90775.zip (2.2Mb, 03-Jul-06), and Alain Noel's model of the 1804 Trevithick Locomotive, trevithc.zip (3.3Mb, 29-Jun-06). Here are some results for a search on the Trevithick Locomotive.
• There are three activities currently being tested (of course web•TrainSim has used his own advice, posted below in three instalments): RE6 Dusseldorf to Dortmund, RE6 Dortmund to Dusseldorf and IC (RE1) Dortmund to Koln. The first of these activities, because it starts at Dusseldorf, needs some traffic removed and/or changed since Dusseldorf puts such a heavy load on the graphics engine. All three activities have driver paths that incorporate changing between the slow and fast tracks and mixing with slow traffic. Given time, we'll get there.

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• Email me at info@webDotTrainsim.com if you have questions or comments. I'll try to answer as best I can. Certainly post me if any step-by-step instructions on various how-to pages need clarification.