Line news March, 2006

• <27-Mar-2006>: While web•TrainSim has been testing a couple of new activities for Wupper Express 10, new downloads have appeared at several MSTS sites. ConBuilder is now at version 2.4.5 and it can be downloaded as cbfull.zip (11.8Mb, 24-Mar-06) from Train-sim.com or as cbfull245.zip (11Mb, 21-Mar-06) from the ConBuilder page at 3DTrains. While you're close to 3DTrains, you might want to check out their new set of freeware F-units. Route Riter has also been updated - it's now at version 6.3.80, RRit6_3_80upd.zip (2.24Mb, 25-Mar-2006), and can be downloaded from its Steam4Me page. At Train-sim.com the Dorset Coast route has been repackaged into four download files (each about 55Mb) - the first file is dorset01.zip (58Mb, 23-Mar-06). Also there is a set of timetables for the South Australian Adelaide and Hills route, adel79tt.zip (1.4Mb, 26-Mar-06), two NS Pocahontas route activities, and an activity, lgvmap.zip (403kb, 26-Mar-06), for the LGV Med route. web•TrainSim's new activities are RB40 Essen to Hagen and RE16 Hagen to Essen, two shorter activities that will nicely fill in some spare time before you're called to the table for the next meal.

• <19-Mar-2006>: web•TrainSim settled into the cab of DB 101 030, turned up the heater and put the windscreen wipers on full speed (virtually), waited for the Continuous Service message to popup, placed the reverser into Forward, turned on the Next Station display, released the brakes and waited for the conductor's whistle to indicate departure time.

Notepaper and pen were at hand and all was in readiness for RE4 Dortmund to Monchengladbach Test #4. Yes, among all the other sounds, that's the conductor's whistle. Bring up the power and prepare to start moving (with lots of stutters!). Oops, we're not moving. Reduce power to zero and do a couple of checks - yes, brakes have released (gauges are normal), pantograph is up (how many times has web•TrainSim not noticed a lowered pantograph), reverser is ok. Try again. No, no movement. Ummm... It looks like one of those occasions when it's Exit MSTS (grumble, grumble), load WordPad and have a look at ENGine and WAGon files.

Remembering ages ago that web•TrainSim had discovered discrepancies between types of brake equipment in locos and rolling stock which resulted in little or no braking and making the brake equipment consistent had solved the problem, it was time to scroll down to the BrakeEquipmentType line in both the ENG and WAG files. What did he find for DB 101 030 and the Graphics15 EC WAGons? That the Distributor parameter was missing. So that was fixed and it was back to loading MSTS (time to make another coffee) and try again - Test #4a and we're underway.

Now what does an activity creator think about when testing? Well, in this case, apart from noting down times of arrival at stations to ensure the traffic is timed appropriately (and making sure he doesn't miss a yellow signal), there's the thought lurking in the back of the mind that the fix to paths, traffic timings, etc., resulting from the previous test may not work. In Test #3 MSTS had severely terminated (there was the chance to contact the train manager) at about D-Bilk (after Dusseldorf), and in Tests #1 and #2 a red refused to clear at about the same location. So traffic from the D-Bilk and D-Hamm sidings had been removed from the activity's traffic (TRF) file.

Well, web•TrainSim's fixes to the brakes was successful and all was going well. The rainy winter weather certainly made it easy to sight signals and traffic was appearing at regular intervals. After some saves along the way (just in case), web•TrainSim reached Dusseldorf. Now how would things go? A red light a few kilometres up the track that wouldn't change? Hopefully not.

Off we go, past D-Bilk and D-Hamm sidings, across the Rhine, and before we know it, we're pulling up for the stop at Neuss. Unbelievable. Nothing can go wrong now. There's the chance to blow some cobwebs off the thyristors on the track to Monchengladbach so speed builds up to 160 km/hr. As the kilometres to Monchengladbach run down, it's time to watch for a yellow because we have to change tracks before going into the platform. Ah, there it is, plenty of time to slow.

As we come up to the yellow, at 40 km/hr... Whoosh! Crunch! Uh!!??! All sorts of strange sounds and MSTS has decided it's had enough - not even the chance to contact the train manager! Severe grumble, severe grumble, severe grumble, reboot (it's fairly rare to have to reboot XP due to MSTS crashing).

So what's the problem this time? Back in the days of WE8 web•TrainSim had come across a problem with the signalling at Monchengladbach due to the track layout and departing/arriving at platform 6 didn't always work. Well, RE4 Dortmund to Monchengladbach terminated at platform 6 and it had worked in WE8 - but it appears it won't in WE10.1. Load the Activity Editor and change the driver's path to end at platform 4. Make a note to do Test #5!

So as not to miss out on all the fun, there are trial versions of RE4 Dortmund to Monchengladbach (driver path changed to go into platform 4 but not tested by yours truly) and RE4 (diverted) Monchengladbach to Dortmund (Dortmund will be very quiet) for you to try.

• <13-Mar-2006>: Before web•TrainSim gets into editing his RE4 Wupper Express Dortmund to Monchengladbach activity to solve a stuck red signal problem, he needs to mention several new routes. Firstly, Australian trainsimmers will be pleased to see a new route, South Australian Adelaide and Hills (info and download page), by Allan Lownsborough. You can either download as one large file, AU_sa_Adel_Hill_v1_Full_MSTS1_Setup.exe (219Mb, 09-Mar-06), or in smaller chunks of about 56Mb each (dialup users need to find a friend with broadband): AU_sa_Adl_Hills_in_parts_v1_MSTS1_Setup.exe, AU_sa_Adl_Hills_in_parts_v1_MSTS1_Setup.D01, AU_sa_Adl_Hills_in_parts_v1_MSTS1_Setup.D02, AU_sa_Adl_Hills_in_parts_v1_MSTS1_Setup.D03. South Australian Railways rolling stock for this route should be available soon. Over at Train-sim.com Jim Ward has version 10 of his well-known Port Ogden And Northern route, ponver10.zip (14Mb, 08-Mar-2006). See Jim's post, Here we go again, it's number ten, for more info and any questions. Michael Stephan's Great North Hi-Line is another new route, running from Whitefish to Havre, Montana - it's available in four files, the first being gnhilin1.zip (52Mb, 10-Mar-06) and documentation is in gnhidocs.zip.zip (378kb, 10-Mar-06). Also at Train-sim.com is Neville Brook's New Zealand route, Northrail, on the west coast of the North Island. At the time of writing this only the first couple of eight files were in the library so be patient (at this stage each chunk appears to be 50Mb approximately). UKTrainsim has two routes, Dorset Coast version 3, the first upgrade file being Dorset3-01.zip (17Mb, 08-Mar-2006), and the Ashburton Branch, the first of four files being ash-setup-1.zip (343kb, 08-Mar-2006) and other files being about 15Mb each. web•TrainSim is now off to have fun with the Activity Editor and try to find which path is causing the problem (there are a couple of suspects) - it's just so much fun when you've been driving for more than an hour and a half, have watched the signals closely, haven't had an emergency stop, and just when you think it's a clear run to the end, a red light sticks... ahh...

• <08-Mar-2006>: There's a new activity, ICE Service #747: Koln to Dortmund, ready for you to try. Please remember to save this activity before 0555 because of the heavy graphics from the ICE 403 trainset itself and the scenery between W-Oberbarmen and Schwelm. As well the train control manager has issued a severe warning to any drivers who race other trains along the four-track section from W-Vohwinkel to Schwelm. One good thing that came out of testing this activity was, when MSTS crashed between W-Oberbarmen and Schwelm, web•TrainSim did a "Play" in the Activity Editor and discovered that AI trains which were supposed to finish and go "whoosh" into thin air on a spur line at W-Oberbarmen weren't doing so because his path terminated after a signal. web•TrainSim has been wondering for ages (from Wupper Express 8 days) why his slow traffic was held up along the Wuppertal-W-Oberbarmen section! As a sidenote, all other spurs and branch lines on the Wupper Express route have the signal placed almost at the end of the track section so are ok. The ICE Service #747: Koln to Dortmund activity is the first that web•TrainSim has moved over from Wupper Express 8 and he spent a few hours thinking about how to do it. He knew before installing WE10.1 that he'd have to recreate all services from earlier versions (they're nearly all completed now by the way). But what about the traffic, held in each activity's TRF file? Could that file be simply brought into WE10.1 and used as is, to save having to nut out traffic timings again? Well, no. The TRF file not only contains info about when a service starts but location IDs of where to stop and these aren't compatible with WE10. So he loaded his WE8 TRF for Koln-Dortmund into EditPad Lite, a simple but fast text editor, and copied each service's time into a spreadsheet. Why a spreadsheet? Because MSTS records times as seconds after midnight and those starting times were needed in hours:minutes:seconds format to re-create a new TRF file in the activity under WE10.1. Now that there's a technique for extracting traffic timing info from TRF files from WE8, web•TrainSim can move onto the route's namesake RE4 Wupper Express service from Dortmund to Monchengladbach. Oh, and here's a great PDF doc of timetables for the Wuppertal and Koln region: German Region Lines Timetables (Die Bahnen der Region) from VRS Online on the Das VRS-Fahrplansortiment page (about 3.5Mb download). Finally, it's Happy Birthday to myself - web•TrainSim went online in March 2002 (train-years ago!).

• <01-Mar-2006>: At last there's an activity that works on the Oberhausen - Gelsenkirchen - Dortmund section! After x tests (where x is rather large), web•TrainSim had to give up on his RB42-3 Essen to Dortmund activity due to a red that wouldn't change for the driver train just 5 kilometres from Dortmund. Anyway, that forced web•TrainSim to have another look at the trackage from Oberhausen to Dortmund, especially either side of Herne. From Oberhausen, it's four-track (fast-fast-slow-slow). Then at E-Altenessen the four tracks reduce to two until Gelsenkirchen where there are four tracks again (slow-fast-fast-slow) until a kilometre or two from Herne. But on the east side of Herne, coming from Dortmund, trackage is fast-fast-slow-slow. As a general rule, in fact very much an absolute rule that web•TrainSim follows, is that an AI train path should not cross another AI path. The reason: because of the real possibility of a standoff, i.e., two AI trains at reds staring at each other and the AI dispatcher/train control manager not knowing which should get the green (and remember Murphy's Law). In other words, the AI in MSTS should be AI but not very intelligent. Anyway, it's at Herne (heading towards Dortmund) that the slow-fast-fast-slow arrangement becomes fast-fast-slow-slow. When you're driving the S2 Dortmund to Duisberg activity you'll notice that as you come up to your stop at Herne you'll cross from the slow and move over to the far right to share trackage with the fasts. A few kilometres after Herne you'll move to the right to the slow track and it's slow-fast-fast-slow all the way to Gelsenkirchen. So web•TrainSim spent some time making sure his paths through Herne were all consistent (to eliminate the possibility of standoffs) but he hasn't yet been game enough to give his RB42-3 Essen to Dortmund activity another trial. For a change of pace, web•TrainSim now needs to bring over some of his activities from Wupper Express 8 and he's going to start with those to/from Koln (That sounds like fun. How are you going to bring in the WE8 TRaFfic file to WE10.1? Ed.).

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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.