Ken Swenson's GE sounds

This is an example of one particular way to use Ken's GE sounds, gesnd10.zip (460kb, 20-Feb-03, Train-sim.com library).

The idea was to use the sounds in one of the NR locos in AU_NR_Setup.exe (1.1Mb, 16-Jan-02, Steam4Me), namely NR53, as web•TrainSim was developing an activity for Modern England which involves driving NR53 at the head of a small number of wagons from London Siding to The Brewery.

Ken's readme contains straighforward instructions for using his sounds with the default MSTS Dash 9 but using them in the NR53 was a little more complicated. web•TrainSim wanted to use the left-hand drive GE cab so some adaptation had to be done in this regard and he also wanted to make Ken's sounds available for other GE locos so he planned to locate them in Common.Snd.

Everything worked out ok and the description below may guide you to use the GE sounds in a similar situation.

As a bonus, web•TrainSim also installed Joe Realmuto's modern track sounds, modtrkv2.zip (26kb, 24-Jul-02, Train-sim.com), into Modern England. The U.K. Modern Track & Coach sounds also add to the audio environment, UKMT_MCS_v1-0.zip (1.7Mb, 14-Nov-02, UK Trainsim), especially when a high-speed train comes up on your right to pass on the inside track.

Folder under Common.Snd

Under the Common.Snd folder, a sub-folder named gensnd10 was created. Then the default MSTS Dash 9 sounds were copied from Dash9\Sound\.

Taking note of Ken's instructions in his readme, the two SMS files and all power_cruise WAV files were deleted. power_cruise files include files such as d9_power_cruise1.wav and x_d9_power_cruise1.wav; there are actually six of each.

Now Ken's WAV and SMS files can be copied from the zip archive to Common.Snd\gensnd10\. Use WinZip's drag'n'drop feature to do this (with Explorer open at Common.Snd\gensnd10\ of course).

web•TrainSim likes to keep the names of SMS files close to the name of the folder in which they're stored so he renamed both to gesnd10cab.sms and gesnd10eng.sms.

ENGine file

Having decided to use Ken's GEsounds10 in NR 53, it was time to open nr53.eng and edit the throttle notch settings, as given in Ken's readme. Scroll down the ENGine file until you come across the following:

    ..............
   EngineControllers (
     Throttle ( 0 1 0.125 0 
       NumNotches ( 9
         Notch ( 0       0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.125   0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.25    0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.375   0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.5     0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.625   0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.75    0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.875   0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 1       0 Dummy )
       )
     )
    ..............

Either copy the block of lines beginning Notch ( 0 to North ( 1 or individually edit the first value on each Notch line. The changed values are in red, as follows:

    ..............
   EngineControllers (
     Throttle ( 0 1 0.125 0 
       NumNotches ( 9
         Notch ( 0       0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.044   0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.11    0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.23    0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.34    0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.50    0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.65    0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 0.81    0 Dummy )
         Notch ( 1       0 Dummy )
       )
     )
    ..............

While still in the ENGine file, scroll back up and look for this line, or do a search from the top:

    ..............
   DieselEngineMaxRPMChangeRate( 40 )
    ..............

You could have any sort of value for this parameter; regardless of what it is, change it to 9:

    ..............
   DieselEngineMaxRPMChangeRate( 9 )
    ..............

One final job - change the Sound lines to point to the SMS files. This is the one after Lights section:

    ..............
   Sound ( "..\\..\\Common.Snd\\GESnd10\\gesnd10Eng.sms" )
    ..............

And this is the one just before the Description section, just about at the end of the ENGine file:

    ..............
   Sound ( "..\\..\\Common.Snd\\GESnd10\\gesnd10cab.sms" )
    ..............

That's all the work that's required on nr53.eng so save it.

NR 53 cabview file

web•TrainSim has been using the cabview that is part of a set of FreightCorp class 81s, fr81.zip (3.2Mb, 12-Oct-02), from the Train-sim.com library in his NR and other GE Australian locos since the cab, the Dash 9 one, has been flipped for left-hand driving.

There are a number of settings to change in a cabview file for use with Ken Swenson's sounds so web•TrainSim made a copy of this file and named it nr53.eng.

The next step is to copy the changed settings from Ken's Dash 9 cab in the zip archive into nr53.eng. You could extract Ken's dash9.cvf to a folder outside MSTS or get WinZip to open it from the archive directly with WordPad. Either way, scroll down towards the bottom of Ken's dash9.cvf until you come to this section:

    ..............
   MultiStateDisplay (
     Type ( CPH_DISPLAY MULTI_STATE_DISPLAY )
       Position ( 264 345 34 15 )
         Graphic ( "ThrottleDisplayGrn.ace" )
           States ( 18 3 6
             State (
               Style ( 0 )
                 SwitchVal ( 0 )
             )
             State (
    ..............

Each SwitchVal parameter needs changing so either copy the whole block or just change one at a time. You can see there are eighteen to do.

Once done, save and exit WordPad.

It's all done! Of course, if you decide to just add Ken's sounds to your MSTS Dash 9, the job is fairly straightforward. However, the technique shown here could help you use Ken's GE sounds with another Dash 9 or some other modern GE loco.

Note: web•TrainSim decided to put the cabview from fr81.zip into its own sub-folder under Common.Cab so he could alias it to all his NR locos and any other Australian GE locos. So he created augecab as a new folder and named the CVF, augecab.cvf. Most of the graphics pointed to in this CVF refer to the default Dash 9 and just a couple in the augecab folder so augecab.cvf has to be edited in WordPad. Each graphics ACE file has to be prefixed with either ..\\..\\Dash9\\Cab\\ or ..\\..\\Common.Cab\\AuGeCab\\; use Explorer to see the ACE files already in augecab.

Raildriver engine file

To put the icing on the cake, web•TrainSim created a Raildriver engine file for NR53. Raildriver keeps all it's engine files in the engine sub-folder under C:\Program Files\PIEngineering\Raildriver\. The easiest method to create NR53's own file was to copy the Dash 9 one and rename it to pinr53.eng. Then using WordPad, the engine and brake control blocks of code were copied from nr53.eng to pinr53.eng.