Greater Eastern - Thoughts

[TechniquestS482]

Sorry for the delay in replying to you, been busy doing non-MSTS stuff for the last few hours.

I was mightily confused with why it wasn't working, however James and Simon were on hand to provide knowledge on what I needed to do. Turned out I hadn't changed some option in Save As. It now works perfectly fine and I've successfully completed the activity. Thanks again for the heads up on the fix

Now to get to adding AI for my own activities. To Activity Editor!

[6rdfar90]

I guess i've been lucky enough in the respect that the issues I've found annoying, were nothing to do with the actual route, just the bin patch!!

It is superb though, just wish the GE line was more suited for high speed running, than 80mph upto Ipswich.

Love the 315 and 170's too.

[tjbantam]

My first impressions (not having played as much as i'd like due to the missus wanting to use my lappy cos her's is cr*p):

Scenery is spot on. The lads at MT have done a cracking job.

Not tried any activities yet so will pass on that.

As for stock, it's great! Love the 66's and the 90's. The MT 170 is streets ahead of EB's 171's for South Coast and any freeware ones seen so far.

But the highlight for me without a doubt, and worth the cost alone is my beloved Skateboards, the 153's.

Must admit i have fiddled with the braking to make them a bit more responsive, but fabulous effort nonetheless.

Waiting eagerly for the 153/155 stock pack and life will be complete!!!

Overall rating 11 out of 10! Good work fellas!

[TechniquestS482]

I didn't think the 153 brakes needed to be more responsive personally, they seemed to be pretty good. Did they have to be altered much? Agreed that they've been done well though, a fantastic job. The same applies for pretty much all of the stock

Also, whilst I was tearing up the GEML with 87007, I noticed not far before Colchester (when heading north) that above a 100mph PSR there was an AWB for 60. I'm absolutely certain it said 60, but the restriction through Colchester is 90. I'll have to go back and have another look shortly.

My final (for now! The more I drive through the route, the more I'm noticing I have no knowledge of) lack of route knowledge is at Stowmarket. On the same run heading to Norwich with the 87, I observed a 70mph restriction, rising to 90 soon after. However, in the opposite direction with 55022 there was no such restrictions. Is this the case in reality? If so I haven't observed anything ultra obvious for the restrictions to apply one way and not the other

[yerkes]

Installed last night and ran the first Up Express activity straight off with no problems. Thoroughly enjoyed the run, not least because I was a minute down leaving Colchester and the timetable had enough slack for me to reach Liverpool St six minutes early. The passenger view - head out the window - is much closer to the reality of my rail trips than sitting 'on the cushions', notwithstanding the lack of windrush noise/smell of ozone

The route itself is very well done indeed. The Norwich/Crown Point area took my PC down to about 10fps, and the yard north of Ipswich (or should that be Ispwich?) hit framerates, but no problems at all otherwise. I don't recall seeing Pudding Mill Lane in Great Eastern, nor the tower blocks around that area, so I assume these are some of the enhancements to the original route - so much the better. I also spotted some stray overhead wires in the up loop north of Stowmarket, which I guess a future patch can sort out.

All in all, IMHO a brilliant product and highly recommended.

Michael

[lumpchase]

Apart from the ISPWICH typo on the map (which appears on the Load/Detail Screens and also in the Manual (and facebook where it was not noticed a month ago ) are there any other typo's I should be aware of?

The issues with the Activities we can solve including the SRV file will all be fixed in the Prototype Livery patch to be made available shortly.

Hope this helps.

Tony

[cambrian06]

I ordered Greater Eastern yesterday morning around 10.30 (standard 1st class post), at 10.30 this morning it dropped through my letterbox - amazing !, well done both Making Tracks and Royal Mail.
Moment of panic when I came to install and got a message saying that Great Eastern 1 could not be detected on my computer...... I'd recently had to replace the hard drive on my PC and had resurrected my installation by simply copying across my entire Train Simulator folder after installing MSTS, BIN & Trainstore so presumably the fact that GE 1 had not gone through the installation procedure from disc on the new drive was the reason for the error. Anyway after a quick re-instal of GE 1 everything is up and running and I'm very impressed. Frame rates are fairly good, so far the only place I've had a significant drop is within the Norwich station area.
Has definitely put the greater into Great Eastern!
Regards,
Andy

[gswindale]

Yep - the installer checks for various things to see if the original GE is installed.

I don't recall having much in the way of issues at Norwich - more around London Liverpool St on my setup - such is MSTS.

[darren10000]

Hi All

I've just spent this afternoon scooting around GE2 and no probs at all, Lovely add-on. I esp like the additional scenery details around london, it really makes a difference. Well done MT. An excellent route as usual!!! Are you planning to update LSE at any time in the future as that'd be perfect then

Darren
73E

[shinysteel]

FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT LOAD UP UP ANGLIA EXPRESS:

Right click onto your MSTS shortcut, click properties and go into the compatibility tab (if you do not have one then create one), then dedicate about half your system's RAM to MSTS by adding "-mem:XXX" at the end of the target box (with XXX being what half your system's RAM is, ie, my laptop has 1790MB of RAM, I dedicated about 895MB of RAM to MSTS by adding "-mem:895" to the end of the target box). I cannot guarantee that this will definetly work, however, its worth a try and worked a treat for me!

[tjbantam]

I didn't think the 153 brakes needed to be more responsive personally, they seemed to be pretty good. Did they have to be altered much?

Not really. just copied the braking entries from the .eng file of a freeware class 150/2 i have installed and it sharpened the 153's braking up to my preferences. The first time i drove the One liveried unit (on the Braintree Branch), was doing about 15mph as i entered the platform at Freeport (glad to see that added in too!) and i just felt it took too long to stop.

Personal preference, that's all.

[TechniquestS482]

Fair enough, and I hope my post didn't sound like I was having a moan. Certainly wasn't the way it was supposed to come across.

I finally got around to doing the North Walsham to Parkeston tanks activity today, I really enjoyed that. Looking at getting that Clacton to Liverpool Street one done next, then it's back to work on my lot.

[paulct]

Route loaded up perfectly, so I tried a journey from Norwich to London. First thing I noticed was that the Trowse Swing Bridge was missing and the river too. So I checked the settings, they had all been changed (downwards) by the download. I ran it again after changing them and the detail improved but still no swing bridge also a number of overbridges have no ramps.

Layout and signalling as per the route.

Otherwise a good job done!!

Paul

[buffy500]

Route loaded up perfectly, so I tried a journey from Norwich to London. First thing I noticed was that the Trowse Swing Bridge was missing and the river too. So I checked the settings, they had all been changed (downwards) by the download. I ran it again after changing them and the detail improved but still no swing bridge also a number of overbridges have no ramps.

Layout and signalling as per the route.

Otherwise a good job done!!

Paul

With due respect... Erm, no it did not. ALL the installer does is copy files to a specific location.
NONE of us at MT are clever enough to do anything other than that.


This is Trowse Bridge and river....

[TechniquestS482]

I've just tried the Clacton to Liverpool Street run, as I wanted a speedier run than with the Parkeston tanks activity. As it turned out, I was going faster in the 66 for most of the way!

Having viewed the front cab fix on the MT forum for the aforementioned activity, I decided to give it a try and followed the instructions to a T. No problems from Clacton to Colchester, but from there after coupling up to the other 321 and changing cabs, I had severe problems with getting the trio moving. I kept losing time due to the 321s not getting above 50mph for most of the way. Going downhill through Brentwood and that general area, I managed to achieve 67.4mph, and yes this was on full power!

Fair enough, there's some meatier gradients on the GEML than I ever thought existed (if anyone ever tells me that's flat, I'll slap them with a smelly fish! ), which will take a bit of oomph to get over. However, surely a trio of 321/3s should be able to overcome these banks without issue.

A gathering of MSTS experienced minds was had during the run, during which we established it's likely that MSTSBin had a hissy fit with the changing to the cab of the front 321/3. This appeared to possibly be the case as the front 321/3 seemed to be making noise but the rear two seemed deadly silent.

Any ideas chaps? I'm not in a rush to try the activity again to be honest, however it seemed appropriate to inquire as to possible causes for this problem.