Route Joining

[markpullinger]

Hi Dave, Have you tried this with ConTEXT? I think it can cope with bigger files & happily opens most of the MSTS file types.
Mark

[ccsdc]

Hi Dave, Have you tried this with ConTEXT? I think it can cope with bigger files & happily opens most of the MSTS file types.
Mark

Mark,

Not tried that - will give it a whirl.

Dave

[Lad491]

Whats this, whats this, whats this !!! is the brilliant Dave Corfield thinking, even thinking, about joining DC with Thames Mersey? My goodness what a great route that would be

C'mon Dave - spill the beans. Im sure you werent just trying it for something to do. Is a merger on the cards ? To be able to run up to Kensington Olympia from Clapham Jct and join at Willesden Junction would be great

[ccsdc]

Whats this, whats this, whats this !!! is the brilliant Dave Corfield thinking, even thinking, about joining DC with Thames Mersey? My goodness what a great route that would be

C'mon Dave - spill the beans. Im sure you werent just trying it for something to do. Is a merger on the cards ? To be able to run up to Kensington Olympia from Clapham Jct and join at Willesden Junction would be great

LOL. Just wishful thinking Laurie.

Dave

[SDtrains]

Firstly, Context is a good little freeware tool which supports a much greater memory addressing range than Wordpad. I have found the macro tool (it's not a scrripted format, just a recorded 'follow me as I do' type affair) very useful for converting markers from Google output to the MSTS format, but you have to be careful which mode you are using it in, because it can mess up your file if you go directly from macro mode to text editing.

Secondly, I have considered the situaton with Kensington Olympia and Willesden. Certainly K.O. could be added, but the junctions crossing the GW Mainline to Willesden would be very extensive to model and would place a great strain on the Clapham tile, which is already at the brink of acceptably useable loadabilty. As you cross a tile, part of the tiles all around the one you are in also load and unload as you proceed, and I think that, on a 'finger in the wind ' basis, there would be great processing demand crossing between K.O. and Clapham. Certainly, it could be constructed, but very difficult to run trains and traffic patterns afterwards.

[JunGRail]

Whats this, whats this, whats this !!! is the brilliant Dave Corfield thinking, even thinking, about joining DC with Thames Mersey? My goodness what a great route that would be

C'mon Dave - spill the beans. Im sure you werent just trying it for something to do. Is a merger on the cards ? To be able to run up to Kensington Olympia from Clapham Jct and join at Willesden Junction would be great

LOL. Just wishful thinking Laurie.

Dave

Mate i agree with lad491 that would make excellent driving, push the boundaries even further. Although i was going to say the brighton mainline from clapham junction would be great but i guess DC is on the verge of MSTS's limits.

[SDtrains]

Technically, 'Brighton from Clapham Junction ' is plausible, but Victoria would place big demands on the tile loading going through to Clapham.

[lateagain]

trouble with merging the likes of Whitefish and Marias pass means its a 12 hour route end to end without the stopping

Without trashing the theoretical and programming effort in this thread, the post you all seem to have missed is the one from salopiangrowler?

How many of you have the time, and even then, have the desire to drive the Sim for a whole day?

Wouldn't you rather drive a number of activities on the same route than drive one long distance?

Is it even possible to create activities where AI taffic could appear over that long a drive?

Would it succesfully save and reload?

Don't mean to cast a huge downer on anyone's enthusiasm here but maybe the way forward is not in these huge routes but in creating activities in sections that are more "sustainable" (?) and usable and less prone to dissapointment if you mess up or your computer throws a glitch? I'd rather drive the activity knowing that any "end game" hadn't completely wasted x hours of my time?

In fact maybe what folk ought to be looking at rather than creating mega routes is a fix for "end game" at derailments or SPADS? I know this is an old axe of mine I'm grinding but some sort of "autosave" or "Reset" function would be more realistic and FAR less frustrating than just getting thrown out of the Sim? For a start complex shunting acts would become less frustrating? You only have to couple at a "gnats" above the required coupling speed and the Sim throws a "derail". Hardly realistic? SPADS happen regularly but the train doesn't go out of service! The driver contacts the signaller and the appropriate instruction is given (as exists in the Sim with tabbing through Reds). I appreciate that this is a programming issue and that signalling also triggers AI traffic but my point is that there is a lot of improved funcionality that could be looked at before anyone tries to recreate the worlds railways in one route
Geoff

[salopiangrowler]

i was just saying, its over 12 hours and to say the least the routes not available anyway as i cant find it. Yes i would drive a 12 hour run and yes i would do the smaller less demanding activities.

Marias pass 3.1 is over 7 hours end to end switching in and out freight cars along the way and 5 and a half hours non stop, providing you get a clear run.

Whitefish 8 & 9 is 5-7 hours on a run through depending on traffic.

i still get coupling breaks on willamette pass.

[lateagain]

i still get coupling breaks on willamette pass.

Yeah and I thought they'd fixed that too?

Geoff

PS those are still some of my favourite US routes and the GN Hi Line retro version is excellent too. I think many who discarded them as "Default" don't realise just how much improved they are?

PPS to drive that long without a reaction equivalent to "SHOCK AND AWE" from SWMBO would either mean she died and I didn't notice (not much fear of that - touch wood) or she'd finally "lost it" with me and left!!!!

[salopiangrowler]

buy her Nintendo Dogs she'd have many happy an hour feeding the little electronic critters

[danny3]

Whats this, whats this, whats this !!! is the brilliant Dave Corfield thinking, even thinking, about joining DC with Thames Mersey? My goodness what a great route that would be

C'mon Dave - spill the beans. Im sure you werent just trying it for something to do. Is a merger on the cards ? To be able to run up to Kensington Olympia from Clapham Jct and join at Willesden Junction would be great

There is only one problem that i could think of (i'll probably get shot for saying this), isn't Thames Mersey set in the 70s/80s where as Dorset coast is set in the 90s - 2000? I'm only mentioning this because of one missing station Milton Keynes Central

[ianmacmillan]

Don't see the point in joining routes.

It is always good practice to save and restart MSTS every hour or so to clear the memory so why not make a two part activity ending on one route and restarting on the other.

What would be good is for both routes to be extended to Kensington.

Years ago I suggested short seperate routes to join routes using end tiles from each with new track between them.
There are quite a few routes that come within a few miles of each other.
Woodhead & MidEast and Burton Derby & Peak Rail are examples.

Cannock Chase and Burton Derby already overlap and have track in common with Thames Mersey but I see no good reason to join them.

[SDtrains]

As an addition to Ian's good words, I have successfully joined Peak Rail and Burton Derby made a load of extra scenery for it, and sent the results to Alan Heath, who was doing some more to Buxton. I'm not sure if he will upgrade Peak Rail further, but if he does you will see a substantial face lift. I have not contacted Big Ant about this , but if you are reading this and would like to comment, please feel free to PM me. The Blue Pullman looks great running from Chinley to Trent Bridge.

It would be possible to join Mideast with Woodhead, but there are Era conflicts and Woodhead is substaintially lacking in gradients! Burton Derby and Cannock chase have similar boundaries but they have different tile altitudes and do not directly mesh. Personally, I think that Mideast would have benefitted from having Sheffield Victoria and Burton Derby should have had at least a couple of platforms from New street so that trains could start and end there, but this highlights the problem with routes and modelling, where to begin and end.

[qzdcg8]

for the record I did look at how Woodhead/MidEast could be linked up and managed to transplant around two dozen tiles out of Mid East into the 'flat' version of Woodhead (was canned when I started work on a DEM'ed version) - what also did not help was that Woodhead had a Lat/Long drift in it (caused by me) that got worse the further east you went and was the main reason my enthusiasm for the DEM'ed version waned

But it was quite cool to see Tim's Worksop sat at the end of my route - have a search there are 5 year old pictures on here somewhere