Starting route building!

JamesC · Post by **JamesC** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 8:22 pm

Hi all,

Well after all these years I’m starting to learn on building my own route after hours of reading in the MSTS Editors and tools help section. Placing objects, tress etc seems easy, as there is Thumbnails in the object selector. I am starting to lay track but a few problems I’m having.

I am having difficulty selecting certain sections of track, when I select the track I don't know what it is until I place the track on the route. I place the tick in the “Show Thumbnails” box in the object selector window but lots of errors pop up.

Look here http://www.btinternet.com/~james.caton/TS.index.htm

What do you guys do?

There are some UK Finescale pieces in the list also.

jonathanmlewis · Post by **jonathanmlewis** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 8:37 pm

You will get use to what all the track section names mean. Anything with Strt in means it straight and it will have its length in the name somewhere. Anything starting with A1 means its is a single track and A2 means double track etc. Anything with pnt means its a set of points. You can assume anything else is a curve. Just add a few sections to see what they are so you get use to it.
Good Luck

JamesC · Post by **JamesC** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 8:47 pm

Thanks mate,

A few of the track pieces come up with errors like "No Extended Shape data for Alt0-8mStrt.s"

Anyway back on with the route!

bigvern · Post by **bigvern** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 9:34 pm

You may have a tsection.dat installed for X-Tracks or UKFS but not necessarily have all the track pieces to go with it. LBE installed a non standard tsection but only for a few pieces, however the tsection lists all the available sections even if not in your Global folder, generating error messages.

That makes it virtually impossible to scroll through the list with thumbnails on to find the default pieces. If you're building with just default track you might be better off working with a clean install of MSTS to avoid such error messages.

JamesC · Post by **JamesC** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 10:23 pm

Well I don't really want to re install train Sim, well not yet anyway. I just had it freshly re installed a few days ago because my computer went down. I've installed UK Finescale and SVR and Cambrian route since.

It’s a pain in the neck searching through the list trying to find the track sections you want.

How come all the curve pieces are bending to the left, do I have to rotate them or something? What shall I do to get a curve piece to bend to the right?

JamesC · Post by **JamesC** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 10:58 pm

How come there is very little in the "Object selector" window? Like when I click in Vegetation there is only one Tree. Surely there should be all the default stuff.

steam4me · Post by **steam4me** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 3:54 am

Visit the tutorials page at the site below and *all* your questions will be answered.

To load all default items, read
http://www.railpage.org.au/steam4me/tra ... _stuff.htm
and download the ZIP within that file.

HTH.

bigvern · Post by **bigvern** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 6:43 am

And buy the Abacus Route Building Guide - this has all been covered countless times before.

If you can't rotate the track (it's the T key BTW) sounds like you haven't even looked in the default MS Help which does cover most of the basics actually.

You could always do another install of MSTS to another drive (if you have one) to keep as a virgin copy for route development. Otherwise if you have the tsection for UKFS installed but not all the track pieces, the error messages will make it virtually impossible to to select the default ones.

asalmon · Post by **asalmon** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 7:46 am

bigvern wrote: LBE installed a non standard tsection but only for a few pieces, however the tsection lists all the available sections even if not in your Global folder, generating error messages.

Point of order. LBE came with a standardised tsection.dat, version 19.

That makes it virtually impossible to scroll through the list with thumbnails on to find the default pieces. If you're building with just default track you might be better off working with a clean install of MSTS to avoid such error messages.

If you have started laying track, you should not change tsection.dat - you may get away with it if you have not placed a single piece of dynamic trakc, but if you have switching from a standard to a default tsecion or vice versa mess up the route. If you must change global tsections, there is a utility called horace which will renumber all dynamic pieces, you then need to rebuild the track database.

A better option is to use route-riter and get it to re-build your global tsection.dat to include only the track on your system.

Alan

jonathanmlewis · Post by **jonathanmlewis** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 8:03 am

JamesC wrote:Well I don't really want to re install train Sim, well not yet anyway. I just had it freshly re installed a few days ago because my computer went down. I've installed UK Finescale and SVR and Cambrian route since.

Itâ€™s a pain in the neck searching through the list trying to find the track sections you want.

If you restore your old TSECTION.DAT in the Global Folder and rename it TSECTION.DAT and rename the new TSECTION.DAT TSECTIONX.DAT or something you will just get the old track sections again.

JamesC · Post by **JamesC** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 8:08 am

Thanks guys,

My other hard drive is not big enough to handle MSTS, I may try using my laptop. All the problems I had above have been sorted, I can now rotate curves and now I have lots of objects in the object selector window.

I may have to reinstall MSTS at somepoint so I just have the default stuff.

JamesC · Post by **JamesC** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 8:10 am

jonathanmlewis wrote:
JamesC wrote:Well I don't really want to re install train Sim, well not yet anyway. I just had it freshly re installed a few days ago because my computer went down. I've installed UK Finescale and SVR and Cambrian route since.

It’s a pain in the neck searching through the list trying to find the track sections you want.

If you restore your old TSECTION.DAT in the Global Folder and rename it TSECTION.DAT and rename the new TSECTION.DAT TSECTIONX.DAT or something you will just get the old track sections again.

Thanks, I will try that later.

bigvern · Post by **bigvern** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 8:17 am

asalmon wrote: Point of order. LBE came with a standardised tsection.dat, version 19.

Maybe, but it's not a standard official MS tsection and it will still mess up the RE if you just want to use the default pieces!

Christopher125 · Post by **Christopher125** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 9:35 am

Hi

As you have downloaded UKFS, make sure that all the track you sue in your route begins with UKFS. To avoid errors have thumbnails turned off. There is lots of help with track sections at http://www.trainsimfiles.com

Chris

asalmon · Post by **asalmon** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 11:39 am

bigvern wrote:
asalmon wrote: Point of order. LBE came with a standardised tsection.dat, version 19.

Maybe, but it's not a standard official MS tsection and it will still mess up the RE if you just want to use the default pieces!

Well, in that case so does NVR, and any freeware route using UKFS or XTracks - so its unfair of you to single out LBE