Morning Mail Activity for Thames Mersey Steam Era

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 12:12 am

Martin - Thanks for that. Ive not had any problems at all during testing, other than the briefing problem. I'll check out those services again when im back home on tuesday.

Gary - Getting better then. At least you've proved that the coal does eventually run out.

You should still be able to make it to Liverpool though.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Glad its proving an interesting activity

sddsddean · Post by **sddsddean** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 4:46 pm

Well all I can say is, there must be some heavy handed drivers out there! At Rugby I still had 18% coal and I got into Lime St. 16 secs late with 6% coal and over 2000 gal of water on board. Great activity though.

Martin - regarding the yellows after Roade, I had to re run this bit, 'cos you have got to get fairly well ahead of the freight train you overtake in the Leighton Buzzard area, so you grab the route at Roade before he does. I sat at Roade for 10 mins first time I tried it, but second time got the right of way over the freight train.

Simon

Deltic9000 · Post by **Deltic9000** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 7:18 pm

Simon

Thanks for the tip - I'll run it again tomorrow.

I made it to Edge Hill before the fireman threw the last of the Coal on, I picked up a full tender at Halebank Troughs, though.

I ran hard to get back on time by Crewe so that probably accounts for using all the coal. I finished sucessfully at Lime Street about 2 1/2 minutes up on the schedule.

Certainly a good activity - I like ones that make me think all the time about how I'm driving

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 8:28 pm

got into Lime St. 16 secs late with 6% coal and over 2000 gal of water on board

An excellent result Simon. You even beat me on coal.

Im glad its meeting with everyones approval.

Im back home now so my task is to get a return trip done, but at the moment im still stuck with the problem of not being able to couple my black5's to the stock. I suspect a bounding box issue, but im going to play about with the consist to see if i can fix it. Might be ready by the weekend, have to see how it goes.

BobLatimer · Post by **BobLatimer** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 8:48 pm

I just had another go to see if I could complete it this time. No joy, I'm afraid. I get an "Activity ended - car derailed" message about 20 miles out of Liverpool, I think the time was around 10:38. It's not the player train so it must be one of the AIs. Just before the message there are three AIs going the other way very close together, the third one being the Deltic. I suspect somehow one of the AIs is getting through the signalling and running into one of the others to cause the derailment. I've even tried turning derailments of but the same thing happens.

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 12:17 am

Oh Dear Bob - sorry about that. Ive just run it again myself tonight and didnt have any problems at all again. Arrived about 1.5 minutes early with 1% coal remaining and about 3000 gallons of water, but i did break the scoop at the last set of troughs.

It must be a timing thing

Did you save at Crewe? If so could you try running the last section again, only a tad quicker, and see if it happens again. I saw the four AI trains come by really close together but they didnt derail or collide tonight. Its really strange how activities run differently on different pc's.

One thing though. If you have installed the latest patch, you will have to go back and make the eng and wag file changes again since Dave has provided new eng and wag files for the consists and loco i used which have changed some of my amendments back again.

welshdragon · Post by **welshdragon** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 9:00 pm

Laurie,

Can this activity be installed on the Downloadable version of TM as I have tried, checked in RR first but when I fired it up in MSTS I was looking at the roof of Euston Station and got a couple of error messages relating to out of date .srv files, then I could hear a steam train starting to move and then Activity Ended, train derailed. Then CTD.

Any advice appreciated

Regards

Alan :drinking:

BobLatimer · Post by **BobLatimer** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 3:08 am

Alan,

I'm running it on the downloaded version with no major problems.

I did have the instantaneous derailment at the start of the activity a couple of times though. It happened after I had changed the player consist wagons. Once I put the original ones back, it started okay.

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 8:12 am

Alan - I haven't tested the activity on the downloaded version of the route but no one else has commented so i guess it does work ok. Ive reused lots of the paths/consists which come with the CD version and if you dont have those you might get problems.

Also above Deltic9000 (Martin Ford) mentioned about the duplicated service starting at 8am in the AI traffic section. Strangely enough on my copy it doesn't cause a problem but it could cause you to get instant derailments if its trying to place a consist over the top of the player service. If you can use the activity editor just edit the AI traffic and remove the 08:00:00 Mail service which should fix that issue

I haven't been able to reproduce Bob Latimers problems with the crashing consists near Crewe. Bob did it work ok next time you tried it?

welshdragon · Post by **welshdragon** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 11:43 am

Many thanks All,

I shall try again and I expect I'll get there eventually, it just sounds an excellent activity from the comments so far.

Regards

Alan

welshdragon · Post by **welshdragon** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 1:25 pm

Laurie,

I ran it through RR, OK. AE got a few paths out of date, prompted to save which I did, no trace of a duplicated .srv

I have got a little further BUT, the following scenarios occurr :-

1) Fresh boot. Load activity and activity notebook appears in cab, click on x in top right corner the train is already moving, in Euston Station, headout position and the train is travelling in reverse collides with buffers and then 'Activity ended train derailed' balloon.

2) Reboot PC start Msts load activity, Activity notebook appears press F11 through to end, train is again moving but heading out of Euston Station, track monitor showing 0 mph and no movement, brake is 39% applied, regulator closed, reverser 0. Train heads off passing all red signals, applying full brake and reverser to full - fails to stop it. Press key 2 and normal view of front of train is obtained, press key 3 and rear of train is obtained but the full rake plus loco is stationary in Euston Station.

Return to cab key 1 and back in moving train, release brake and open the regulator the train picks up speed but nothing is registering on track monitor or F5 display and then near Willesden Electric Depot there is a train ahead on the same line which we collide with the rear and again the 'Activity ended train derailed' balloon.

I have Mid East, The D/L T.M and SVR all running on quite a high spec P4 with multithreading on the motherboard, Intel 3.02GHz CPU, 1GB Ram, 150GB HDD, ATI Radeon 9800pro 128mb on board. WinXP Pro + SP2.

I have been using MSTS since it came out and have had the odd strange thing happen but never anything like this, my flabber is absolutely ghasted. I have all the Activities in the Library installed and working.

Any ideas or suggestions gratefully recieved.

Regards

Alan :drinking:

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 4:37 pm

Alan - Im totally amazed at these problems and im afraid i dont have any suggestions really. Firstly the player service doesn't start on the move so you should start sitting at the platform, stationary with brake applied etc.
You certainly shouldn't be moving - forwards or backwards

Im wondering if what you are seeing is the duplicated service mentioned by Martin Ford above. Did you try removing the duplicated 08:00 mail service from the AI list of trains?

There is a train running ahead of you which is there to force a block on you arriving at Watford too early. However you shouldn't run into it as you should get cautions / reds as you catch it up.

Are you using the CD version of the route or the download?
Are you using stock which came with the CD and activity or have you changed anything, other than the changes i said to make in the readme.?

It certainly sounds as though your installation of the activity has gone wrong somewhere. No one else has had so many problems. Bob Latimer has just uploaded a BR revised version of the activity. You could try downloading and running that one instead and see if it fixes the problems.

welshdragon · Post by **welshdragon** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 5:23 pm

Laurie,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I am using the D/L version of TM and have done all the things mentioned in the Readme file.

When you say remove the 'AI Morning Mail' srv, I am no whizzo when it comes to some things but I clicked on Edit in the Traffic Pattern of AE and then in 'Traffic pattern box' and 'Pieces of traffic' there was a 'Modern Mail - 8:0:0' piece of traffic so I then in 'Select service' found it and deleted it but only to find it also removes it from the Player Service on the right hand side of 'Player' and when I went to run it in MSTS it just freezes.

I don't know if this was the correct way of doing it. I have tried Bob's version but exactly the same result.

Works OK in Explore Mode but obviously no realism setup as per Activity.

Regards

Alan

dforrest · Post by **dforrest** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 5:50 pm

Lad491 wrote:Firstly the player service doesn't start on the move so you should start sitting at the platform, stationary with brake applied etc.
You certainly shouldn't be moving - forwards or backwards

Im wondering if what you are seeing is the duplicated service mentioned by Martin Ford above. Did you try removing the duplicated 08:00 mail service from the AI list of trains?

I had this same problem (activity starting "on the move" and no control over what appeared to be the player loco). This was remedied as soon as I removed the duplicated (AI) service. I edited the section out of the .act file.

.

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 8:19 pm

Alan

If you open the activity in the activity editor and then click on edit in the AI traffic section at the bottom right hand side of the screen, you should get a window open with all the AI services shown. Scroll down to the 08:00 Modern Mail service, click once on it and then right click. You should have an option to delete. Click delete and resave the activity. It sounds like you've deleted the player service, if you have you will have to reinstall the activity first again.

That hopefully will stop the starting on the move problem

Its weird that i didnt have that problem on my PC, which was why i didnt spot the duplicated service