MattH2580 wrote:The Grand Central Railway has caught my eye a few times, but I have neither the Isle of Wight or Somerset & Dorset sadly.
davep wrote:and I would wish (at least) some route builders would only take account of free stuff available.
It's a perennial problem, or at least a problem for those new to the game, but you have to consider that many of those building routes have been with the game quite a while, and honing their skills to bring us the best thay can. Because they're often veteran users they'll have the routes that were once 'default' (S&D, formerly known as Bath-Teplecombe) and the IOW has
always been widely used--it was probably the first large add on for the game and was eagerly snapped up.
The poor guys are really in a no-win situation; on one hand they get slammed for using DLC assets but if they didn't they'd get slammed for not using the
best assets available.
If the trackwork and signalling from a payware route are used you have very little choice but to get the route but if it's scenery objects that have been used luckily RW Tools (
http://www.rstools.info/downloads.html) can be your best friend. Not an ideal situation, granted, but as the download and installation of a free (lets not have the old discussion about how much the internet connection or the electricity used costs please) route is ....well, free it only costs you time to download (let the PC do it overnight---you lose next to nothing then) and install it, and then run it through RW Tools to see what's actually missing. Many scenery objects have been duplicated across DLC routes too, so you may find you don't have ..\Assets\SouthOfEnglandRoute\DetachedHouse.bin but you do have ..\Assets\JustSlightlyMoreNorthThanTheSouthOfEnglandRoute\DetachedHouse.bin which is exactly the same model; maybe with a new frock on but a model that will do the job nicely.
Even with what seems to be a huge list of missing items generated by RW Tools you can often run a route without realising anything is missing, OK if you fly about the route and drop into that housing estate 200 yards from the track you might find a few 'milk bottles' (a milk bottle denotes a missing scenery item) but in many cases you'd be surprised how good a supposedly 'incomplete' route can be.
- but if you look up the south downs lines though that would be an updated one !) - if its still mentioned there of course! Edit - It seems that the East Kent Branch Line disappeared (it was 5th in the second challenge)
