GW or FGW loco-hauled MK3 coaching stock?

[sn5775]

Hi all,

I've having problems building consists of loco-hauled MK3 coaches in either the new Great Western (GW) or previous First Great Western (FGW) liveries.

I have found Class 57 locomotives in both GW and FGW liveries but the only loco-hauled MK3 coaches I can find are the Night Riviera SLP/SLEP coaches.

I have quite a few Class 43/HST coaches in these liveries but these only couple to the Class 43 and when I try to couple them to the Class 57 in the quick drive consist builder I receive the error message "coupling issue click here to move to problem" - I'm aware that the '43 uses different couplings to other locomotives - is there anyway around this in the game?. Is this related to the "allow all coupling" option in settings, which is enabled?

If possible, what I would like to do is to create a quick drive consist based on the Night Riviera sleeper formation with a Class 57 leading, followed by a pair of MK3 standard seated coaches, a buffet coach and a few sleeper coaches?

Many thanks in advance for any help.

Kind regards.

[gptech]

Have a look at the UKTS Coaches Freepack; there may be loco hauled versions of the coaches you want in there. If not, it really is a simple edit to a copied .bin file to swap the couplings over so if you need to create your own somebody will be able to give you instructions.

[Oldpufferspotter]

In the long distant past I have changed couplings on some coaches and wagons. For what they are worth, here are my brief instructions to myself on how to do it again:

TO ALTER ALIASES FOR MISSING COUPLINGS ON US STOCK IN RAIL SIMULATOR (yes it was that long ago!)

If couplings fail to show up on American rolling stock, find the main .bin file for that wagon or coach, drag it over the serz.exe short cut to create a .xml file, then open the .xml file with RSBinTool, and alter the following lines:

RailSimulatorUS\Couplings\Buckeye\Type-E\buckeye_type_e_coupling.xml</BlueprintID
to:
RailSimulator\Couplings\Buckeye\Default\buckeye_default_coupling.xml</BlueprintID

There are two occurrences of this line.

Close and save the .xml file, then drag it over the serz.exe again to convert it back to a .bin file.

Hope this might set you on the right road...

[gptech]

The right road for U.S locos, but not for U.K stock. The line needs changing to whatever coupling is referenced on other coaches. No need to serz the .bin either if you use RW Tools, just open, edit and save.

[sn5775]

Thank you for the replies.

I did take a look at the UKTS freeware coaches pack but unfortunately this didn't appear to have what I'm looking for.

Is it possible for me to make a copy of an existing MK3 HST passenger coach before changing the couplings on the copy, so that I have both HST and loco-hauled versions of the same coach?

If this is possible, what would be the easiest way of going about this?

I have RW Tools.

Many thanks again for the help.

[gptech]

If this is possible, what would be the easiest way of going about this?

I have RW Tools

Copy the .bin for whichever coach you're working on and rename that copy to include something that denotes it's a loco hauled version---MK3_TSO.bin would become MK3_TSO_Loco.bin for example.

Open that new file in RW Tools and change the descriptive name to also reflect that it's a loco hauled version; without editing this line it won't show in game as only 1 of any .bin files with the same descriptive field will show, though which one is more pot luck than anything.

Not too far below this field is the section that deals with the couplings. The path to the coupling file needs changing, as outlined earlier to the same coupling used by the standard coaches. You may also need to change the numerical values in the positional section below the path.

Easiest way to do this is to open an already edited .bin from the freepack and copy and paste the section in it's enitirety.

I'm not at a TS enabled PC so I can't be specific as to file names, paths or numerical values I'm afraid, but the sections you'd be editing are all pretty self evident and near the top of the .bin document.