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Post by Tom Goodrick on Apr 6, 2009 9:51:02 GMT -5
Yesterday I gave my energetic shopping team - wife and elder son are recreational shoppers - $12 with a request they buy a copy of the new TRAINZ RAILROAD SIMULATOR. I decided it would be nice on our new laptop computer. The memory on my desktop computer that also flies is almost filled up. They found it and gave me $5 change. A total of $7! It is on DVD so it includes all that was previously on a 5-CD set. It is confusing a little in that it says TRAINZ 2008 in one place on the software and TS2006 elswhere. Anyway it is an improvement over the version I last ran on WIN98. This runs fine in VISTA so far. I did have a fair amount of trouble trying to start some of the preset scenarios. But I put together a small layout just to run a few trains and things went well. I did have some trouble trying to move some track joints to fair the curves through turnouts.
So far I have been able to pull 17 freight cars with one SD-40 on level land with no difficulty. My old version blew up when you touched the 13th car.
I have not yet connected online to see about downloading rolling stock. You must set up a special browser to contact Planet Auran.
There are two new features I really like. First they have included some steam locos in the default equipment - a UP Big Boy (4-8-8-2) and a Denver (2-6) They look and sound great whether chugging slowly in the yard or running at speed through the country with the long plume of smoke carrying back over the train in a very realistic fashion. Second, you can place rolling stock in Surveyor mode so that the trains are ready to run when you start Driver mode. (There is no intermediate train placement mode.) This makes it nice when completing track in an outlying area to place some stock on it.
There are two driver modes. In the cab mode, you have real controls and real-world physics. I have not tried this because I have work to do to get the track laid well-enough. I like the DCC mode which has the same easy controls that I am used to from the old program and has easier physics so the big locos and long cars won't derail moving at 8 mph over some rough turnouts.
When you fail to grab a track node for moving it, you hear a double clicking sound. That sound becomes extremely annoying as you fail to grasp the node anyway you try. I have had to delete track and re-do it to straighten turnouts as the track quickly sticks just after being laid.
The default scenery and rolling stock has a greater variety than before. They finally figured out we have cattle here in the US and not just buffalo and horses.
The program evaluates your system when it loads. Mine is barely acceptable with its .895 GHz CPU. But it has been running very well with one train at a time. On my old Dell I can run 9 trains at once with good motion. We'll see how that goes. I don't have the best video chip set on the Toshiba laptop.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Apr 11, 2009 10:33:17 GMT -5
I have some news to report about this version of Trainz.
I was able to pull a freight with the 4-8-8-4 Big Boy that had 64 cars. That was all I had in the yard. It could have pulled more.
There seems to be no auto pilot. Thus, you can't run several trains simultaneously. This is very unfortunate. I was able to run 9 trainz simultaneously on the layout I built a couple months ago using the older version. I would have 9 trains on autopilot while I ran a tenth train operating on manual between the yard and some industries. That made for some very interesting situations. With the autopilot, you can set speed limits on blocks and use block signals. The speed limits will keep trains on schedule and will avoid crashes on tight-radius turns. Block signals cause trains to slow down or stop if a slower train is in the block ahead.
The new version has new road types but no new driving logic. There are some fancy-looking boulevards complete with constructed four-way and three-way intersections. But the constructed intersections do not change any traffic logic. There are no turns allowed at intersections. On T-intersections, the cars from the side road simply disappear when they get to the center.
At least you can make roads with a variety of looks from dirt country roads to freeways. I like to have a road system that complements the rail system so the setup looks alive. I use the left-turn logic (?) to force traffic conjestion in parts of the system. By " left turn logic" I mean that when given a choice of a left turn or straight ahead at any intersection you make, cars always turn left. This even works with the new four-lane roads where a car proceeding down the boulevard will jump left across two lanes of traffic to exit on the opposite side. Where the designers got that logic beats me. (The software was designed in Europe.) You can use this logic, however, to collect cars in an interior section onto perpetual loops. This creates conjestion.
Another problem with the cars and trucks is they move very slowly - about 25 mph even on the highways. I tried fixing this with speedlimit signs for the roads but had no luck.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Apr 13, 2009 21:03:22 GMT -5
Well, guess what! This version of Trainz has an airport and it is operational in all respects. Airplanes fly in and out, taxi around and even taxi into cargo hangars. There is a built in train track for moving/removing cargo and for supplying jet fuel. There is another built in track that holds four 80ft passenger coaches for passengers waiting in a covered area. The neat thing is seeing aircraft flying while you are driving trains around.
There are some other operating industries. I have found no container-carrying cars. But there is a container operation that loads containers onto flat cars that you supply. These are special PRR flat cars marked with a green arrow in the menu that means they participate in industry operations. The only operation I have witnessed is a big forklift that stacks containers whether they need stacking or not. But when you start the "Driver" operation to drive trains, four containers are automatically placed on some flat cars.
There is supposed to be a way of setting up operating industries to control the rate of flow of cargo. But it does not work on my machine.
One other feature that is nice is the "roving eye." This works in Driver mode like the eye works in Surveyor mode. You right click on a space ahead adn the eye moves to that are. Then it rotates and tilts as you click the arrow keys. Then it stays fixed to watch the train go by.
Unfortunately, a feature from earlier versions was carried over - earthquakes. These occur as you work on scenery, making the layout more complex. They cause derailments where the track was demonstrated to be smooth earlier. Thus after any scenery addition you have to check all runs to make sure no derailments occur. Tracks and roads that were straight and flat get wavy even though you did no work near those spots. This is particularly troublesome near road crossings.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Apr 14, 2009 9:24:28 GMT -5
The Container Industry does actually load containers onto the flat cars. You use a locomotive to pull the flat cars into position below a gantry and a container pops from the storage area onto the car. You can fill a whole row of cars. There are two sets of tracks for this on one side of the storage area. Then next question is how do you get them off? There is a tird set of tracks on the opposite side of the storage area marked for cargo unloading. But so far I have not been able to get them to take a container off the car. There is no gantry over that track. These are portable gantry cranes. I may be able to install a crane over that track.
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Post by Bill Von Sennet on Apr 14, 2009 14:45:58 GMT -5
I have a port with a ship. A gantry takes the containers from the train and moves them over the ship before they disappear.
My version is Trains2004
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Apr 14, 2009 19:18:05 GMT -5
Thanks for the idea. That is probably in this version. I have a north/south layout in the middle of the US. Maybe the south end can be on the Tennessee River (where I have seen barges with containers) or the Gulf Coast if the ship is too big.
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Post by MrHobbit on May 1, 2009 16:26:28 GMT -5
Hi Tom: I sent you a private message...... Don't know if you got it.
Just looking for help with Trainz 2009.
Eddy (MrHobbit bgak013)
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Post by Tom Goodrick on May 2, 2009 10:42:07 GMT -5
I read your private message and will be glad to answer it here since others probably have similar questions. As I am 65 going on 66, you can see that you are probably old enough as well to play with these trains all by yourself. But you will have questions on getting started and i will try to answer them either here or by email (click the mail icon under my photo).
I do not know a great amount about Trainz but just enough to help you get going with it so you can learn too. It installed on my new laptop with no problems. My laptop has Vista and is a minimal system as modern day computers go. It has no memory on the graphics card but shares graphics in the 3 Gig RAM. This software "measures" the capability of your system as you load it and tells you if you should expect any problems. It incorrectly measured my CPU at 0.895 GHz (the computer claims it has 2 GHZ speed) and rated my system as "marginal." It runs pretty good but as I load my layout with goodies it does reduce the frame rates in some busy areas. It seems best to distribute the fancy stuff (ie- scenery that "operates") along the route instead of in one big city.
I have not been able to operate all of the features. It comes with a number of layouts that you should be able to just start operating. I have not had success, perhaps, because i don't understand the new procedures for instructing engineers to operate the locos. I like to just take control of a loco myself and drive it around.
I suggest you just start making a "layout' for yourself. The program has two modes: Surveyor Mode and Driver Mode. In Surveyor mode, you set up a layout and edit it. You also place rolling stock only in this mode. Driver Mode is where you actually operate the trains. If you have "operating scenery" it operates only in Driver Mode.
You begin a layout in Surveyor Mode looking at a flat gray table top that is about 1 mile square. You see a menu of tools on the right and a 3-D position indicator in the center of your view. You can zoom in or out with the mouse roller and can rotate your view with the arrow keys. Pointing the mouse and right clicking moves the 3-D position icon which only serves to aid your view of the layout. The terrain tool lets you make bumps for hills or dips for lakes/ponds/rivers or ocean shores. A water tool lets you fill dips with water to a certain level. If you move to the edge of the square, you can create an adjacent square. A paint tool lets you color parts of the landscape. A track tool lets you lay track. A scenery tools lets you place trees, animals, people, buildings, etc.
Begin with a simple and basic plan and then get fancy as you go. I have made several good layouts using the basic idea of a very long and thin loop for mainline track (it looks like dual mainline track with the ends in small loops separated by many miles). Then I hang various side tracks at points along it making some operating complexity. I make the loop available to a passenger trains as well as freight trains. I still have a lot to learn about operating trains in this new program. An earlier version allowed "autopilot" operation where you set out speed limit signs which controlled the speed of trains on different parts of the layout and block signals. This way you could put four trains on one loop and they would operate continuously without conflict while you either watched or ran operations on side yards off the loop. There may be a way of doing that in this version if you give proper instructions to each engineer.
But I built my layout to work on, not just to look at.
This version has "operating Scenery." Examples are foresters who continually cut down trees (and re-grow them) making logs for you to pick up, wood mills that make lumber and wood chips from the logs, pulp wood mills that make various products like furniture from the pulp wood, airports with cargo and passenger service, shipping ports moving cargo and peopl and various sources for "general goods' that come in boxes fitting on flat cars, and freight container systems that provide or consume containers. These can be placed to provide some order to your freight operations. You use a lot of open cars - flat cars and gondolas.
In my present layout, I have three towns - North Town, Middle Town and South Town. At north Town there is a logging operation, several warehouses producing goods, and various box cars exchanged with a phantom connecting line. At Middletown there is a wood mill that recieves the logs and produces lumber and chips. There is an airport that produces goods, people and uses fuel oil. There is a large container producer that takes in goods and puts out containers. Just south of this area is a pulp mill that takes in chips and puts out general goods. Southtown has a shipping port that takes lumber, logs, goods, containers and brings in oil of various types including jet and diesel fuel.
There are plenty of types of locomotives including steam and diesel. You can download more rolling stock from a place on the Web. The steam locos are particularly interesting. I have two steam locos I use for fun but I run mainly F7A, 7B and GP-38 diesles in Milwaukee Road colors. I have two neat yard diesels borrowed from Canada for lumber operations.
In surveyor mode you just place these locos and cars on the track you lay. I recommend laying track first on the flat areas before adding scenery and topography. If you accidently raise some track while making hills, you can easily reset the track levels as desired. Or you can leave a mild slope in place. When laying track, you lay down strips 100-400 ft long, leaving points to which you can attach other track. You can move those points as needed. Double track can be laid as one strip. there will be some frustration as the end of a strip connects itself to existing track when you did not want it to. Sometimes you leave an end well out away from adjacent track and then move it in later. Deletions and redos are common.
Start small, operate a little and then build gradually. Eventually you'll be hauling 60 cars over rivers with fancy bridges acorss deep canyons and between steep hills.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on May 3, 2009 9:28:25 GMT -5
I tried making screen prints of parts of my layout to show what you can expect. The visual realism is very impressive. But no screen prints turned out. They come out all black! This is Vista which is strange in many ways but I pasted the screen prints into Paint which should have shown them. It shows other screen prints i make on the same computer. I don't know what the story is here but it is very disappointing.
By the way when you start a "layout" you must choose a scale. O, HO and N are possible choices. But "Real Scale" is also a choice. Then everything is in either feet or meters as you choose. When you view the railroad from beyond the edge of a section, it appears as though built on a table top in someones gigantic basement. But my layout measures about 28 miles long based on travel time.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on May 5, 2009 10:29:37 GMT -5
Operations are what maintain our interest in a layout after the novelty of constructing it has passed. When first laying track, you only need a broad sense of what the operations will be like. It is easy to rip up track and re-do it as needed to make operations more reasonable. I have done that with this layout in several places. Unlike with lectronic layouts you build in a basement or garage, these layouts can have reversing loops and Y-reversals with no complication in operation. Also there is no maintenance so you can use a lot of track.
The operating scenery is very helpful in adding clear functionality to part of a layout. The types of operations include timber, lumber, wood chips, general goods, inter-modal containers, coal, ore mines and oil. You can easily make one of these the main theme of the layout. When you select any scenery object, a picture of it appears below the selection menu. If it operates there is a special icon indicating operability. The same applies to rolling stock. This picture does little to tell you about the object. If it is slightly interesting, find an empty place on the layout and set it down. This will show its scale and will make clear where the connecting tracakge is located so you know how to integrate it with your layout. You will find signs you can read that help such as "Deliver General Goods here". But you will not find the needed details for operation until you approach the object in Driver mode. Then you can point to it and do Ctrl-H (a note tells you what you press if not H) to open a window that shows how much of what type of cargo the object can handle per day. I have yet to figure what the quantities really mean (carloads, boxes ?).
Some operations are straight forward such as the timber-lumber-chips-goods operation. You take timber wagons (cars) to the plces in the forest where men are cutting down trees and a fork lift is piling up logs. You back them in on the track and stop each car in front of the piled logs. The logs appear on the cars. You take them to the mill to the track for delivery og logs. The logs disappear from the cars and go onto a pile. Then you move an open chip gondola under a chute and it fills with chips. Also at the mill, neat parcels of cut lumber appear that will load onto special flat cars. (One place to take these is to the dock area for loading on a ship.) The chip cars go to a pulp mill where they are turned into general goods or "boxes" which load onto special flat cars.
Last night I was trying to pick up and distribute General Goods. They can be taken to the airport where they are loaded onto cargo planes, to the container facility where they are put into inter-modal containers (ship, rail, truck) and to ware houses from which they can also be picked up.
This operation with general goods and warehouses proved to be far from simple. I have yet to work it out completely. The problem is that goods go both ways - out of the warehouse and into it. I started by backing a long line of empty flat cars next to three warehouses in a row. As soon as the last flat car was in front of the last warehouse, I stopped and a bunch of boxes appeared on several cars. My plan was to move the empty cars in front of the warehouses until all were filled. But as I moved them slowly, some loaded boxes disappeared. I had to pull all the cars out and sort loaded cars to one track and empties to another. This process was repeated until I had about 18 loaded cars for a trip all the way from North town to South Town for loading on the ship.
Having taken nearly an hour to form up this train, I was less than thrilled when it crashed at the last turnout leaving the yard because I failed to set the turnout properly. This turbout problem takes some practice and some re-design of the layout. You can set turnouts in two ways. You can pop from "driver' mode wher you ride the lead diesel (either inside view or following external view) to a free mode in which you can jump around the layout much as you do in Surveyor mode. Then you can get near the turnouts and set the switches for a given operation. To get back in a diesel you simply point at the diesel and click. Each turnout control shows a red and green arrow. To change the setting you click on one of the arrows. But there are several aspects to this.
1) First the turnout pattern must be designed with adjacent switches so that it is clear which way the train will go for an arrow. Sometimes this can get confusing.
2) Second, if any car or loco is withing a certain distance (which might vary) of the turnout, the turnout will not operate.
3) Third, as seen from your perspective, you may point clearly to one arrow and an arrow for a turnout closer to you changes.
If you try to move through a turnout that is set the wrong way, the train crashes and will remain so until you quit and restart in Driver mode. All work is lost. But it is also possible to save incremental work in steps so you can get back in to the latest saved step when starting Driver mode.
Now back to those boxes - juxt one more story. I had a bunch of empty flat cars parked next to a big warehous - maybe 7 cars. I brought a loco around to hook up with them. Boxes were sitting on the loading docks ready to go. As the couplings touched and the loco stopped, all cars were filled with boxes. I started to move away but went the Wrong Way (not easy to remember). I stopped to go the proper direction and then all cars became empty again. That had completed the day's activity for that warehouse. I could not get another box out of it!
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Post by Tom Goodrick on May 5, 2009 19:04:03 GMT -5
I had a good experience working with the boxes today. You just have to start with flat cars outside the area of the warehouse, move enough in to sit next to the entire loading dock, stop and then leave. (Remember which way to move the throttle to leave!)
I filled up 21 cars from two warehouses and moved them to the airport and the container depot. The goods were gobbled up. Those at the airport were loaded onto a big jet and took off.
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Post by MrHobbit on May 7, 2009 12:50:50 GMT -5
WOW Tom:!!!! You are something else!! Your post are chuck full of info on TRAINZ! I can see that I need not go any further then right here to get all infomation on TRAINZ that I need. I've got a TRAINZ Program on hold and waiting to see if that is a good way to go. You'll see the info in another note. This looks like it's going to be very interesting. Okay......... Later. Eddy (MrHobbit) I had a good experience working with the boxes today. You just have to start with flat cars outside the area of the warehouse, move enough in to sit next to the entire loading dock, stop and then leave. (Remember which way to move the throttle to leave!) I filled up 21 cars from two warehouses and moved them to the airport and the container depot. The goods were gobbled up. Those at the airport were loaded onto a big jet and took off.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on May 7, 2009 23:18:19 GMT -5
Well, I have not had much else to do lately. That is changing now as I will be publishing more music.
I got your email this morning on my other (old) computer and tried answering but the computer crapped out. You mentioned waiting for the new MS Train Sim. I won't repeat all the bad things I said about Microsoft (that is probably what crapped out the computer). But I think for less than $10 at Target Stores, this Trainz will beat anything M$ puts out there.
Yesterday I added a coal mine on on a hill, a coal-burning power plant and an oil refinery. These provide things used by all other industries.
With the oil comes a need for marked oil tankers to use for different oil products. Soon I will attempt to use the PaintShop built into this sim to paint some tankers.
The only problem I have is my wife has many things she likes to do on this shared computer. I only get it late at night.
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Post by MrHobbit on May 8, 2009 8:58:08 GMT -5
Hi Tom: No........ NOT MS Train Sim.......... I'm ordering TRAINZ2009. I will order it today. I'll let you know what i think of it when i get it. I hope it's the same one you have. Thanks Eddy Well, I have not had much else to do lately. That is changing now as I will be publishing more music. I got your email this morning on my other (old) computer and tried answering but the computer crapped out. You mentioned waiting for the new MS Train Sim. I won't repeat all the bad things I said about Microsoft (that is probably what crapped out the computer). But I think for less than $10 at Target Stores, this Trainz will beat anything M$ puts out there. Yesterday I added a coal mine on on a hill, a coal-burning power plant and an oil refinery. These provide things used by all other industries. With the oil comes a need for marked oil tankers to use for different oil products. Soon I will attempt to use the PaintShop built into this sim to paint some tankers. The only problem I have is my wife has many things she likes to do on this shared computer. I only get it late at night.
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Post by MrHobbit on May 8, 2009 10:44:01 GMT -5
Hi Tom: I just went onto TRAINZ WEB Site and was going to order Trainz2009 DVD but they wanted far too much for shiping and handeling. Almost $7:00!! So.... I'll simply wait till it comes out in the Software stores. $7.00 for mailing a product that cost less then $30:00 is ridiculous. Thanks anyway Tom. Back to Flight Sims till then. Eddy
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