Archive of content from Trainz Pro Routes?

H

Hectorama501

New member
While revisiting some older versions of Trainz, specifically TS09 and TS10, I decided to look through older routes from that time to run. However, a good chunk of them require dependencies that used to be on the website Trainz Pro Routes which, to my knowledge, shut down in 2019.
As such, I'd like to know if there is any archive available with the content that used to be present on that site or if someone here happens to still have everything from over there downloaded. Either way, that would be an immense help and greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Hector.
 
Content from the TPR site is still copyrighted by the creators and therefore can't be shared without their permission. Several of them are active in this community and have uploaded stuff to the DLS over the years. Search on the DLS for the user jkeenan and you will find many of the TPR items legally.

Trainz Pro Routes required a valid Trainz account to login in. This was to prevent people using pirated versions of Trainz from having access to their content.
 
Everybody knows copyrights and intelectual property laws and there is really no need to cuckoo it every time when someone asks for help. According to the previous inutile annoying nagging useless ever-reccuring post all the wayback is illegal pirating company then.
 
Thanks for reminding me.

In the list of violations of the Code of Conduct is:

15. Giving, discussing, requesting, or linking to information that is either directly or indirectly related to obtaining pirated or unauthorised copyrighted materials, unauthorised access to secure sites or circumvention of digital rights management.

And as per the MyTrainz Agreement,
(g) A breach of the Code of Conduct is a breach of this Agreement.

I strongly suggest that everyone take the time to read and understand the MyTrainz Agreement. It is a legally binding agreement that governs how you can use the services offered by N3V Games and the actions that N3V Games can take if you breach the agreement.

MyTrainz Agreement | Trainz Simulator

The MyTrainz Agreement is a binding contract between users and N3V Games for accessing MyTrainz Accounts, Trainz Forum, Trainz Software, and Trainz Plus. It requires responsible use, account security, and compliance with the Code of Conduct. The Agreement covers data privacy, intellectual...
www.trainzsimulator.com www.trainzsimulator.com
 
If the stuff is no longer legally available, and one downloads or has a route which has missing content from TPR, what do you do then? Trainz has no way of knowing what kind of asset an unknown kuid is. It's a pain to do the workaround to replace missing assets and you can only do that if you know what type of assets the missing assets are, buildings, track, roads, scenery, signs, etc. The closing of TPR made all routes with content from them broken with missing assets. I think farejoint's NEC routes use buildings from them made by dmdrake that are unavailable anywhere else. Fortunately, I had them in Trainz 12 and imported copies of them over to Trainz 19. Same thing with Trainz Commuter Rail downloads when they were forced onto tapatalk from zetaboards most of the content in the download section was lost but they got back some NJT, etc. content and now working download links were found of most of the content on wayback archive. I found buildings by Gandalf (Mike) that I thought were gone for good. This is the big problem with Trainz and third party sites that just disappear. Routes that used content from defunct sites are broken unless the content can be obtained some other way, like wayback, but if that fails then you have to ask around but that could be against the rules unless it is content which is allowed to be shared. I have routes with missing content that I just can't find, google kuid index, I feel like just deleting those routes. Some of them are DLS routes that used some third party content or built-in content that isn't in newer Trainz versions or even packaged or payware content. At least with missing assets you can click on the kuid in cm and see who the author is and if they are alive and active in Trainz, send them a message.
 
Last edited:
wreeder said:
Thanks for reminding me.

In the list of violations of the Code of Conduct is:

15. Giving, discussing, requesting, or linking to information that is either directly or indirectly related to obtaining pirated or unauthorised copyrighted materials, unauthorised access to secure sites or circumvention of digital rights management.

And as per the MyTrainz Agreement,
(g) A breach of the Code of Conduct is a breach of this Agreement.

I strongly suggest that everyone take the time to read and understand the MyTrainz Agreement. It is a legally binding agreement that governs how you can use the services offered by N3V Games and the actions that N3V Games can take if you breach the agreement.

MyTrainz Agreement | Trainz Simulator

The MyTrainz Agreement is a binding contract between users and N3V Games for accessing MyTrainz Accounts, Trainz Forum, Trainz Software, and Trainz Plus. It requires responsible use, account security, and compliance with the Code of Conduct. The Agreement covers data privacy, intellectual...
www.trainzsimulator.com www.trainzsimulator.com
Click to expand...
Usage of the Wayback Machine is not piracy nor is it a violation of the Trainz CoC. The Wayback Machine is an archival tool used to archive websites. Using the Wayback Machine to access old content websites like TPR, Virtual Motive Division, etc. is not illegal and is often encouraged as a way to obtain previously unavailable freeware assets and dependencies. No material that is paid for is available through the Wayback Machine, only freeware content put out on the web. Downloading freeware content that has been archived is NOT piracy. It was free from the start and continues to be free.

There is also no unauthorized access to websites or circumvention of DRM by using the Wayback Machine, as TrainzProRoutes was online and free to visit and download from for years. The Wayback Machine crawls the internet and archives websites in the name of freedom of information and archiving the internet.

TLDR: It is perfectly legal and acceptable to use the Wayback Machine to obtain previously available content, and does not violate the Trainz CoC or copyright law.
 
But Wayback is no good for TPR because the downloads required a login with your Trainz ID. There is no other way to get non-DLS content from TPR short of asking around.
 
When a creator creates something, they acquire an implied copyright that gives them 100% control of how that creation is distributed. To add to that the MyTrainz Agreement recognizes that copyright to be valid and binding and requires all users to respect the rights of the creator as a condition of use of any service offered by N3V Games.

With regard to the use of the label "freeware" as an attempt to suggest that a creator that allows users to download their creation(s) from their website or from the DLS for free is somehow the same as the creator relinquishing their 100% control of how their creation is distributed is a false assumption. Unless the creator specifically gives users the right to redistribute their copyrighted content either on the their website or in the config.txt file of the asset, that right is not granted by downloading their copyrighted content.

Now we come to web archiving services. You are of the opinion that what they do is legal but yet there are at this moment thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits making their way through court systems all over the world. So clearly not everyone agrees with your opinion. In the case of The Internet Archive which is the parent organization of the web archive, they claim that they have the altruistic purpose of preserving the content of the Internet for future generations. They further claim that they are doing no financial damage to the copyright holders since what they are preserving was made available at no cost in the first place. And as well, they claim no copyright over the content they are preserving and are providing free access to said content. So it seems on the face of the matter that you might have a point. What they are doing might be legal. But the plaintiffs insist on pursuing legal action anyway. Why? It seems to me that their arguments are based on two ideas. First, it was their choice at the time to distribute some of their content for free for a promotional benefit to themselves. For example, JR and RRMods both offer older content on their sites as free downloads to attract people to their sites in hope of converting them to paying customers. From time to time, some of that older content is removed due to it no longer being consider of high enough quality to serve this purpose. The second argument is that a creation that once had low value now has a higher value and by it being distributed by the archive, the creator is denied the exclusive right to profit from it. An example would be a young writer that published short stories on a blog before being discovered and offered a book deal to publish the short stories as a book. The writer takes down the short stories from the blog but the archive continues to distribute the stories without permission. In the Trainz world, this could be seen as a creator choosing to start making payware based upon their older freeware which they rework and update to payware quality. In doing so they removed the older content from the website. RRMods chose to replace the old site with new sites that did not have the older assets available for download. That is their right. The web archive has no right to continue to make the old stuff available to anyone without the creator's permission. Recently, I saw that The Erecting Hall was granted permission to update and release some of the older RRMods content. That is the proper way to do things.
 
My God you don't have to be so annoying about this. I just asked if anyone knew how to find that content because a route that came built in Trainz 2010 required assets that originated from that website. No one's gonna die because a tree asset made in 2003 was shared around 20 years after on a forum because someone needed it. It is really not that deep. Just say it can't be shared and move on, God damn.
 
I think the biggest problem is those who created routes with TPR exclusive content in them and TPR went belly up and the content with it. So, that results in missing assets in routes that can no longer legally be obtained. I can name a couple examples, one of them being farejoint's NEC Baltimore-Wash DC route which has dmdrake Baltimore, etc. buildings from TPR that are not on the DLS or anywhere else. How are people supposed to get the buildings now who download the route from the DLS? I'm lucky I still had them in Trainz 12. I moved on to TANE and now mostly 19 but I also have 22 PE in case there is a route that only works in 22. I only go into 12 to transfer old files into 19.
 
I have been searching for a long time for the SCS2013 system that used to be hosted on Trainz Pro Routes but have not managed to find a copy.

I tried the Wayback machine but, as mentioned above, there are no download depot files retained.

It is a shame, but not surprising given the economic and time pressures that people face nowadays.

Hey ho, back to SCS2006 then!
 
Every problem has its solution. Biggest problem is that people who created and maintained TPR just switched it off without any care about troubles, any of the route creators or just players trying desperately complete all the missing deps to the routes they downloaded from anywhere, could have. They were offered by some others to place the content at their sites for free but they just carelessly switched it off and went to the FU ignore mode. That is it. All is about people. And this issue may be applied in general, for any website gone. Reasons for switching off websites or removing any content is usually being explained by heaps of (sometimes very stupid) excuses but always it is about people being bad mooded or not very good (trumpish like LOL) personalities.
 
JAGG said:
Every problem has its solution. Biggest problem is that people who created and maintained TPR just switched it off without any care about troubles, any of the route creators or just players trying desperately complete all the missing deps to the routes they downloaded from anywhere, could have. They were offered by some others to place the content at their sites for free but they just carelessly switched it off and went to the FU ignore mode. That is it. All is about people. And this issue may be applied in general, for any website gone. Reasons for switching off websites or removing any content is usually being explained by heaps of (sometimes very stupid) excuses but always it is about people being bad mooded or not very good (trumpish like LOL) personalities.
Click to expand...
Or even die without warning sometimes. Some people just don't consider the community at all.

John
 
Hectorama501 said:
require dependencies that used to be on the website Trainz Pro Routes which, to my knowledge, shut down in 2019.
Click to expand...
This harks back to an old discussion about where Trainz items should be stored that are for the benefit of users. The contention was that the creators wanted more control over their freeware creations than the DLS could provide. I never understood what kind of control you could have over something that is given away but that's another issue.
Over the years many third party sites have come and gone. So everyone should be aware that downloading a route that depends on items from a third party site that is gone is asking for trouble in getting those items. If it's still online, better get everything you think you'll ever need or want while it's available. As for the DLS, if it every goes away, we'll have bigger issues to deal with.
On a related topic, if a site is abandoned and someone else takes over the assets, can they maintain any free downloading service that existed on that site?
 
martinvk said:
On a related topic, if a site is abandoned and someone else takes over the assets, can they maintain any free downloading service that existed on that site?
Click to expand...
I would say they can with the permission of the creator. That is what The Erecting Hall does with old content when the creators gives him permission. He has VMD stuff, old RRMods stuff, SPORbust stuff and a few others.
 
Everyone should give serious consideration to a legacy clause in their licensing. None of us will be here forever. My stuff is all free for the taking and using with only the ask that I be credited in any derivative works, but for those who insist on control: consider what worth that will have if your gone - either from this world or just this game.

Some will always insist on being the sad little king of their sad little hill but I suspect many simply never thought of it.

Meanwhile, if you don't have the asset then you don't have the license, it shouldn't be a capitol offense to simply ask.
 
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