Help getting Trainz & Thomas for my son

M

mattblox0808

New member
I am in DESPERATE NEED OF HELP!! my 8 yr old son is a big fan of Thomas and friends as well as Roblox. He joined Roblox 2 yrs ago and he has gotten quite good at it. he loves to play and create thomas train games....he also spends A LOT OF TIME ON YOUTUBE watching Thomas and friends videos and recently saw some "Trainz" videos that said "Sodor workshops" and he wants to "go on Trainz" so badly!!! I googled Sodor workshops and found this site and created an account for him but I don't have a clue of what to do next!!! I have read a little bit about "trainz" trying to understand what it is exactly and I can't even figure that much out!! There are so many different "Trainz" sites and versions and I am so confused! WILL SOME ONE OUT THERE PLEASE HELP ME???!!! I found this "Trainz" site and registered my son so now we have an account but I'm still lost as far as what I need to do or what I need to buy or download so that we can go on the "Thomas" sites like Sodor workshops and download the trains ect.
I am concerned that this will be too advanced for an 8 yr old child and I can't find any type of tutorials or help pages for people who have never used "Trainz" or even any info about the suggested age range....
ANY HELP/GUIDANCE WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!! My son is asking me every hour on the hour if I "figured it out yet" I am feeling the pressure!!! 8)

Thanks!
M.I.
(for Mattblox0808)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You can buy Trainz here: https://store.trainzportal.com/

There are several versions of Trainz available, the latest being Trainz: A New Era (T:ANE) and TMR17 which is the same software but with a different content set. The other version to consider is the previous version Trainz Simulator 2012, which will run on lower spec computers. The other products on the store are mainly additional content that can be added to the above games.

Once you have downloaded and installed Trainz you can start adding additional trains and routes which can be got from a variety of places. There are plenty of websites offering Thomas content as well as lots of real trains too.
 
Step one is what sort of computer do you have? If its a recent desktop with a GTX 1050 then think in terms of TANE. If its a laptop without directx 11 then TS12 is better. Either software is fairly demanding in terms of computer specs.

Step two will be how much patience do you have? It fairly complex software and although many four and five year olds use it they need some sort of technical support to get the best out of it.

Have fun

Cheerio John
 
thank you for responding, I haven't purchased Trainz yet because I was confused by all the different versions!
to answer the question about what kind of computer....my son has a Toshiba Satellite laptop.
so I need to purchase one of the Trainz versions and download it first....I will get the "trainz 2009"??

Thanks again everyone!!
I will let you know how step 1 goes.....

M.Izzy
(for Mattblox0808)
 
The oldest version I would suggest getting is Trainz 2012.

2009 isn't bad, but it's a few generations old at this point & most content being made these days isn't going to work with it. Conversely Trainz A New Era (TANE) is new enough that there is still quite a lot of people making content capable of being run in 2012.

Since you're primarily concerned about TTE stuff, you might check in with SI3D & see what version their stuff is made for; (for the most part) older stuff will work fine in newer versions of the game. (So if they say it's made for 2009, it should work in 2012).

peter

Mod Note: I rewrote your thread title to be a little more clear as to what you're asking. "Please Help" titles are easily overlooked/ignored.
 
I have an old Toshiba Satellite 105 that barely runs TRS2006 with choppy framerates of 0.5 to 13 FPS, and because it has Integrated Graphics, and has no real video card, it will not play TS09, TS10, TS12 ... nor T:ANE (which requires a 64bit PC)

Most low end, and Integrated Graphics, laptops will not run any Trainz version ... And Toshiba Satellite is not even close to being a very minimum spec PC

Even if you go out to the local BigBox Store and buy a new laptop, none of their off the shelf laptops, that have no actual video card, will run any version of Trainz, without extremely bad choppy framerates, as almost all BigBox Stores laptops have low end hardware inside

I know a guy that had a $1200 HP DV7, and it fried itself inside
 
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Just a little apology for what was said earlier...I'm sorry for that comment. It was very insensible and irrational as the mood I was in at the moment of reading this thread was very, very, VERY dark. I will curb that. If it helps, I have found a crap ton of Thomas and Friends related Trainz websites I can show you. Just throw me a pm or ask here and I'll help you out. Edit- Actually, I have some here. Sodor Workshops, Hilltrack Trainz, Si3D (they have 2 websites that are up.) my personal website which is available in my profile, and some more.....
 
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SI3D and Sodor Workshops are 2 great sites that usually have some great thomas content for train. My site has some characters you won't find anywhere else, plus I've made some other nice model for trainz as well. Click my signature to visit my trainz site!
 
fourteen said:
What web sites did you find that had Thomas stuff? my son wants to run them in game. Thanks. I see https://www.sodorworkshops.com/ and http://si3d.co.nr/ maybe cant see that site on this computer. http://ministerfarrigut.wixsite.com/simhub/routes your web site?
Click to expand...
Yes it's mine. The routes are all mine, but I used objects from Si3D and #1TFM, another great Thomas content site. Those are old routes, and I plan on updating most of them soon, so I suggest checking in every other day to see if they are updated. They are pretty good I will say. I make small ones because Sodor Island 3D made a HUGE Island of Sodor route and released it. It was too big for my computer, but I liked the detail. So I made new, smaller routes that didn't make the computer work so hard. My main interest in trainz though is screenshotting, as you can see from my Gallery. I have no idea how many I have, but there are a lot. Good luck!
 
ditto

mattblox0808 said:
I am in DESPERATE NEED OF HELP!! my 8 yr old son is a big fan of Thomas and friends as well as Roblox. He joined Roblox 2 yrs ago and he has gotten quite good at it. he loves to play and create thomas train games....he also spends A LOT OF TIME ON YOUTUBE watching Thomas and friends videos and recently saw some "Trainz" videos that said "Sodor workshops" and he wants to "go on Trainz" so badly!!! I googled Sodor workshops and found this site and created an account for him but I don't have a clue of what to do next!!! I have read a little bit about "trainz" trying to understand what it is exactly and I can't even figure that much out!! There are so many different "Trainz" sites and versions and I am so confused! WILL SOME ONE OUT THERE PLEASE HELP ME???!!! I found this "Trainz" site and registered my son so now we have an account but I'm still lost as far as what I need to do or what I need to buy or download so that we can go on the "Thomas" sites like Sodor workshops and download the trains ect.
I am concerned that this will be too advanced for an 8 yr old child and I can't find any type of tutorials or help pages for people who have never used "Trainz" or even any info about the suggested age range....
ANY HELP/GUIDANCE WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!! My son is asking me every hour on the hour if I "figured it out yet" I am feeling the pressure!!! 8)

Thanks!
M.I.
(for Mattblox0808)
Click to expand...

Hi @mattblox0808

I'm in a remarkably similar situation and I finally got Thomas and friends into Trainz: A New Era. It was surprisingly easy.

Purchase the game and just download 2012 Thomas trains from https://www.si3d.co.uk/. I went to the Locos Menu and chose Standard Gauge
(You have to download the files to see what version (year) they are sometimes.)
Run the Trainz launcher and choose Manage Content.
From Content Manager select Import Content... and tell it where to find the .cdp files you just downloaded https://www.si3d.co.uk/.
That's it.

All the 2012 models have worked, but anything else gets errors in the Content Manager and won't work.

Good luck.

n0rt
 
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trainz a new era requires a lot of fixing for the thomas content. I've had to fix a lot of the much older stuff for 2010, but that stuff works in new era now. As for the 09, 2010, 2012 models, those are mostly not working due to .texture.txt.
 
Zeldaboy14 said:
trainz a new era requires a lot of fixing for the thomas content. I've had to fix a lot of the much older stuff for 2010, but that stuff works in new era now. As for the 09, 2010, 2012 models, those are mostly not working due to .texture.txt.
Click to expand...

Use PEV's Image2tga program to convert them to tga + texture.txt files, delete the texture files, then they should be OK in TANE unless there are other faults.
 
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