MSTS content

[muniman]

Hello everyone, and Happy Holidays!

I know I'm asking on the wrong forums but I don't have anywhere else to ask. I got MSTS for Christmas and I'm looking for a place where I can get good content for it, particularly commuter stuff like NJT, MN, Caltrain, etc. And all those F59PHIs. If anyone knows where I can get those and if anyone has any other content to suggest please tell me.

Thanks!

 

[JCitron]

Hello everyone, and Happy Holidays!

I know I'm asking on the wrong forums but I don't have anywhere else to ask. I got MSTS for Christmas and I'm looking for a place where I can get good content for it, particularly commuter stuff like NJT, MN, Caltrain, etc. And all those F59PHIs. If anyone knows where I can get those and if anyone has any other content to suggest please tell me.

Thanks!

This is definitely the wrong place to ask. Shhhhhhhh! before the lynching mobs come along....

http://www.train-sim.com/

There are many links below for payware and freeware (Mostly payware).
train-sim-com its self has some nice freeware which you'll need to spend time looking for dependencies (sound familiar?). If you don't have them and try to install route that has a lot of them it'll kill the game.

A great set of freeware route here:
http://www.allaboardrails.com/
Also check out Rich's payware route as well the; Canton.
Check out those by Andy Halstead (I think that's his name) at Mapleleaf Tracks.
http://www.mapleleaftracks.com/index1.html
Totally awesome sets of payware routes. His D&H Bridge Route is super. It takes place in the winter and the track is rough. When you get done playing you're actually exhausted trying to fight the train over poor track through Upper State NY. Another goodie is the Cumberland Route Sand Patch Grade.
Anyway enjoy these are really great routes with super content. Those over at Train-Sim vary in quality from totally excellent to mediocre at best.

John

 

[JimDep]

Life is too short to waste on MSTS.

Have fun which ever tracks you take.

 

[Johnk]

Hi muniman. this is also off topic, but are you aware that your signature photo is oversize according to the Trainz CofC. The maximum allowed height is 100 pixels whilst yours is 113. The maximum file size is 30kb and you scrape in on that one by a couple of bytes. When you reduce the size, can you also compress the JPG file to 70% which is normal. That will reduce your file size from 30kb to 7 or 8kb, making the sig a lot faster to load.

Thanks.

 

[Boobless_ed]

Hi muniman. this is also off topic, but are you aware that your signature photo is oversize according to the Trainz CofC. The maximum allowed height is 100 pixels whilst yours is 113. The maximum file size is 30kb and you scrape in on that one by a couple of bytes. When you reduce the size, can you also compress the JPG file to 70% which is normal. That will reduce your file size from 30kb to 7 or 8kb, making the sig a lot faster to load.

Thanks.

Yes. That extra few kb will surely make everyone's internet drag down for a whole ~80 ms. Tragic, isn't it? And with everyone using a screen resolution of at least 1024x768, I am certain that those thirteen pixels will be extremely detrimental to everybody's forum viewing experience.

Indeed.

 

[Isaacg]

Lets put it this way... MSTS is a more stable train simulator, if not highly detailed. There are rarely any errors, and I've never heard of a fatal error until I came to Trainz. @JohnK: Thank you, officer....

 

[Winterpaw]

Yes. That extra few kb will surely make everyone's internet drag down for a whole ~80 ms. Tragic, isn't it? And with everyone using a screen resolution of at least 1024x768, I am certain that those thirteen pixels will be extremely detrimental to everybody's forum viewing experience.

Indeed.

i enjoy your signature.

 

[Johnk]

Boobless, it does make a difference. Added up, the endless stream of graphics appearing on this forum are slowing it down. Auran has set a limit of 100px for sigs so please let's keep it that way.

 

[muniman]

Thanks a lot, guys

And thank you for letting me know my sig is too large. I'll make it smaller as soon as I can, not now of course, it's a little late, but I'll take care of it in the morning.

P.S. Thanks for letting me know that you like my sig, Winterpaw .

i hope dylanviey sees it...

Anyway I gotta get outta here before the lynching mob arrives!

 

[mfp111]

there is one site the you might want to look at www.uktrainsim.com

 

[colhad]

Hmmm, came across from MSTS to Trainz in late 2001, never been back since.

I'll always be a Trainzer.

 

[JCitron]

Lets put it this way... MSTS is a more stable train simulator, if not highly detailed. There are rarely any errors, and I've never heard of a fatal error until I came to Trainz. @JohnK: Thank you, officer....

I used to get plenty of fatal errors with MSTS particularly when editing an activity. I made my own Whiltefish to Shelby, among others and as I would configure the train schedules, the program would sometimes produce an error to phone home and quit. Other times, the program would freeze requiring a force-quit (Ctrl_Alt_Del then end task) under Windows 9x, 2000 and NT 4.0.

The driving portion wasn't so stable either. If an imported activity is missing dependencies or some of the trains downloaded are missing dependencies, these will actually crash the program dead to the desktop after a bunch of errors rather than not load the activity or components, which is what Trainz does and is a much more graceful way of handling this situation.

How do you know something is missing? It's not so easy. You need to load the components in and start the program. If anything is missing, you need to write down the information generated by each item that is missing something. After a certain number of errors, the program will crash so you need to fix the ones you've found and start the process again until it crashes again.

TRS and MSTS are really two different animals and both can be enjoyed AND on the same computer. Granted Trainz isn't perfect, but I discovered TRS2004 in late 2003 early 2004 and I haven't gone back since because I found the TRS experience whole lot more fun.

John

 

[rjhowie]

Well I have got reapeated erros with MTS. I moved from it to Trainz when I discovered it by chance and bought TRS04 then 06 and now awaiting 09. I only kept MTS for a small selection of particular outes that I knew and was interested in. But even there i still get probs. I am exceedingly glad I found Trainz and much prefer it to MTS. Trainz is less clunky the detail is great and the ease of building for novices without having an exceedingly tiring learning curve a great encouragement. Severalk times I had errors and route crashes with MTS so if someone got a totally smooth situ he is exceptionally fortunate, Trainz is my home and here I stay.

 

[colhad]

The most annoying feature of MSTS is coupler breakages. I think from memory there were a few bugs, one on Marias Pass, another on North East Corridor.

Coupler breakages drove me mad, I know a fix was created but out of the box, it is notorious for that.

 

[0099]

Haha id love to get those problems because in the first place i never found out how to drive the bloody things

 

[JCitron]

The most annoying feature of MSTS is coupler breakages. I think from memory there were a few bugs, one on Marias Pass, another on North East Corridor.

Coupler breakages drove me mad, I know a fix was created but out of the box, it is notorious for that.

Yeah a patch came out for that. I think I have it burned away on a downloads CD somewhere.

The problems with Marias Pass were quite frustrating. One of them was an Activity AI Train that would run the points of a switch and derail. Once the derail would happen, the session had to be aborted. Other times, an AI train would run a red light and that was an automatic activity abort. That one was unfair because I didn't cause any errors at all. I would be something like 100 miles from the errors when they would happen.

One of the most frustrasting things was the locked paths. The fact that I couldn't take over a switch to move my train on to an alternative path put my annoyance level over the edge a few times.

What I did like about the activity editor was the ability to setup a running schedule for the passenger trains. The program would automatically generate the station arrival times based on the distance and track speed. I wish this feature was in Trainz.

John

 

[Boco]

You might try http://lnps.info/. Very true to life route.

Boco

 

[obo]

I know I'm asking on the wrong forums but I don't have anywhere else to ask.

The main forum for North American MSTS is http://www.train-sim.com. It also has a massive download area.

I got MSTS for Christmas and I'm looking for a place where I can get good content for it, particularly commuter stuff like NJT, MN, Caltrain, etc. And all those F59PHIs. If anyone knows where I can get those and if anyone has any other content to suggest please tell me.

I'll plug one of my own sites as a general resource for finding locos: http://msts.banal.net/catalog/catalog.html.

Off the bat, though, you might find a few things of interest here: http://www.klw-trainsim.com/.

As MSTS is off-topic here, I suggest you follow-up at train-sim.com if you have more questions.

Regards,

Rob.