Newbie saying hi. Any tips and tricks?

Vivadave

New member
Hi everyone. I'm brand new to trainz. I have purchased railway simulator powered by trainz 12. Signed up and registered my serial number.

Is there any advice I should know prior to starting trainz. Plus any tips or tricks I should know too. I'm in the Northeast UK so where's the best place to start loco route etc. I like the idea of running to a passenger schedule and to a time table pickup up passengers etc on real world routes. Is that possible?

Thanks for any input


Dave. :)
 
Welcome to the world of Trainz......best advice is to be patient with problems encountered. Trainz is not a tame beast.....don't be afraid to ask on the forum. Enjoy it....that's what it was created for...:cool:
 
Welcome to the world of Trainz Railway Simulator, Dave. As Sourdough said, be patient with problems encountered and don't be afraid to ask on the forums. There's a good few people willing to help you out. Also check out the freeware and payware announcements section of the forums, I know not everyone can afford payware but both of those have the scoop on some real neat offerings. Best thing I can think of is when you have find the dependencies for engines and cars is put the webpage in your favorites. This will save a lot of time and hassle and will enable you to find them quickly instead of grappling with an hour-long search for a couple KUIDs.
 
Oh, Dave; You don't have any idea of what you've done! Well, there's no turning back now. Welcome aboard, you're going to love it. There are a lot of folks here who are nice enough to help you on your way.

Cheers.....Rick
 
Welcome Dave..I hope you have patience to learn Trainz..You won't be sorry..The versatility is Awesome..Happy Trainzing..
 
I'm beginning to wish I'd seen this thread earlier, so I could welcome you to the forums.

Anyway, it's always nice to see newcomers to Trainz, although I can tell you that certain parts can have a bit of a steep learning curve, but the forum is always on hand to assist with any issues you may come across.

Leksie has very kindly posted links to both my main tutorial thread, and my Youtube account which contains one video so far. My advice is to take it slow and don't jump in too quickly into things as frustration can result. The main areas I can help you with are technical (like installing patches and things like DirectX updates), and operational (like how to merge routes together, and how to download content). I do sometimes help out in other areas as well, depending on what I'm doing at the time.

As the saying goes - learn to crawl before walking/running (which applies well to Trainz).

Another area I would advise you to have a read of is the Code of Conduct if you haven't already. That page contains the rules of the forum (although if one uses common sense, it's easy to keep to the rules).

Shane

P.S. You may like the built-in ECML route which is between London Kings Cross and York (from memory - it may be as far as Newcastle)
 
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I'll add one technical bit of advice, since it's a bit hard to see your screen from Texas, USA.

After you install TS for the first time, in the lower right hand corner of the splash screen, you should see a five digit build number. If that number is 49922 or higher, ignore the rest of this post. If it is not at least 49922, visit the very first thread in the "Auran Announcements" forum,<http://forums.auran.com/trainz/forumdisplay.php?2-Auran-Announcements> download the patch, and follow the instructions to patch your installation.

ns
 
Welcome to Trainz, Dave. This is a whole new world opening up for you that will be bigger than Pandora's Box! :)

Remember don't be afraid to try anything. You can't break anything, and there's no waste either when experimenting in Surveyor unlike the old plaster and plywood model railroad.

And please do remember to backup your User Data folder regularly. We've all learned the hard way from this. :)

John
 
And please do remember to backup your User Data folder regularly. We've all learned the hard way from this. :)

John

I'll say we have. I had a backdoor virus get in on my old pc and I had to re-download everything:eek:. Thankfully not much of it was payware engines at the time; most all f it was freeware.
 
If I may be so bold as to add a bit to John's suggestion to back up, back up to a different physical medium than your primary. A different physical medium, in this case, would be a CD, DVD, flash drive, or second hard disk. My own practice is not just to backup not only the User Data folder, but also everything else I find valuable that I think I'll want to find later. So all downloads--video or pdf tutorials, content of any kind, along with any necessary information (like keys to unlock the software, and external "readme" files) gets downloaded first to backup, and then installed to the main installation. And, periodically, I make back-ups of my backup, too. I've had too many instances where media went bad not to keep a couple of backups of each file.

ns

ns
 
I'll say we have. I had a backdoor virus get in on my old pc and I had to re-download everything:eek:. Thankfully not much of it was payware engines at the time; most all f it was freeware.

Those darn sneaky viruses! Anyway, welcome! Anything faulty can still work in Trainz 12, as I found out. Thought it was not going to allow me to play on those routes!
 
Hi Dave, welcome to Trainz.

As has already been said TS12 has a built in UK route ECML KX - Newcastle, that's a good starting point if you enjoy driving.

There are loads of other routes on the Download Station (DLS) all for free, you already have access (Via the "Content" section on the Trainz "Launch Menu" or via the web DLS - top of this forum page). The free access is very slow and it's well worth buying a "First Class Ticket" (FCT) for much faster unlimited access. In addition to routes the DLS has thousands and thousands of other assets e.g. scenery items, different tracks, locomotives/units, rolling stock etc.

Nearly all of the DLS content has been created by members of the Trainz community and free tools are available so that you can create your own assets if you are interested in doing so. Many people do not create individual assets but are interested in building routes using the assets already available ("Surveyor"), there is a short section in the TS12 manual on basic route creation and this (US) site has some very handy information:

http://trains.0catch.com/tutorial.html

For the UK scene you could also join this forum:

http://forum.british-trainz.co.uk/

If you are interested in the UK 1960's era then purchasing the Settle and Carlisle 2009 add on (which works fine with TS12) is a must have, you may want to buy it for the route alone ! See:

http://www.settleandcarlisle.co.uk/

The predecessor to the S&C 2009 add on was the Trainz Classics version - you should go for the new version but the old web site has some useful tutorials, under "Guides":

http://www.trainzclassics.co.uk/

Trainz is a whole new world to explore and there is a load of information out there - it would take me all day to list just the ones I have. If you are after some links for specific interests then post here again.

For UK locos and stock I can list some UK creators to look for on the DLS if you would like.

Chris
 
If I may be so bold as to add a bit to John's suggestion to back up, back up to a different physical medium than your primary. A different physical medium, in this case, would be a CD, DVD, flash drive, or second hard disk. My own practice is not just to backup not only the User Data folder, but also everything else I find valuable that I think I'll want to find later. So all downloads--video or pdf tutorials, content of any kind, along with any necessary information (like keys to unlock the software, and external "readme" files) gets downloaded first to backup, and then installed to the main installation. And, periodically, I make back-ups of my backup, too. I've had too many instances where media went bad not to keep a couple of backups of each file.

ns

ns

Never mind worrying about being bold to add this. This is very important, as I learned too. I had a crash of the secondary drive I copied to and lost a backup! It's good thing I had an external as well. Backup the backups! :D

John
 
Hi everyone. I'm brand new to trainz. I have purchased railway simulator powered by trainz 12. Signed up and registered my serial number.

Is there any advice I should know prior to starting trainz. Plus any tips or tricks I should know too. I'm in the Northeast UK so where's the best place to start loco route etc. I like the idea of running to a passenger schedule and to a time table pickup up passengers etc on real world routes. Is that possible?

Thanks for any input


Dave. :)

Tricks
TS2010 & 12
in surveyor
cmd_cam_walk alt y Walk - mouse to select direction to walk, arrows to walk, Esc to exit
cmd_cam_fly alt u Fly - mouse to select direction to fly, arrows to fly, Esc to exit.

cmd_cam_car alt ctrl shift z Car - Left Mouse Button on a car to ride, Esc to exit.
cmd_rand_map alt ctrl shift p
cmd_smite alt ctrl a

Gerry
 
Wow just checked back on here and i was amazed at all the reply's, thanks so so much everyone....
I've tried the world of flight simming, FS9 and the infamous FSX.... All good in there own way, complex too, FSX is ran on the size of your wallet to buy the NASA rated PC to run it lol.....

Curiosity brought be to trains plus it was on special offer in my local store, I will take things easy and get to grips with this slowly. I am a reader and will work through the tutorials etc

Thanks again

Dave.... :)
 
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