When does the fun start?

[rickf77]

I'm putting the Dartmouth yard together, and I must say it's frustrating. I must have put the turntable together a half dozen time now. I must have moved it or something. That, and trying to find a different roundhouse. Sniper did a nice looking "reskin?" of the one I was using, but both were a little to big for the area I need it in. I ended up using several sheds. Took hours to finally get a water spout and coaling tower to work. Oh, I just can't wait to start putting in all the track for the yard! I gotta get used to the "buttons". I'm always hitting something I shouldn't. If things get tough tomorrow, I may have to break into the Father in law's Christmas gift. I think the wife bought him a bottle of fancy whiskey. I'm sure that will improve my job performance!

Cheers.....Rick

Hey, how did I become a Trainz Veteran!!? Whoever changed that must have me confused with somebody who knows what they're doing!

 

[sniper297]

Click on forum options, edit profile, change your user title to "Disgruntled Route Builder".

As for the rest, practice practice practice, build a few disposable routes before starting on the real thing. And don't break open you father in law's gift, cheap whiskey works just as well. To improve route building superpowers, coffee with a shot of rum actually works best.

 

[rickf77]

Hey Sniper, how are ya; I worked on a five mile area (or so I thought, I can see it from the yard at some angles) before the yard, which is where I plan to start the route. I used your tips about making lakes look good, and they do look 100% better. Planted a zillion trees, flowers and such. Oh, it's real pretty out there! The only problem is I have no reason to drive a train out that way. I'd like to ask you a question, if you happen to see this. I'll try to ask this in a correct manner, but as I hope you already know, I'm a moron with computers and pc lingo, and also a moron when it comes to some other things. A general all round moron.

Here's what I've noticed: I use defraggler, and it shows you a "pie" telling you how much space you have left. Before I started with Trainz I had used about 1/10th of that pie. Now I've eaten about 1/9 of it. I guess this is from my route and the scenery and such. I have not even read anything about potrals yet, and thought I should leave some room in case I ever learn how to use them and have a train or two come into the yard from the pretty 5 mile away area. IF, I don't need all that scenery, maybe I could slap up a few back drops, and get rid of all that scenery, and save my resources for areas I will be driving on? I'm going to have a look at some back drops and see how they are. Maybe use them for Halifax, which I wiped off the face of the earth.

I hope all is well with you, all your tips have really paid off for me, thanks so much for them. I'm about to battle it out with surveyor in a few minutes, oh, I better get the rum. Let's see, I know I have some of that old navy rum around here somewhere. I used to be the guy who dished it out. I was a pay writer in the navy, supply branch. Everyone wanted "spillers". Somehow, you were expected to give a double dose of rum to your buddies under the watchful eye of the supply officer. Oh, it could be done!

Cheers, stay well........Rick Jeez, I guess it's time to say, "Merry Christmas!!!", if that's still allowed these days.

 

[JCitron]

Hi Rick,

It looks like you're already finding some of the fun in Trainz.

The portals work really nicely for off-route traffic. I use them all the time to bring life to otherwise empty tracks. With portals you can set the amount of traffic to be as heavy or light as you want. On my modified Gloucester Terminal route, originally built by George Fisher, I use portals to represent through traffic. With an unusual number of trains on an otherwise quiet commuter line, I have enough freight traffic and commuter traffic to make train watching fun. What's nice about Trainz is the ability to interact with the outside traffic. At any time in your driving session, you can take over a portal-bound train and manipulate it. I use the freights to bring in or take out freight cars for my yard. I'll grab any freight coming along, and head the driver to a track mark located in my yard. I'll break off the engines, and send the driver and locos to the engine terminal. While he's being serviced, I'll switch out some cars, and when the cars are ready, I'll get him out on the yard lead and send him on his way again with any new cars added to his consist.

Backdrops, well yes, they'll do exactly what you want them for. They're also great for hiding the edges of the world too. I've used backdrops to hide a temporary end of the world as well as to frame in a smaller route that is small than a full baseboard area. In the latter case, the route was a small model railroad type route and the backdrops filled in the empty world that wasn't used. In the former case, this was because I hadn't modeled that end of the world yet, and didn't want to see Tron land.

Speaking of the Royal Canadian Navy. I wonder if you know my uncle's brother Whitney Riggs? He was one of the Chief Engineers, and was called back into service right up until he died in 1997/98. He and his brothers all served in the Royal Merchant Navy, the Navy, or the Canadian Air Force. I met Whitney and his other brothers back in 1995 when I drove my aunt and Uncle Rudy up to Halifax to visit Whitney. It was a great time even though this was a long 12-hour drive in the worst cold spell on record.

John

 

[sniper297]

I once met a guy named Whitney, thought it was a funny name for a guy back then. 77 or 78, can't remember which, my US Navy helicopter squadron deployed aboard some Canadian Navy auxillary ships. I was on an oiler, HMCS Protectuer? Procueter? something like that, for NATO exercises in the North Atlantic. Refreshing change from the US Navy's no booze afloat policy set by some party pooper congressman back in 1925.

Anyway when you get to AI I got a tute to get you started on that;

http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?311484-AI-traffic-beginner-s-guide

As for the 1/10th 1/9th, depends on how big it is to begin with;

That one is 451 gigs, still plenty of free space, IIRC you need at least 15% free to defrag. "Capacity" tells you how much is on there to begin with, since computerese "kilo" means 1024 rather than 1000 the actual number will be less than advertised - they say 500 gigabytes but when you divide by 1024 instead of 1000 and factor in the way data is stored in blocks of X number of kilobytes you get a different number. Main thing is to run the disk cleanup and empty the recycle bin before defragging so it's not tripping over trash bags while rearranging the furniture.

As for backdrops, what I usually do is raise a slope around the outside and plant trees or building splines, like DMDrake's Large-City-Spline-N.

That's a narrow shelf 10 meters above the track level, adding the buildings makes enough viewblock so the edge of the world isn't visible unless the guy plays helicopter pilot instead of train engineer.

From track level where we belong it looks like that.

Same thing in rural areas, the hills vary from 10 to 20 meters above track level, in the real world track is usually run thru valleys instead of the top of ridges anyway.

Tree splines on both sides of course, and if you have long stretches of fairly straight mainline having overhead bridges every mile or two distracts the eye from scenery popups in the distance. Sweeping panoramic vistas just don't work very well in train simulators, keeping the player's eye close to the train for better immersion takes a lot of tinkering with viewblocks and close objects to distract the eye.

 

[RoysTrainz]

The fun starts the moment you understand fundamentals of trainz and how to

Just me experience and love for the hobby to share.

1. Understand the basics of trainz
2. what not to do and what eventually to do
3. time is your friend
4. impatience is your worst enemie!
5. never give up
6. have a goal and adapt thru learning by doing
7. never fear the unknown hit that darn button and see what happens there is life after failure.

Enough for today enjoy

Roy

 

[rickf77]

Thank you fellas!

John, what you described with The ai trains is similar to what I want to do, when the time comes. This route only used one passenger car in the 1950's. Nova Scotia has always been (not so much now) 10 or 20 years behind the rest of North America. There MAY have been more passenger service before the 1950's, but by that time the roads must have been finally good enough to drive on and even those out in the boonies had them fancy automobiles. That darn highway was the beginning of the end for most of this route.

I was going to do a "one man" kind of deal. One day you could work in the yard. Another day work delivering and picking up cars from locations around town. Back then seems just about any fair sized business had a siding. Another day, take the mixed train out to the end of the line. But, it will be so much better having ai trains doing their thing.

Sniper, as usual, thanks for these gems of information. I booked marked that place, and I am going to print that. I STILL just need to have tuts and such on paper, makes things easier for me.

Thanks to you Roy, yes, I always forget that most times if I break something, it likely can be fixed. I'm finally getting that into my thick skull!

Now for the RCN stuff. John that name sure sounds familiar. I'm not sure how old he was. I MAY have met him, and if he was my dad's age, I might have heard his named mentioned. My dad was a well know sailor. He served in Korea and was on almost every ship we had, even did time on subs. He loved the navy, rose to the rank of PO 2nd class on a few occasions. He was always getting into trouble, but he knew everything, and even though he should have been kicked out many times, he was just to valuable of a sailor to loose. We both served aboard HMCS Yukon at the same time. He was a PO 1st class then, and had started behaving himself, most of the time. We were coming home to Halifax one time, we were both in the wheel house, I was the recorder and he was at the wheel, blind drunk. Somehow, as usual, he got us along side without even a scratch.

Sniper, I thing she's called Protector. She must have been given her name before we went nuts and had to be french/english about EVERYTHING. There MAY have been two supply ships with that name over the years. We've had a few of them, Provider, Protector, Preserver. One of my duties was hauling on the marker lines. You know that line with the flags on it, so you know how far away you are from the other ship when you are replenishing at sea? Boy, one of my biggest fears was that I might break my neck or something and have to be sent across to the supply ship. The Yukon had never been updated to carry a Sea King. Jeez, you know what? Now, I'm not sure how you spell "Protector". Dang this dual language country!

Thank you, gentlemen, your wise words and info will be put to good use.

Cheers....Rick

 

[sniper297]

Found her;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Protecteur_(AOR_509)

Here's yours;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Yukon_(DDE_263)

The ship my squadron normally deployed aboard, and where the six Canadian helos and crews went for that one cruise;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Independence_(CV-62)

We normally deployed on carriers with six helicopters, since the Canuck auxilaries carried 3 each we swapped with two RCN ships. It was interesting since the British, Canadian, and American navies had different methods and traditions, but since the helicopters were the same type;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_SH-3_Sea_King

It was pretty easy to integrate with the allies, which was probably the whole idea.

Anyway back to Trainz, what I do is select the route or loco I'm working on in content manager once a day, save to CDP in a backup folder, giving it a different name each time. Example, MyRoute, save to CDP, it automatically defaults to MyRoute.cdp so I put the cursor between the e and the . and type 1218 so the name is MyRoute1218.cdp. Tonight I'll do the same only make it MyRoute1219.cdp, so I have daily backups sorted by date, and even if I make a drastic m!$taKe that screws the whole route and don't discover it for a week, I can go back to the most recent backup that doesn't have the problem.

 

[rickf77]

Hi Snipe; I have been doing the back up thing, saving to CDP. I was wondering where the "Auto save" came from in the routes menu. I'll try your "e and ." and the date idea as well. With me there's no IF when it comes to screw ups.

We brought the Yukon from B.C. to Halifax. That was in 1969 I believe, whatever year they first walked on the moon. It was in dry dock when we got out there and we had to stay on an old supply ship called HMCS Cape Breton. I don't think she had left the wharf for many years. It was nothing but bunks from bow to stern. Amazingly, everyone out there knew who my father was before he arrived. The old salt had quite a rep. Our last carrier was HMCS Bonaventure, I think that's how ya spell it. They had kind of a father/son thing, and I got to sail on her from here to New Brunswick when I was about 9 years old. Never ate so much ice cream in my life!

cheers.......Rick