Greetings, and a few questions

In the 1980's Fleichsmann scaled down some of their HO German rolling stock including the UIC compartment coaches (the infamous ones where you spent a 10 hour journey sitting on a slab of plastic) to a slightly shorter than prototype length. Can't recall if this was done by taking out one compartment or building to a slightly smaller scale, 1:100 or similar.
 
jatws.org has more than a few downloads of UK stuff. It will give you a basic collection to start with anyway.

Cheerio John
 
jatws.org has more than a few downloads of UK stuff. It will give you a basic collection to start with anyway.

Cheerio John

Thank you, that looks very interesting. I'll check it out in more detail when time allows - real life has been getting in the way recently, hence my silence here at the moment.
 
Greetings. I'm very new to Trainz so I apologise if there's an FAQ I've missed that answers some of this.

I've purchased TMR2017 as I'm primarily interested in model railways, not driving trains. Basically I want to relive my boyhood Hornby years :) (although that's now almost 40 years ago! Where does the time go..?)

So, first question: I've downloaded and installed it on my main gaming PC. Can I also download and install it on a second PC I have? Note: this is not to have the two copies running at the same time, it's purely a convenience thing - I use both machines roughly equally (one upstairs, one downstairs connected to the TV). Ideally I'd save any layouts on a shared drive that both machines can access (again, if possible).

Second: are there any good tutorials for track laying anywhere? I'd be interested in YouTube videos if possible. I've already looked at some of 'Approach Medium's stuff and it's very good (and I find him very easy to listen to) but they kind of assume you already know what you're doing.

Lastly, my main area of interest is British trains and associated assets. Mainly older stuff (50's-70's, so the 'Appen' assets seem to be a good start). Are there any additional assets I should look to be getting? While I'm not hugely into steam just yet, it might be nice to look into that later. I guess what I'm asking is: how much comes with TMR2017, and how much extra is there (which, I appreciate, is a very open-ended question). I've not had time to fully look at the Download Station yet. What are the limits on it without buying Tickets?

Many thanks, and as I say, I apologise for the numpty questions.

Hello,

My 5 cents... Life happens, whenever you want to go at it feel free to ask. You can have multiple PC's and multiple installations of one or many of the Trainz products, as long as you are the one using it.

I see you bought the TMR17 product, my suggestion to you is to buy TANE from the questions you have asked in this thread. It is more of a vanilla slate when you first start to develop a Route, and they are both compatible with each other. Just a flat piece of land that you start placing assets into, no worries. I would liken it to walking before you run.

Lastly, buy a 1st class ticket if you thinking of making routes in either TRM17 or TANE, otherwise you will be disappointed.
 
Hello,

My 5 cents... Life happens, whenever you want to go at it feel free to ask. You can have multiple PC's and multiple installations of one or many of the Trainz products, as long as you are the one using it.

I see you bought the TMR17 product, my suggestion to you is to buy TANE from the questions you have asked in this thread. It is more of a vanilla slate when you first start to develop a Route, and they are both compatible with each other. Just a flat piece of land that you start placing assets into, no worries. I would liken it to walking before you run.

Lastly, buy a 1st class ticket if you thinking of making routes in either TRM17 or TANE, otherwise you will be disappointed.

I was under the impression that TRM17 is the same game engine just different content or it might be a slightly later version of the game engine.

John
 
I was under the impression that TRM17 is the same game engine just different content or it might be a slightly later version of the game engine.

John

To me TANE is more flexible to building a gigantic route, and TMR17 is a subset. Yes they are built on the same platform. Could be a great new thread / discussion, although I'm sure it has already been discussed.
 
TMR was produced off the back of TANE so is essentially the same code - not sure where the relative versions stand now. Essentially what you were receiving was a asset/route pack more orientated towards the model side of things but to all intents and purposes you could use TMR to build a prototype route or TANE to build a model layout. The biggest bind (as I've noted previously) is that N3V made no code or design changes with TMR to better facilitate the constrained space (horizontal and vertical) in which a model railway is built.

In other news, I started over with the troublesome Peco plan by increasing the size 50%. It works better now, also if you refer to the plan I raised the goods yard and circuit above base level to ease the gradient on the outbound tail of the reverse loop.

35a8ww9.jpg
 
To me TANE is more flexible to building a gigantic route, and TMR17 is a subset. Yes they are built on the same platform. Could be a great new thread / discussion, although I'm sure it has already been discussed.

It's funny that this should come up, because I did in fact buy T:ANE as well - I bought it on the Mac because my gaming PC (where I bought TMR2017) doesn't really have enough desk space for proper mousing around. The honking great Warthog HOTAS bolted to the desk there doesn't help :)

However, from a purely 'building layouts' point of view they appear to be functionally identical, at least so far as I can tell. I get the feeling that T:ANE is perhaps the 'going forward' product.

It would be nice to see a comparison between the two, see where the differences are.
 
I appreciate that this will be laughably simple compared to what most of you are capable of, but I feel that I'm starting to get there:

0VaRAQd.jpg
 
It's neither laughable nor simple - looks really good to me. You might want to explore some alternative tracks with more pronounced sleepering. The late Andio6 created some good UK procedural tracks lookup 'Protrack', I also use LRW tracks - they also have a good range.

Yorkshire
 
It's neither laughable nor simple - looks really good to me. You might want to explore some alternative tracks with more pronounced sleepering. The late Andio6 created some good UK procedural tracks lookup 'Protrack', I also use LRW tracks - they also have a good range.

Yorkshire

Thanks - it started out as just me playing about with the tools, finding out how to do terrain and stuff, then started to get a bit more serious. The track there is just the inbuilt single wooden and, as you say, lacks a certain something, so I'll check out those suggestions.
 
+1 re the LRW track. Also for terrain texture need to look at the ones by Malcolm (clam1952) and possibly Ultra Texture (by McGuirrel) as many of the older Auran ones or third party from ~2006 era just look horrible and pixelated now.
 
It's funny that this should come up, because I did in fact buy T:ANE as well - I bought it on the Mac because my gaming PC (where I bought TMR2017) doesn't really have enough desk space for proper mousing around. The honking great Warthog HOTAS bolted to the desk there doesn't help :)

However, from a purely 'building layouts' point of view they appear to be functionally identical, at least so far as I can tell. I get the feeling that T:ANE is perhaps the 'going forward' product.

It would be nice to see a comparison between the two, see where the differences are.

I read that as "disk space", being a geek by trade! I too have run into desk space issues as well.

TMR2017 was born as a look back at the original Trainz version which was released back in 2001, which took place 15 years before. Back in those days, Trainz was marketed as a model railroad simulator, however, it grew up beyond that to a full scale simulator complete with interactive industries, and 100s of miles/kilometers long routes.

TMR2017 is based on the same game engine, but is now at a lower version of what is used in T:ANE. When TMR2017 was first released, it was at the then slightly newer and in between the SP2 and SP1 T:ANE version and has some slightly different code, but is essentially the same product underneath. This presented a problem initially due to the version difference, which prevented people from installing TMR2017 content in T:ANE. Since T:ANE has moved beyond that to SP2, this has changed and when T:ANE SP2 was released, and owners of T:ANE Deluxue got the free download of TMR2017 in-built routes. TMR2017 also comes with Basemapz utility which was written by fellow Trainz user Mike Jenkins (mjenkins). This utility can be downloaded separately from his website, but I can't find my link to place here.

The thought of sub-products is not new to the Trainz franchise. A bit after TRS2006 was released, Auran as the company was once called released the first of the Classics series. Classics 1 & 2 was it was called, was essentially TRS2006 with a different main screen, but came with content specifically made for this package and had some underlying game engine differences. The reason behind this, outside of being another revenue stream for the company, was that the community at the time wanted a bare bones or slimmed down Trainz version without all the extra built-in content. This was repeated afterwards with Classics 3, which is based on TRS2009 but with some internal improvements and some major engine script rewrites that have gone forward since then. It was with Classics 1 & 2 that we got the Metro North Commuter route and others, and it was Classics 3 that gave us the splendid Settle and Carlisle route and content, which was later released as a separate product.
 
Last edited:
John: Many thanks for the explanation. Not sure I fully grok the details just now, but I certainly appreciate the time :)

Yorkshire & Vern: Many thanks for the track recommendations. I downloaded both sets last night, and although I didn't have time to have a proper play I could immediately see that the difference was striking. It doesn't help that the original track I used was '1 track dusty' (or something like that) and I think it may be a contender for 'worst track in the game', as it's almost two-dimensional!

And Zod be thanked for being able to globally search and replace assets!
 
As for layout size, browsing through my RM collection the other day I came across a plan in January 1973 which very much appealed to me at the time, but I realised I could never build because of lack of time and finance - although my (then) loft would have accommodated it. I was suggested as an exhibition "tail-chaser" for a club - about 13'3" x 9'6". But in Trainz ...

As a follow-up to this earlier comment, I have made some progress on this project, and if anyone is interested there are some screenshots at https://raystrainz.wordpress.com/project-1073-gallery-the-model-railway-room/

Ray
 
Back
Top