Decapod.'s GWR Dean Goods

KotangaGirl

Pre-Grouping Railways Nut
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GWR Dean Goods 2576 by decapod. made for TS2009 <kuid2:130855:10:2>.

There aren't that many pukka pre-1924 GWR locomotives available for Trainz so when TRS19 SP3 suddenly made this Dean Goods model vanish from sight I was stunned and couldn't understand what had happened. 'Find Object' says it's there and after fixing all the warnings that I could manage to fix that CM had flagged I got it to appear in Surveyor (as pictured above) and the Preview Asset window, but no joy at all in Driver. I am well and truly stumped on this one so I thought I'd bring it to the forum to see if anyone can shed some light on the problem.
 
It was created with 3D Canvas Pro so I don't think it used the N3V .xml importer program. This means the .im file might be corrupt as far as TS19 SP3 is concerned.

Cheerio John
 
I have to say that crossed my mind John. The model is fine in TANE SP4 and it was fine in TS2019 SP1 as well, but plainly N3V have done something with their crusade against asset errors in SP3 that killed it stone dead.
 
That was one of the reason's the Blender importer used the xml route. The work that was done for 3D canvas actually formed the basis of the Blender .im exporter.

Cheerio John
 
I have just downloaded both the BR and GWR Dean goods into TRS19 Platinum SP3. They appear fine in both surveyor and Driver. Perhaps it is just the luck of the draw?

ingha

Edit: Ah! The pitfalls of boasting. The Dean Goods works fine in sessions where it already exists, but fails to appear in Driver when loaded first time. It will appear in Surveyor, not in Driver.
 
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The asset only has one bogie that may be a problem. I'll refer it to the CRG so they can have a look at it.
 
Ah ha! I have just redownloaded the GWR Dean goods and GWR 3000 gal tender and tried it in TRS19 Platinum. It showed in Surveyor and Driver until I started the session, at which it disappeared. I changed the enginespec, reloaded the session and loco and it worked perfectly. It could do with the enginesound updating too.

ingha
 
I notice there are a lot of leading spaces in the .lm files. Might it work if you remove these?

Good point, thanks for that.

The asset only has one bogie that may be a problem. I'll refer it to the CRG so they can have a look at it.

I added in two invisible bogies, but while it might eventually help it wasn't the silver bullet needed to fix the problem.

Ah ha! I have just redownloaded the GWR Dean goods and GWR 3000 gal tender and tried it in TRS19 Platinum. It showed in Surveyor and Driver until I started the session, at which it disappeared. I changed the enginespec, reloaded the session and loco and it worked perfectly. It could do with the enginesound updating too.

ingha

Now that's a good point. The engine spec and the sound file are truly ancient so I'll give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion.
 
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So closing up the spaces in the LM config file made No.2576 appear in Driver, but any attempt to drive it made it instantly disappear. So I changed out the engine spec for a more recent one, deleted the model in surveyor and then placed it again to make sure that the new engine spec would be recognised. And it worked! Joy unbounded! I drove it up and down the yard at Moxbury using both DCC and Steam controls and No.2576 ran perfectly. Another nice old engine for Trainz brought back from the dead.

I am going to change out the less than best PB15 cab view for something better and more appropriate, but that certainly wasn't a factor in getting this engine to work again.

The list of dependencies I used. I updated the driver bogie to TS2012 3.5 and fixed its warning errors. The engine spec is a bit too outstanding for a Dean Goods, but I wanted to use an engine spec that I knew worked in my present SP3 install. I can always change it later.

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Congratulations on getting the locomotive working again! :)

I found out ages ago that incorrect formatting in a config.txt file can cause weird things to happen such as this. I haven't run across it in ages, probably over a decade, and completely forgot about it. It's amazing that things like this crop up now and then.

One of the more common finds is a hard return at the end of text lines such as in the description. This causes extra double quotes ( " ) to appear where they're not supposed to go. This reminds me of the old JCL batch programming language used on the IBM mainframes in the 80's and early 90s. One extra space or an incorrect alignment in one of the tables, and the job would crash.
 
Thanks very much John. Just recently I found another old asset, - a tender I think it was, - that had ceased to work in TS2019 and the source of the problem was spaces in its config file where there weren't supposed to be any. They can be confusing to search for as the 'View Errors and Warnings' tab in CM doesn't list this kind of error. I'd worked my way through all the warnings shown in CM without any result and it was only when Stovepipe very kindly mentioned the spaces in the LM config file that the light switched on in my brain and I was able to solve the problem.
An older engine spec just plain not working and causing the locomotive asset to disappear if I tried to drive it was something new though.
 
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This is decapod.'s SE&CR O1 now sitting happily in the goods yard at Moxbury. This was another one of decapod.'s engines that was doing a vanishing act in TSR19 SP3's Driver mode. Essentially I had to do the same fixes as I did with the Dean Goods and the fix certainly went a lot more quickly this time since I knew what to do.
 
Thanks for pointing that out. I'll get it added to the CRG list. I might also check the other loco assets by Decapod to see if this problem is contagious. :) The Dean Goods is already in the queue and some will now see it as Third Party on the DLS - but still downloadable.
 
Hello Paul. I think it's more than likely that the SR and BR versions of the O1 will have the same faults. I haven't had a look at them yet to see though.
 
Hello Paul. I think it's more than likely that the SR and BR versions of the O1 will have the same faults. I haven't had a look at them yet to see though.

Those two are OK in DCC mode but have zero boiler pressure (no water) in realistic mode.

I checked all the locos I found and the only two that disappeared in a puff of smoke (literally) are the two you found. I had total Trainz lockups in both builds 111951 and 114400 (+beta) requiring a task manager kill and fingers crossed for no DB damage.

I'll go back and check the remaining locos for boiler pressure but the two 01s will need to be fixed as well. There may be more.

Thanks for identifying these issues.
 
Hi Paul. I gave the O1's a 94xx engine spec <kuid:248163:1648> by 2995valiant, but I haven't given them a proper test yet. I got the lock up as well with both the Dean Goods and the SE&CR O1, but changing the engine spec fixed that. The GWR class 2021 pannier tank by decapod. isn't giving me any problems, but I don't really use it much so I wouldn't like to say for certain that it's free of issues.
I'm using build 111951 by the way.
 
Since the problem also exists in the current Trainz Plus beta I have submitted a bug report so they can look at the freezing issue. The CRG will repair what it can.
 
Decapod.'s BR O1 under test with the steam controls on my updated version of the Ashington branch. Ashington is a useful test track since it has some long sneaky gradients that can catch you out. All is good with the 94xx engine spec doing all that it should. Injectors work well and the engine spec produces good steam. Tests under the DCC controls were fine as well.

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