Question from Canada

kroger42

New member
Help - I'm considering purchase of Trainz but am seeing so many choices and so much lingo. What would be best to purchase to achieve the following:
Canadian National locos and primarily Canadian rolling stock
Western Canadian locale - ideally mix of prairies (Alberta) and mountains (BC)
Design my own route to experiment and test operations with potential HO scale home layout design (from what I've read so far I gather this is possible?)

Many thanks for any advice/comments.

Ken Rogers
 
Welcome Kroger42? Looks like you already have TRS19, so you are all set to go. Check the DLS for free Canadian locos and rolling stock, including CP, BCR, CN, VIA, and others! For routes I highly recommend picking up the Rocky Mountain series of routes by Roy and company. These are payware, but you can often find them on sale, and they are done to the highest standards. Also check out RRMods.ca for some great Canadian Locos.
 
You can build your own in surveyor. The DLS has plenty of assets but filtering them can be interesting. Normally find one content creator then see what else they have created.

Whitepass does some high quality North American assets you might want to take a look at.

Cheerio John
 
Hi Ken --

" ... to experiment and test operations with potential HO scale home layout design ... ."

This was the video that inspired many of us to give Trainz model railroads a try:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_X5OvItoK0

I suspect that I may have done more than my share of model railroad construction in Trainz. A few of my layouts are payware but most are freeware and can be downloaded from the Download Station. This is one of my layouts that is completed but is in limbo at the moment (full screen / 1080p):


I have several other similar videos on youtube. Search with something like "Trainz philskene".

Be aware that (a) it may take some time to develop the skills to use Surveyor proficiently, (b) one good way of learning is to dissect existing layouts, and (c) TRS19 is considerably better than all other editions of Trainz (those there are still many who might dispute this). And, hey, you might eventually decide you prefer virtual model railroading to the real thing.

Phil
 
Last edited:
Thanks!

Welcome Kroger42? Looks like you already have TRS19, so you are all set to go. Check the DLS for free Canadian locos and rolling stock, including CP, BCR, CN, VIA, and others! For routes I highly recommend picking up the Rocky Mountain series of routes by Roy and company. These are payware, but you can often find them on sale, and they are done to the highest standards. Also check out RRMods.ca for some great Canadian Locos.

Thanks Forester1 and do I have egg on my face. I searched my Mac and I indeed bought TRS19 at the end of Christmas break January 2021 but then got so busy after the break I didn't use it and I guess completely forgot about it! Thank you very much for your advice and I will explore DLS and Rocky Mountain routes and RRMods.ca and get on my way. Onward....
 
Thanks John, I'll explore surveyor in my TRS19 and the new lingo and look for some content creators. Hope you survived the snow in Ottawa yesterday - a friend sent me pics of her driveway!
 
Lingo...
"DLC" is Payware and it's found in your in game "Content Store" if any is due you or for you to purchase. "DLS" is Freeware. All freeware (even individual components) are found in the in game "Content Manager" - what used to be (and still is) the online "Download Station." For now, you can think of the "CM" and "DLS" as the same thing. Learn to use filter in the "Content Manager" - There are lot's of settings to help find things.

And, of course, there are many 3rd party websites that offer freeware and payware. They normally come as a ".cdp" file (zipped maybe). Drop onto the CM window to install.
 
Thanks John, I'll explore surveyor in my TRS19 and the new lingo and look for some content creators. Hope you survived the snow in Ottawa yesterday - a friend sent me pics of her driveway!

The 48 cms of snow wasn't the problem, it's the city ploughs filling the end of the driveway in as they plough the streets. The other problem is the temperature minus 17 windchill minus 25 daytime means the snow tends to freeze solid if you don't clear it fairly quickly.

Cheerio John
 
Thanks for your help, Phil, much appreciated. I've poked around a bit and surmise everything on the Download station is free - I hadn't realized that at first. Great place to start along with TRS19 then. Thanks for the tip of dissecting a layout, I've already seen a couple of CN ones and now will look for something close to what I'm planning. I look forward to exploring your YouTubes - thanks!
 
Thank you 1611mac - that really helps, I poked around the site for a while earlier this week and still wasn't sure what was free or paid to download - DLC/DLS and their locations is very helpful. I've been searching and trying different filters tonight and getting the hang of it. Thanks!
 
Last edited:
The other place to poke around in is the "Back Pages" or "White Pages", here (log-in may be required):

https://www.auran.com/DLS/

The search function is very limited, but you do have direct access to an image and description.
_____

As mac suggests, in Content Manager filters are useful. I usually set up a few, like
Installed = True / Built-In = False
Installed = False / Name =

Also use the right click function, eg Show dependencies.

Phil
 
Yes.. the "list dependencies" is very useful... You will mostly use "List Dependencies Recursively" as that will show dependencies of dependencies. For example, you may be missing a part of a loco (bogie for example) and "list dependency" will list the loco but "List Recursively" will list the Loco and any missing dependencies of the loco.
 
Content Manager (CM) is definitely a powerful utility that you'll spend a lot of time in and should get to know very intimately.

Here are some filters I created and use often.

Faulty only.

I removed the missing dependencies and faulty dependencies from the Faulty filter. Seeing only what's broken saves a lot of time since we see only what we need.

A related filter. Missing Dependencies Only.

Installed = true
Missing Dependencies = true.

This also removes the chaff from the wheat and helps to quickly identify what's missing and not what's "broken".

Obsolete and not Built-in

Installed = true
Obsolete = true
Built-in = false

Out of date - No Payware.

Installed = true
Out of date = true
Payware = false

In addition to the filters, we recommend adding all the columns in CM.

Right-click on the column headings and add in the various columns. You can arrange them however you like but be sure to open them up to fit the text in the columns. It takes a little bit to get them how you like them.
 
John, does your "Faulty only" filter work better than selecting "Faulty" in CM? When I do that, it seems to take forever for the list to come up. I also have an old DLS only filter that needs to be updated now for the new statuses, but I am not sure how: payware= false, locally modified = false, built-in = false.
 
John, does your "Faulty only" filter work better than selecting "Faulty" in CM? When I do that, it seems to take forever for the list to come up. I also have an old DLS only filter that needs to be updated now for the new statuses, but I am not sure how: payware= false, locally modified = false, built-in = false.

Mine takes a forever sometimes to load but only after installing a lot of content and doing a lot of Trainzing. The main purpose is to show only real faulty assets and not all the other fluff that makes the display confusing. From my experience with databases, having only pertinent data is better than too much, so I like my queries (filters) to produce only what I'm looking for and nothing else.

For the new TRS19-Plus / TRS22, you need to change payware and built-in to packaged. The filter will work the same as before. I discovered that not so long ago.
 
Back
Top