Where to Go Next

PWeiser

Well-known member
The initial New Haven electric roster nears completion (from left below, EF-1, EP-1 with changeable road numbers and heavyweight coach train, and a Westchester coach leading a 3-unit M/U). A question and a concern, though.

rosterz.jpg


Question (Remember, I’m still at UTC - there’s probably a simple, built-in answer for TS2009): when I form a train of Westchester M/U coaches, I can make it reversible by reversing the trailing coach in Driver/Consist. That is, all I have to do to change the orientation of the CTC and AI drive in Driver is select the trailing coach, visit the cab (F6) and, voila, that is now the forward direction - including looking the right direction from the cab front windows. (The only downside is that the trailing coach’s pantographs are opposite those of the rest of the train if you only raise one per coach.) The question is, how do I do that with a one-coach train or one of the boxcabs (which are nearly double-ended, aside from location of the bell)? I tried creating a second cab attachment point and assigning a copy of the first interior to it, but so far haven’t made that work. Would activating the second, rear-facing interior reverse the normal forward direction, if I *can* get the second cab to work at all? The “c” command to switch cabs has no effect, but this is probably because I’ve bungled the KUID assignment of the second interior view, or the name of the attachment point in GMAX.

Concern: TS2009 is now in the house. My hardware is marginal for it (added RAM, but I can’t do anything about the nominal processor speed). I’m having a whole lot of fun building stuff (next project: EY-2 steeple-cab switcher and a miniature two-track version of the Hell Gate Bridge). I realize the homemade rolling stock will have to be pretty much rebuilt up from the meshes to make them work in TS2009, but if TS2009 can’t be made to work satisfactorily on this machine - reduced detail, distance, etc. is fine, I’m used to UTC standards - will UTC remain viable on the machine so I can drop back to that for play and development while I work out the logistics and finances of a high-standard machine? The current machine is XP-SP2, but all patches including Framework are up to date.

(With apologies, if this belongs in a different part of the forum such as Parts & Labor, UTC, or whatever.)
 
UTC should be fine. TRAINZ 09 should install in it's own folder within Program files(default) or anywhere else you want to place it when the install option screen comes up..Be sure to install the 09 service pack updates. See the 09 sub forum for help on this. Warning: once you get used to 09 and it's capabilities UTC is history. It is no longer supported by Auran in any event

tomurban
 
Encouraging

That's encouraging, about TS2009. I'll still back up all my UTC material to a removable drive *and* remove the drive before installing, though.

On the other question, it occurs to me that New Haven EP-1s and EF-1s generally ran in blocks of at least two (they pioneered M/U controls). So all I need to do to have the pantographs sync is create an alternate version of each (and the Westchester coach) in which the pantograph attachment points in the mesh are reversed, that is, a.pant0 is at the aft end. This might not work (it might go careening across the fields broadside, ringing its bell mournfully and smoking, as a four-bogey loco does when a.bog1 is not the aftmost - you have to like programmers with a sense of humor!), but seems worth a try.
 
That Worked

Much as hoped/expected, TS2009 loaded with no difficulty from DVD and did not bother the UTC installation. TS2009 must be throttled back a bit (render distance, no shadows) to animate smoothly on this machine, but that was expected.

One homemade locomotive has been imported so far, and works correctly in 2009 (compatibility mode). Next project, a full update to 09 standard for a homemade loco...

See what you mean about the problem with direction being no problem in 2009: the "Change Direction" command handles it.

(Having a little trouble patching 2009, but that's for a different discussion area.)
 
you might want to check out PEV's handy tools if you want to update your stuff for '09 and not have to rebuild them. '09 prefers your models be a .im format instead of the old .pm. PEV has a simple tool that allows you to convert .pm to .im. Also '09 supports KUID2; so if you want to convert your .pm to .im when you go to put it into TS09 change your config to be:
KUID2:YOUR_ID:ASSET_ID:VERSION# so it'll look like KUID2:104609:3346:2. doing so will allow you to 'roll back' to the old version if something goes awry.

peter
 
Try it both ways?

Since I have the original meshes I can try it both ways and see which works better. Thanks for the pointer!

They need some work, anyway - must learn to do transparent windows (what a concept:) !) so the driver can be seen.
 
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