Newbie route builder's thanks

gremlin1812 · Beginner Joined: Aug 09, 2008 Last Visited: Oct 22, 2008

Hi all, I’m fairly new to MSTS but feeling rather adventurous decided to try to build a route so I first had to find out how to so after many hours of forum searches, googleing and much printing and stapling documents together so they don’t get scattered I was ready to jump in boots and all.
To cut a long story short in less than a week I have done the terrain and created the track markers and am ready to start on laying track. It has not been without its hiccups but nothing that a bit of searching didn’t fix. So to those starting out like I have my advice is research, search, search, search and more searching as it does pay off.
And to those who create tutorials and hints I say “a picture is worth a thousand words”.
Many thanks to all those who take the time to share their knowledge in tutorials and hints/tips as without these I know I would not be where I have got to now.

Gremlin1812
Sydney, Australia

ARG706 · Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 12:51 pm

Good to see you're still enjoying it. This task is relatively straight forward, and you will uncover much larger cans of worms good and bad along the way. Pay attention to the warnings in those tutorials about what you should NOT do. Some of have decided to ignore it and hope for the best and find ourselves in a muddle months later which can only be solved by tedious trial and error.

Some basic pointers -

Make sure your crossovers are always visible in activity editor
Don't bother with automatic points. Half the time they don't even animate
Apply transitions to your gradient changes of a minimum of 10 metres and 150 gradient points in the MSTS lingo
If something feels hopeless, it possibly is and you'll need to revert to your last backup.
Go nice and easy on the dynamic track. Too much of it can work against you
Try and stay under 1400 objects per tile, 1200 if not using BIN
Using forests where practical. If you are fluent in 3d modelling, create your own tree clumps and utilise these as much as possible.
If a road is crossing the track at a diagonal angle, place a short section of track next to the mainline covering the width of the road, and bury it. Then save it. This will prevent cars from getting dangerously close to your train at crossings.

Best of luck with it. Please feel welcome to post any updates whenever you see fit

superheatedsteam · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:18 am

Gremlin1812,

Welcome aboard. I applaud your read and search first policy.

I concur with just about everything ARG706 has posted with the exception of the auto vs. manual turnouts. When I built my route it was all laid initially with manual turnouts. Later on when I wanted to create activities to take an alternate path to a branch line or passing loop the path could not be changed in the Activity Editor. I had to go through the route’s world files and replace the manual turnouts with auto turnouts as required to allow editing paths in the Activity Editor. Something to bear in mind.

I would also strongly suggest a regular backup regime. I backup my route after each building session with a sequential number appended to the filename and a copy of these backups also saved on removable media like CD, DVD, removable drives, memory sticks. I suspect most route builders who have spent long hours in the Route Editor will at some time have encountered a problem that could not be resolved and have had to resort to restoring a complete backup of a route or extracting specific files from a backup.

Once again I stress the importance of multiple backup files. As an example, a while ago I was deleting surplus tiles to reduce the size of my route. After completing this job I did not traverse the entire route to check that all was OK which was a big mistake. A couple of weeks later I was in an area I rarely frequent and found to my horror that I had deleted some tiles that were very close to the track leaving a gaping hole in the terrain. Adding the missing terrain tiles using RGE was not an option as this missing section was a very hilly area and the route had been DEM’d. As I had incremental backups I could go back to the backup prior to tile deletion and could restore just the missing terrain tiles from that backup and not loose a couple of weeks work done after the tile strip.

In response to your post in the MSTS Routes section re: checking eng/wag files my suggestion would be yes check all your equipment. Route Riter and EngineMod are two programs that can automate/ease some of the more mundane tasks relating to eng/wag file maintenance. I use Context myself and employ MK1 eyeball coupled with copy and paste.

Good luck with your route. If you have any questions you know where to ask.