Operations Manual

Please read the following information contained in this online manual, it should answer most of your questions.

NERR Operations Director: Bob Artim
Chief Programmer: M.R. Roberts
Road Foreman of Engines: Wayne Kuzara
Treasurer: Kerri Ann
Security Counsel: Gary Kunder
Graphics Advisor: Derrell Carter
Human Resources Director: John Hodgkinson
Forum Administrator: Various, as named in the forums

NERR's
operations manual v1.1a
April 1, 2002 (updated 31 January 2007)
compiled by Bob Artim

1. The Story behind North Eastern Railroad
2. Requirements for membership
3. Downloading engines, rolling stock and activities
4. Regulations on driving trains in activities
5. Code sharing with other VR's
6. Reporting system
7. Engineer's ranks & salary
8. Contacting Headquarters

North Eastern Railroad's founder & Operations Director, Bob Artim, is also the 1st Honorary Lifetime Member and former Human Resources Director of Atlantic Coastal Railway.

Bob obtained Train Simulator in July 2001, wrote an activity for the NEC and uploaded to Train-sim.com and got 2200 downloads in a week (1 year later it has 3560 downloads). This was the beginning of activity creation. The idea came to have continuity across routes in October of 2001 while making freight activities for ACR. Working with freight trains can be time consuming, so the strategy of breaking the activities into parts that ran together in sequence, to keep them shorter and more fun, since you could then complete them in a reasonable amount of time. Now we are putting the same theory to use at North Eastern Railroad, only using it across routes. A long haul could take a virtual week. You get to drive the same train across the country, or at least across several routes. North Eastern Railroad began major operations on September 1st, 2002. Headquarters is based in Pittsburgh, PA in the old Conrail/AMTRAK terminal. That's the story.

Anyone can become a member of NERR, and it's free. NERR add-on engines, rolling stock and activities, along with the routes we drive, are available for free, but not required, although without them the flavor of actual NERR operations will be lost. To join NERR, click the join button from any page. Fill out the application. Take an entrance exam. Complete the automated New Engineers Orientation program (NEO). It is that easy. While you're on the Join page you should read the Staff Guidelines.

NERR has a variety of engines consisting of steam, diesel and electric. Rolling stock is available to handle any kind of freight operations. Comfortable passenger coaches in a wide range of styles can be attached to engines. NERR's activities are all custom made by staff members and engineers, using NERR add-ons. You can begin downloading once you complete the NEO Program by going to the Roster section of the NETS facility on the NERR website. (NOTE: All older NERR downloads are zipped using WinZip. All engines & rolling stock are zipped in their respective folders. Folders do not have to be made for these add-ons. You only have to unzip them to your TRAINSET folder inside of MSTS. When unzipping you must have the "make folder options" turned on so the correct folder name will be used to maintain compatibility with future enhancements to the activity. If you installed to the defaults setup the TRAINSET folder would be at c:/program files/microsoft games/train simulator/trains/trainset. All NERR activities can be installed by double clicking the .APK, either inside the zip file or after unzipping.) All newer stock are in self-extracting exe files inside zip files - double-click on the exe file, and it will install automatically into the default MSTS location - you can point it to your MSTS location if it differs from the default one.

Engineers are required to run at least 2 NERR activities a month and submit time slips for them in order to maintain your Active status in the NERR. You can download any activity that is available to you from our library and run it. All though we prefer that you downloaded NERR's activities you can download them from any location on the internet, or you can run the canned activities that come with MSTS. You can make your own activities and run them. NERR's policy is very flexible. NERR activities are designed for use with the routes available for download. You can get these routes from other places; just make sure they are the same version NERR is using. We try to have the latest route versions available. You will have to download these routes to use NERR activities.

Code sharing with other Virtual Railroads might become available as more VRs are born. Code sharing is where you can run activities from another VR and they of course would run ours, to get hour credits. At present we are not code sharing with any other VR. However, as stated, above you can run any other activities from any other location and still be a member - you just have to submit at least 2 time slips for NERR activities each month.

NERR requires all engineers to file a trip report after running an activity by filling out the trip report form online in the NETS facility. The trip report forms are automated and require you to input or search for and select the activity you ran and total time. To get your hours posted on the Engineer's Roster, to advance in rank and to get paid, you must file your trip reports.

As a new engineer with NERR, you will start as a Trainee. The ranking is based on hours driven, in other words, on experience. For promotions and salaries see the chart below:

Rank	Hours	Monthly Salary	Symbol
Trainee (T)	0-5	$5,000
Junior Engineer (JE)	6-10	$10,000
Deputy Engineer (DE)	11-20	$15,000
Full Engineer (FE)	21-35	$20,000
Engineer (E)	36-50	$25,000
Senior Engineer (SE)	51-75	$30,000
Executive Engineer (EE)	76-100	$35,000
Senior Executive Engineer (SEE)	101-199	$40,000 + $5,000 per +25 hours
Superintendent of Engineers	200+	$100,000 + $25,000 per +25 hours
If you complete your 2 runs per month you will be paid your salary per rank and an additional $20,000 bonus + $5,000 for each extra run.

To get paid for driving for the NERR, you must have active status and must have completed the 2 required activities by the end of the month. If you do not complete the 2 required activities per month, your status will become inactive. You will not be paid if you are inactive. If you are inactive for 90 days, your position will be removed from the roster. If you require a leave of absence, you can request a vacation to ensure you do not get dropped from the roster for a 30 day period.

All NERR staff can be contacted via the email addresses listed at the beginning of this document.

This is a Virtual Railroad. It's not real.
It's just for fun.
Only fun.
Let's have fun.