Claude's Corner    
Taz's Tales
Old Heading    
Railroad Slang

  Index to past issues
   Links & Tutorials
       MSTS Utilities
    Fun Page

There will be no further updates of this News Page until further notice.

I apologise for the loss of this NERR service.

21 June

• The table below shows the  most popular work order  for each of most of the routes that we have at the NERR. Have you run all of these? I know that they have been around for varying times, but this is just a simple, fun survey.

• The latest news from  Kuju's Rail Simulator  website is that they intend to enter the North American market with their new generation train simulator. Interesting news from their website yesterday:

18 June

• There has been one  new work order  released this week - NEWH-317-01 for the Whitefish route. Boy, it's cold today, but you still have to work! OK, boys, your train, and your GE AC6000CW #9905 loco  is ready to roll. The last crew refueled it for you, so you just have to hop in and go. This is a special run with a load of logs to Spokane for the Spokane Lumberjack Olympics. Traffic is light with no foreseen delays. Dispatch will inform you of any news on the line, so keep your eyes and ears open. By the way, it's snowing heavily, so visibility is poor. Also, watch for deer on and near the tracks. It seems that they don't know enough to get out of the snow! Must be that new breed they came up with called the Railfanning Deer! Have fun!

• Steam4me has released  7 new MSTS tutorials  in the past week or two. From their site: "Tutorials are popping up everywhere: another three today bring the tally to seven over the past few days and over 100 in total.

  •  Paul deVerter describes the use for a button we've all seen on the TGATools screen, but have never used or even understood: Alpha Channel Generation using the TGATool Alpha Channel Template Option. Sounds tricky, but Paul's explanation makes it quite simple.

  • Otto "Ottodad" Wipfel is one of the most prolific writers on MSTS and today presents Changing the MSTS Registry Entry the Easy Way - another way of changing MSTS Registry settings - probably useful if only to keep a set of registry entries to avoid having to completely re-install MSTS if you have a computer crash.

  • Otto "Ottodad" Wipfel's other contribution today is a simple but effective way to make sure that your carriages' wheels are planted on the rails, not under or in the rails. Read Placing the Wheels on the Rails for his technique on getting this feature right on your vehicles.

  • Late last year, Michael Sinclair wrote A Pictorial Tutorial For Creating Activities in MSTS. It's taken a couple of months to get here, but this tutorial will walk you through the creation of activities, including player and traffic trains, paths and consists. Click on the link above to start viewing this excellent tutorial.

  • Jim Ward's back with another tutorial on Creating Static Trains to Fill Up Yards.

  • A short tutorial by Mike Simpson on Using Route Riter to Change the MSTS Registry Settings.

  • Paul deVerter continues his struggles with TSM and on this occasion explains how to Make Wheels With Spokes As Separate Parts Rotate Together."

12 June

•  Apologies for the gap  in reporting. I've been at a conference for the past few days, and I won't be home again until next weekend.

• Two  new work orders  recently:

  • NEPO-050-10a - for the Pocahontas route - Buchanan Branch Part 1. You're in Williamson Yard. Couple your SD40-2 NERR #4212 / FURX #3048 / NERR #4207 locomotives to the 45 empty coal hoppers + FRED immediately behind you and take them up the Buchanan Branch to Weller Yard.

  • NEPO-050-10b - for the Pocahontas route - Buchanan Branch Part 2. You're in Weller Yard. Couple your SD40-2 NERR #4212 / FURX #3048 / NERR #4207 locomotives to the 40 loaded coal hoppers, FRED, and SD40-2 pusher locomotive immediately behind you. Cut off your pusher locomotive at
    Cartright, near the summit. Watch for red signals; coal mines operate 24 hours a day. There is quite a bit of Buchanan and Pocahontas mainline traffic. Deliver the coal hoppers to Williamson Yard #16. (Williamson Yard #16 is actually near the center of the yard complex.)

6 June

• The  Cascade & North Western VR  is open for business, and, at the time I am writing this, 73 people have applied for membership. Most of those have been approved (still some missing numbers on the callboard), and all but 25 have submitted their first time slip and are on their way through their C&NW career.

• Lots of  interesting files  over at the Train-Sim.com file library this week. Apart from the new routes that have already been mentioned here, there have been:

  • A pack of over 40 activities for the Lehigh Valley v2 route - needs non-default downloads.

  • Some activities for the Pocahontas route - the excellent route by Austin Yoder - including one passenger activity, a rarity from North American activity developers. From the fileid.diz file of the passenger activity: "Bluestone Trainfan Excursion. A Norfolk Southern Pocahontas district route passenger activity. A group of rail fans have decided to organize a rail excursion along the Bluestone excursion. Your RDC unit is allowed up to 30 mph. As an experienced engineer in the branch, you will ensure your passengers a soft ride along the twisting tracks. The weather is great and the scenery is beautiful. But you never know what could happen during the trip! Else, you will have good reasons to be on the lookout, there will be rail traffic along the way, even along the Princeton-Deepwater district line. The first part of the activity should end when you bring your RDC unit to a stop at the Matoaka setoff after unloading passengers at Matoaka station. The second part will make the return trip and end once stopped at the Bluefield WV station."

  • A free form activity for the Marias Pass v3.1 route. This one switches the mainline from West Columbia Falls to Conkelly and the Kalispell Branch from Columbia Falls. It uses all default equipment and includes 15 repaints of default cars. Also included are 10 activities and a blank work order so you can make your own, a start-up list of all sidings and what cars are on them, plus track diagrams for West Columbia Falls, Columbia Falls, Conkelly and Kalispell. All switches are manual. There is no AI traffic, and there are no required downloads. You can switch cars using work orders or randomly switch cars on your own." The other route that people have made free for m activities for is the PO&N route, also recently-released in a new version.

  • A 14Mb download is the Golden State Rocket Trainset. The passenger train car models are by Train Artisan and Gaetan Belanger. Original textures, specular lighting and mip fixes have been down by Bill Hemb. It has been repainted in Rock Island Golden State livery by Jim England. Extensive research materials were supplied for this project by Clayton Rowe."

  • A number of cabooses (cabeese?) and box cars for the Spokane Portland & Seattle Railway.

  • An update for the Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railway MSTS route v2.3. These files  upgrade the signals and signal scripts to try and eliminate stand-offs. It also updates the car spawners and scenery.

  • The first activity for an Australian route that I can remember seeing on t-s.com is for the  recently-released South Australian Railways Adelaide and Hills route. This one has you driving a 700 Class steam locomotive to Mt Barker Junction. In appalling weather, thread a double 700 class mixed consist through Adelaide's busy metropolitan rail system and tackle the grades of the Mt Lofty Ranges en route to Mt Barker Junction, with considerable AI traffic.

• The following table shows  where our NERR members live . Like the other VRs, we are a global organisation. This enables us to provide assistance to our members 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All the numbers are approximate and are based on the information that members supply when they apply to join the NERR as engineers. The locations where the members of the NERR forums live are not as useful to tabulate, as a much higher proportion of forum members do not provide information about that when they register in the forums.

4 June

• 1 day until the new VR -  Cascade & North Western  - opens for membership. Their website is here. You can apply for membership from tomorrow, 5 June. The new VR will operate rather differently from the existing ones:

  • One route - Dual Fictional route - but the DF like you have not seen it before. It has lots more track, plenty of new scenery, large numbers of new objects along the route, new features (e.g. some things will be in different places each time you run that part of the route), new sounds (e.g. in-cab radio chatter), and all this still with good frame rates. And there are probably plenty of things that I don't know about yet. Some of what you see will depend on the slider  settings that you run MSTS at. There is so much to see in the landscape as you pass, you will have trouble concentrating great on your driving.

  • A set sequence of work orders. You will do 4 training activities (with supervision), then you can access the work orders (over 100 developed so far) one at a time. So you will download a work order and the equipment necessary to run it. Then you will run the work order, and save the Detailed Evaluation Report (DER) when you complete it. You submit the rtf file containing the DER, and then, if your  DER is satisfactory, you will be given access to the next work order and the extra  equipment needed to run it (if any). Example: the first "day" of work orders consists of a number of work orders around the Ada yards and port part of the route. Each work order is from about 10 to 35 minutes long, and you will use the same locomotive for the day.

  • On the callboard you will be credited with a set amount for each work order, not the actual time that you take to complete it.

  • Stay under the speed limits, or you will not complete the work orders satisfactorily.

• Have you investigated all the options on the  NETS menu ? Some of the questions in the forums show that numbers of our members do not know the extent of what NETS can do for them. Maybe someone would like to write a NETS manual? Three examples of what NETS can do for you are:

  • If you get an error in MSTS such as "can't find ???.wag", you can search for the file that you need to download for that car from the Roster in NETS. Choose the Work Order Search Centre option in NETS and then the "Search for Equipment to D/L by Name" option (No. 7), type in the ???.wag that you are missing, and then click on "Go". You will then be able to download the file that you need to continue running that work order.

  • You can find the most recent 5, 10, 15 or 20 work orders that have been added to the database. Choose option 4 on the NETS menu. When you get the list, you can see that one of the newer work orders is, for example, D - NENE-235-03A (21). The number in the brackets shows the number of equipment files that you need to have to run the work order. If you click on the NENE-235-03A part of the list, a small window will open to show you the 21 files that you need. You can download them from that screen. There are 4 small icons in the table cell to the left of the work order name. They are, clockwise from the top left: work order details (new window), download the work order zip file, view / write comments on the work order, and view all parts of multi-part work order series (if appropriate). The three cells to the right of the work order name show the duration of the work order, the date it was added to the database, and a short description of the work order task.

  • Choose the "Change Status" option on the NETS menu to request that you be put on Leave on the callboard, or you can request a change to another status level. When you press the "Submit" button, an email is sent to one of the NERR Admin staff (H.R. Director - me), and your request will be acted on. This is the best way to get a message like this to the NERR Admin.

• Let's have a look at the work orders that have had  between 5 and 10 time slips  submitted for them - shown in the following table. I've removed some of the work orders that are no longer relevant, including those  developed for older versions of that particular route, and those that are so new (ID# higher than 900) that the reason for their low use is obvious. Why not go and run some of these? Old does not always equal interesting!

1 June

• A  new work order  to start the new month: NENC-247-01a for the North Coast route. A new Las Vegas casino project requires large amounts of lumber from the North Coast area. NERR has promised delivery by Monday. Ready for a long haul with your ALCo C424 #s 452, 451 locomotives? In this first part we are going to start in Eureka early on Saturday morning. There are some wagons to pick up on your left. There are several other pick ups along the way, so check your work order and don't forget any! Your helper engine was supposed to be here waiting for you, but there were some problems on the run up here. Crews are in South Fork hurrying to get it fixed before you arrive. You could probably run without it, but a helper would make the trip much better. And you probably won't take the 2 hours listed on your work order, but you never know.

• As we usually do at the start of each month, let's take a look at the  Top 40 Work Orders  from #40 to #1, as determined by the number of time slips submitted for them since NETS began operations. Some interesting trends this month. The main one is the effect of using the Full Bucket Line route for the new Engineers Orientation program. We have welcomed 19 new members in the past couple of weeks, almost all of whom have started to submit NERR time slips. Most of these have been for the Full Bucket Line route. It is logical for the new engineers to continue to run on the NERR route that they already have installed. So if you want to make lots of royalties, start developing some short, interesting work orders for the FBL, with not too many equipment downloads.

The views expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of the NERR Administration. They are the views of the author of the particular news item.