North Eastern Roundhouse Ramblings (April 2003)

... to the latest edition of North Eastern Roundhouse Ramblings, the newsletter of North Eastern Rail Road. I’m writing this on the eve of my journey across the US. Three Amtrak trains from now - The International, The Empire Builder, and The Cascades - and I’ll be in British Columbia, my home for this summer. Any of you who plan to do some tourism out there this summer, drop by the Hell’s Gate Airtram (http://www.hellsgateairtram.com/) between Vancouver and Kelowna and say hello. This is North America’s steepest non-supported cable car and I would be more than happy to take you down into the canyon.

There’s been a lot of activity going on lately at NERR and I’ve done my best to include it here. Most of the information that I’ve missed is available through the forums. Be sure to check them out regularly! We’ve got an interview with Wayne Kuzara, NERR’s Road Foreman of Engineers and a bunch of tidbits to keep folks up to date. I promised a travelogue of my recent trip on VIA Rail’s Constellation service (as well as additional pictures from our first International Convention) as well as shots from the railroad museum in Madrid, Spain for this issue, but the rest of life got in the way and we’ll have to wait a while longer. Apologies for the delay in the release of this newsletter.

Even though it’s been three months since our last newsletter, I haven’t received any submissions from our engineers. It’s always great to see your name "in print" so go ahead and send travelogues, historical pieces and whatever else you like to eic@vnerr.com.

Enjoy the newsletter,

Cedric Nagy

Director of Employee Communications and Media Relations

NERR’s recent success has come at a price. Planned upgrades to the website, including NETS, our automated trip report system, have had to be continuously pushed back. NERR has been inundated with new applicants, and each one takes time and effort to process. In order to complete the required upgrades NERR will not be accepting applications for new engineers until current engineers can be properly looked after.

The Virtual Airline Stock Market, located at http://www.vastock.com/ has begun it’s beta phase. NERR engineers are invited to test the service during this phase so that they can become comfortable with the website. VASM runs the BVI Bank, which is how NERR engineers will be paid.

The North Eastern Academy of Railroad Science, headed by NERR’s Director of Workforce Development Jim Vaughan, recently opened its doors at http://www.vnears.org/. All NERR engineers are encouraged to register for training courses such as Steam Engineer Certification, Passenger Service Certification, How to Develop Activities for Microsoft Train Simulator, Locomotive Cab Views: Inside and Out, Equipment Physics: Modifying .eng and .wag files, Equipment Lighting: Making sure you can see and The How-To’s of Route Design. More information is available on the website.

NERR’s Director of Workforce Development has recently announced two training positions at NEARS. The available positions are Diesel Certification Mentor and Test Manager. For more information including job descriptions and qualifications, visit http://svr1.turboweb.net/~admin104/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3258. This is your chance to give something back to the NERR community!

Several new work orders (activities) have been posted on the website. In addition, Brian Element, NERR’s Superintendent, Maintenance of Way, reports that "many of the activity developers are now working together to create large multi route activities." In addition, he says, "the route map has changed as payware routes are no longer part of the main map but will be part of the extra board." Engineers that would like to attempt to write work orders are encouraged to apply to the NEARS developer’s course at the address noted above.

If you are having problems installing or running an activity could you please verify the suggestion below before posting questions to the forum. Note that all the activities available on this site have been completed by at least two members of the Feasibility team so the activities can be played with the equipment and routes available from this site.

1. Very that you have the correct version of the route. All our activities have been tested on the routes available on our site, unless otherwise noted these routes can also be downloaded at train-sim.com or avsim.com, just make sure you have the correct version as multiple versions of these routes may be available on these sites.

2. If you install an activity and it gives you a different route version number please ignore this error and install. When routes are updated we verify that the activities will still run on them so there is a possibility of different track version numbers but all our activities will run on our routes.

3. Make sure you have the proper equipment, much of our equipment has been updated since the site opened so it is possible that you may have obsolete equipment installed on your computer, please verify that you do have the most up-to-date equipment, this is also important as some of the original equipment available on the site was in a beta release, an example is the SW1500, if you have the original you will have problems as there were problems with the eng file.

4. When installing new equipment make sure you delete the old version before installing the new equipment and do not just write over it. By deleting the folder you make sure that you have deleted all the old files that are associated with that equipment.

5. Make sure you have the common sound and common cabs installed as these are needed to run our equipment.

6. When being stopped at a red ask yourself if you have hit all the reversing points in the F4 monitor, it is just not good enough to have the arrow hit the reverse point but the point must actually disappear or you have not hit it. This seems to be the greatest problem that causes red signals. Also have some patience, if you are sure that you have hit all the reverse points then it just might mean that you will have to wait 10 or 15 minutes for that AI train to show up.

7. Verify that you have properly followed the work order and have not missed any steps in the work order or not followed the instructions properly.

8. If you are still having problems then please post to the forum and we will try and help you out. When posting to the forum please be as specific as you can be on what the problem is. A comment that you can not run activity xxx tells us nothing, you should tell us the exact error or place in which the problem is occurring and be as descriptive as you can.

Finally, remember we are all here to have FUN and enjoy ourselves.

NERR’s Human Resources Director John Hodgkinson has passed along a few comments to be included in this issue. "A growing number of engineers," he says, "are adding comments to their trip reports. That makes my job more interesting. I'll try to publish some in the coming weeks."

In addition, John, and the rest of NERR’s staff encourage all engineers to become active on the forums. They are a great resource and an integral part of the NERR community.

Q. Let's start out with some of the basic stats. What's your full name, age, and place of birth?

A. Wayne Kuzara, 39 years old born in Montclair, NJ

A. I don’t have any mice in my house….. I use a trackball.

A. Yes, I only eat the stems. I don’t eat flowers.