Bedford-Hitchin branch problems

Hi everyone. Yesterday I downloaded the Bedford-Hitchin branch route from UKTS and installed it today. It looks like a great little route. However, I'm running into an annoying series of No Extended Shape Data errors for various JP2 road pieces. They don't appear to have anything to do with NewRoads V4 (it is installed, and I reinstalled it to be sure) and even resorting to copying everything related to JP2 doesn't fix the problem. The readme states nothing about this. Is there something I've forgotten to do? Did anyone else have this problem and how did you fix it?

Hi,
Yes, it is a nice little route

You don't say if you're running MSTS or Open Rails?

The JP2 road pieces are part of a default MSTS installation and, as such, are included in the GLOBAL\SHAPES folder.

If the 'missing' files are in your GLOBAL\SHAPES folder, maybe your PC is having trouble running the route?

Cheers,
Ged

I'm running MSTS (the latest stable BIN version).

I tried running the 'check route' option in Route Riter to see if it could identify the issue... 'No errors'

This is most infuriating as there's no reason for this to be occurring.


EDIT - I have a second MSTS installation on another PC and tested the route on that. It worked. So I copied the GLOBAL folder from it onto my other PC, and that seems to have done the trick. I guess something mistakenly got deleted some time ago.

Though now I'm running into a stream of "Train Simulator has encountered a problem and needs to close" errors at several locations. Hitchin Junction and Southill are two of them. Always fun trying to determine what the issue is with those as they don't tell you anything.

Another crash...

Yesterday I played the lite DMU activity from Hitchin to Bedford. Using Trainstore. MSTSBin.

I got as far as 1.5 miles from Henlow when the computer locked up and a blue screen of death. Considerably more annoying than the previous instances of MSTS crashing on its own.

What usually causes this sort of instability?

Hi Harry,

There are so many different issues that can cause MSTS to throw in the towel: too many items of rolling stock, a single missing sound file, a slightly wrong texture, a file compressed wrong, or it could just be because it is past 12pm on a Wednesday .

With MSTS, it's not just about mastering the trains but the simulator itself. More than once I have loaded up one version of MSTS only to have it crash out because it refuses to load the track monitor, so I have swapped over to a different install which loaded fine, and then swapped back only to have it work. .
MSTS has had issues with various things since its release over 20 years ago, and when they developed it I don't think they ever envisioned that it would take on a life of its own like it has.

The only thing that I can suggest is working through everything slowly: are the eng and wag files set up correctly (couplings, power parameters, weights, bounding boxes, etc); then check timetable paths and traffic timings, making sure that there are no services starting on top of one another; checking for any missing files from the rolling stock and the route; make sure MSTS is set up corretly for the right graphics level and on the right graphics card.

Try loading the train and the path in explore mode, see if it is a pathing issue or something else.

Justin

Hi,
As the route works OK on another PC, it sounds like something is failing on the other PC.
You don't say whether it's a laptop or desktop.
Whichever it is, it could be almost anything!  Hard drive failing. Memory module failing. Overheating and the processor is throttling back to protect itself.
Are other programs having similar, or odd, problems?

If not, it could be some corruption in the MSTS files.  I suggest uninstalling MSTS then re-installing it, or, if you've got a recent, working, backup, overwrite the whole installation.  It's probably not worth backing up the current system as any corrupted files will also be backed up, but it's your decision!

Cheers,
Ged

EDIT : Sorry, Justin, you beat me to it!

Yes, I know MSTS has its quirks and temperaments.

My main PC is a desktop running Windows XP (for games, video processing and writing mostly, I haven't used it to connect to the internet in over a year). It initially was able to load the route in Route Editor but with the missing JP2 road pieces it was driving me bonkers. My mistake was copying the entire global folder from my laptop, which caused Route Editor to throw in the towel every time I tried loading it, and probably the crashes in the simulator too. I remedied the situation tonight by using an old copy of the global folder from a miniroute and then copying each missing JP2 road piece individually as it was asking for them. Now I am able to load the route in Route Editor with no issues, and hopefully this has also solved the problem for running in the simulator.

The laptop is seldom used for MSTS these days since the screen is much smaller, and although it is running Windows 7 it is no more powerful than my desktop PC.