Actober Ideas

Hi all,
With the idea of Actober; ever looming closer? How about we have a look at the Routes available in the Routes Directory and those that don't have many Act's or no Acts available Here and think or look into creating an Act or 2 for one of those Routes?
Any thoughts/Suggestions/Ideas?

Andy
I intend to look at a branch line route that would match with one of my recent FG DMU uploads, although I haven't finalised that yet.
Please note the activity will be simple!

Alec,
Thanks, if you need any help or advice, then please let me know..

Hi folks

As far as I'm aware, nobody at all has yet made any activities for The Tunnel route. The Tunnel route runs between Ashford to Lille which has a Channel Tunnel and also has a Folkestone branch (actually as far Folkestone as the route continues to Dover Priory and some go to Ramsgate from there). I have just made the act called "ACTU01 18:10 London CX to Ramsgate" and you are the driver of the Class 375/8 as far as Folkestone.

I'm planning to do some acts for Glasgow Carlisle v4 if completed, with some on Scottish Central Stage 1 in my head.

Cheers
Alistair Cowell

Excellent stuff Alistair.

A number of the routes in the Route Directory are without activities so . . .

I have just downloaded some more Routes Yesterday and will have a look into doing possibly doing 1 or 2 for Actober; as long as my chief tester Ged doesn't mind testing for me once again?  
A question if I may, does The Withered Arm route actually go down to Ilfracombe. (I haven't installed it yet)
But if it does I would certainly want to do an Activity for this.....

Hi Andy,
I'd be pleased to do any testing for you, mate  

Regarding The Withered Arm - this is an extract from the Readme :-

This route is a semi-fictional rendition of the old Southern route into Devon and Cornwall, "The Withered arm".  It starts from Yeovil and extends into the West Country to Torrington and Ilfracombe.  I have included all the little branches off the mainline to all the little seaside towns that British people once went to for a holiday before it became cheaper to fly to Spain.  The route is set in the late 1950's - Early 1960's before most of the route was axed by Beeching.  Niether the route or places are factually accurate but then there are not many people left now who can remember the route as it genuinely was. "The Withered Arm" was well known for its wonderful character combining the rural railway with heavy Summer holiday traffic from the West Country seaside resorts to all kinds of destinations throughout the British Isles.

Cheers,
Ged

EDIT : Oh dear!! I should have just linked to the Route Directory  

slipperman12 wrote:Hi Andy,
I'd be pleased to do any testing for you, mate  

Regarding The Withered Arm - this is an extract from the Readme :-

This route is a semi-fictional rendition of the old Southern route into Devon and Cornwall, "The Withered arm".  It starts from Yeovil and extends into the West Country to Torrington and Ilfracombe.  I have included all the little branches off the mainline to all the little seaside towns that British people once went to for a holiday before it became cheaper to fly to Spain.  The route is set in the late 1950's - Early 1960's before most of the route was axed by Beeching.  Niether the route or places are factually accurate but then there are not many people left now who can remember the route as it genuinely was. "The Withered Arm" was well known for its wonderful character combining the rural railway with heavy Summer holiday traffic from the West Country seaside resorts to all kinds of destinations throughout the British Isles.

Cheers,
Ged

EDIT : Oh dear!!  I should have just linked to the Route Directory  

Hi Ged,
Long time, no hear buddy! I did read the readme.   So can I gather that it goes down to Ilfracombe? I'd like to give everyone a challenge from Ilfracombe up to Barnstaple if I can? With those banks and with an Unconverted as converted's weren't allowed because of their weight!

Hi Andy,
If my checks are correct, you will be severely disappointed by The Withered Arm route

Although some recognisable station names are included, the distances between them are nothing like real life!  For example, Exeter to Tavistock is 38.5 miles (61.960Km) by road; the distance in this route is 9.7Km - even in a straight line, it's 33 miles in real life.
I've not been able to find Barnstaple in the route; also, the few parts of the route I've travelled are mostly flat.  

Cheers,
Ged

Ged,
I've just installed it with some errors before hand. But so far looks like you are correct and the end of the line at Ilfracombe with no Sea View beyond and Signals/Platforms and no climb.... 
Isn't the No extended Shape File Message for the Tsection.Dat file or is it for the following;

Xtracks 3.18
New Roads 3.2

Hello Andy,The Withered Arm Route is quite interesting to explore,I know because I have done so.Sadly though it should be treated as completely fictitious,names of Real Places have been used,but that is all !

Such an approach is not uncommon - we need to appreciate that compromise is the name of the game - especially in the early days. Me I'm happy to work with what we've got and there are plenty of other routes to try.

Alec,I for one am glad to try out any route,the Withered Arm was no exception,in fact as I said I found it very interesting and managed to get lost quite a lot,,great fun !

The need to illustrate the variety of routes was one of the "drivers" behind the Route Directory. I never seem to have the time to explore all of them.

Going back to my previous thread. Does anyone know why I am getting those errors?

Hi Andy

If you haven't got NewRoads and/or Xtracks installed then that is likely to be the problem.

Your tsection is unlikely to be the problem unless it is pre-tsection36, but if that were the case MSTS would crash rather than throw up errors.

I will alter the entry for it to say you need newroads and Xtracks.

Hi Mark,
I'm going to download them tomorrow, but it might help with the links to them?

Hi Andy,
XTracks is at UKTS file ID 14093 and New Roads is file ID 6254. These are later versions than those specified in the route info., but are perfectly OK  

Regarding the shape description file problem - what's the name of the file, please.

Cheers,
Ged

They are all listed in the links directory, and now also in the route entry.

Introducing the Actober activities for last year was a great idea and it was good to see quite a number of routes reappear, that were made many years ago. Now we are in the month of October again, is anyone planning to do more activities again for this year?
I'm afraid the AE is not my pet subject as far as MSTS is concerned, I am much more at home with the RE, so asking me to do some activities, which I would like too, is best left to the experts.

Geoff
As usual it's always good to hear from you. Since our last suggested event "June & July 2014 are MSTS Months" this area of TSSH has been lying fallow. I was thinking of suggesting a second "12 Days of MSTS" during Xmas 2014, when I may have some of my TSM work available for upload.

Hi Alec, thank you for your comment. 12 days of MSTS seems a good idea too, although I don't think I could add anything, except maybe have a go at doing some activities (although the AE is not my pet area ) I might be able to put something together, for a few routes.
I did do a couple for the SCP, before we released it, but these were  pretty simple shunting activities for Rosyth Dockyard and I think a recovery activity on the Forth Bridge. Mick Young (mickrik) did some very good activities for the SCP. as well as his loco's he built for the route.
Anyway, I will give it a go, once I decide what routes to choose, as there are so many to choose from now. I have about 30 routes installed at the moment, with other routes stored on file, should I need to load them.

Geoff
Even one upload is better than none. We ran a similar event last year and it was relatively successful. When NWE V3 comes out I very much hope that it will stimulate more "activity" activity. Of course there are also some other routes in production although I don't expect these to be available until they're ready.

Hi All,

Even though there isn't an Actober event as such I will be uploading at least 2 activities this month. See my S - Activities topic for more details.

Regards,

Stephen

. . and very much appreciated they will be to!

Hi All,

One up, look for it when approved.

Regards,

Stephen

Since finishing the SCP, I have not been as active on the forums as I used to be. Loosing my wife three years ago, was a bad time and I went through a period of depression, so that didn't help. Anyway, I am happy to say, that I have a new lady in my life and living is getting back to normal again. I have been running quite a few activities on quite a number of routes I have stored in my Routes Folder, something I never seemed to have the time for whilst working on the SCP.
Now that I have the time with MSTS again, I have decided to give making activities a go. It took a while to get to grips with the Route Editor, but soon got into it after a few weeks. So, getting to grips with the Activity Editor, shouldn't prove too difficult, if I start with a few simple activities first.
I might start with the SCP, then move on to some of the other routes. But my involvement with Route Building has come to an end, as the time needed to build even a short route, is very time consuming and I don't want to spend hours and hours at the computer, which is needed when route building.

Geoff

Hi Geoff,

If you need help with creating activities look on the steam4me website - there is a mass of information there. There are also files 7100 & 9178 on UKTS. Or there is the personal approach - I will always try to help others if I can and I'm sure others will as well.

Good luck,

Stephen

Thank you guys!  Yes those tutorials on Steam4me are very good and I will be referring to the activity tutorial again, just to recap, before I make a start. I am familiar with setting up a player train, adding AI traffic, also making paths with reversing and waiting points, as well as placing consists for picking up from various sidings. What I seem to have trouble with, is setting up work orders. This is one area of the AE that baffles me. I know how to add messages for adding instructions during an activity, it's just working out how to get everything working in sinc (if you know what I mean)
One problem I seem to have difficulty with, is packaging the activity and uploading it to UKTrainsim. The few activities I did for the SCP, were sent to Don, and he packaged everything together, when the route was finally uploaded. So a bit of help in that department may be useful.
Anyway, let's see how it goes.