MSTS - Helpful Facts and Links - Part 26 (Re-arranging routes in MSTS and TrainStore) by Mark (MarkH5682)

MSTS - Helpful Facts and Links - Part 26 (Re-arranging routes in MSTS and TrainStore) by Mark (MarkH5682)

This is another part in the series of posts that are intended to give a simple history of MSTS, point people to the various links considered vital to maximising the performance, describe elements within the MSTS hierarchy as well as allowing an understanding of the various components that make up MSTS.

This part has been prepared by Mark based on his approach to listing his routes.

If you have got a multitude of routes located within your MSTS installation, and find that it takes ages to find the route you want to run, or your favourite route is always at the bottom of the list, this is considered an easy way of organizing them. This approach sorts them by region.

It is quite easy to do, simply open up the routes .trk file with a unicode text editor (such as WordPad or ConText) and add a prefix to the route name so that all UK routes are listed together; all EU routes are listed together, etc.

The opening lines of the TRK file for the North West England V2 route, for example, are as below:-

SIMISA@@@@@@@@@@JINX0r0t______

Tr_RouteFile (
RouteID ( NWE )
Name ( "North West England. V2.0" )

This would be changed to the following:-

SIMISA@@@@@@@@@@JINX0r0t______

Tr_RouteFile (
RouteID ( NWE )
Name ( "BR North West England. V2.0" )

When TrainStore lists Routes in the LH Pane of its opening screen, it lists them by their name as in the lines above, and therefore if all UK routes are prefixed with BR - use BRNG for UK narrow gauge routes - then all UK routes are listed together within MSTS and TrainStore, so it is not necessary to search through dozens of other routes to find the route required.

The Prefixes used in mine are as follows:-

AF = Africa
AU = Australia
BR = UK
BRIR = Ireland
CA = Canada
EU = Europe
IR = Indian Railways
JP = Japan
NZ = New Zealand
NON = Non region specific
ROW = Rest of the World
RU = Russia and former soviet bloc countries
US = USA
Z = Test routes, unfinished projects odds and ends etc.

By using the above prefixes you can now find your routes very easily, for instance if you want to run a Japanese route, you just scroll down your route list to the JP prefixed routes, and select the one you want.

You can use your own prefixes and alter the sort criteria to suit your own ideas; e.g. having your favourite routes at the top of your list, etc. (As an aside Alec (Rufuskins) has used route source; i.e. EB for European Bahn, MT for Making Tracks, etc.)

So if you have a lot of routes installed and have trouble finding them, (especially the lesser used ones that you can't quite remember the name of), the above method may be of some use to you.

When installing and/or amending all or any part of MSTS it is strongly recommended that you create a back-up copy, because even with the best will in the world mistakes can and will happen. There’s many a “simmer” who can testify to that.