Retro Routes

While waiting for something new I thought I'd go retro for a while and see what I could find,

 Albula

 Harzquerbahn

and the "Blue Comet"running on N.E.Corridor

Some of those old retro routes were quite good, Hoogdam and Swisslines were a couple of my favourites because they had many running lines and were not just simple A to B running lines like a lot of the others at the time.

Yes Mark I think I can agree with you there,I quite like this (German ?) Route,HARZQUERBAHN

Nice pics Roger.

I haven't got that route, just started the download

Mark,As long as you don't mind the old Khia cab here's an interesting drive.

Roger, Is that part of the included trainset?

neanderthal wrote:

Yes Mark I think I can agree with you there,I quite like this (German ?) Route,HARZQUERBAHN

Wow, That steam loco without the coaches and the cars look very realistic indeed!! Looks photographic and I would like to say someone got the textures spot on!
Cheers
Andy

Yes Mark it is,I have so far driven 2 of the Steam Loco's,they both have the same Cab,but thankfully its not the scotsman.There is 40 included activities and they appear to run very well with plenty of AI traffic,and nice scenery.

Andy,I must agree,retro it certainly is,but I don't know about the Technical stuff,but everything looks good,and not only does it run smoothly but so far I have been able to do hour long acts without having to make any saves.

Finally I recommend that you also try "Natal Mainline",retro yes,and you do have to save (about every 15 mins),but South Africa makes a nice change, and the trains do have their own Cabs.add to that the Gradients are quite fearsome,especially when hauling a fully loaded Coal train.MSTS is not bringing out New stuff every day,but some of the Retro Routes are well worth a go.

I have been following this thread with great interest, and it really is great to see that MSTS is well and truly alive. Perhaps a link could be added to show others where these routes can be downloaded from.

That would be a good idea Alec,but they're all from Trainsim.Com.I myself though don't know how to place a "Link".
Maybe some of our other members also know of retro route sites,preferably one's that are in English though as my Foreign language skills are Zero.
So far I have "Albula",Bear Mountain Pass,Natal Mainline and this one "Harzquerbahn" 3 of which actually came with the proper Stock,albeit I was surprised that BMP came with the good old British "Class 50"

Old they may be,but great fun for sure

I agree some of these old routes are worth downloading, if you don't already have them. The Albula V2 Route is very picturesque and I have this on CD, complete with all stock and activities.
It's only drawback is the fact that most of it is single line and you don't get to see much AI traffic on the move, except at passing places. But for scenery and the Swiss mountain feel of the route, it is one of my old time favourites.

I prefer scenic routes to those that run for miles and miles on flat terrain, which I find quite boring. Most of the American routes seem to go on for miles and miles with very little scenery appeal, but some of them are quite enjoyable, such as GN Highline V4, this is based on the default Marias Pass, but very much extended at both ends, with some lovely scenery. It is mostly single track but there are some good sections of double track, making it ideal for some activity creation.
Whitefish V9 is also a nice route, which is part of the BNSF system along with the GN Highline and has some very nice scenery.
Version 5 of the Mofatt Tunnel Route (Rollins Pass) has has another 100 miles added to it's previous version and runs through some lovely mountain gorges at the Western side of the 6 mile Moffat Tunnel, or you can take the longer old Rollins Pass route, which has some pretty bleak scenery as you approach the summit at Corona.

It's everyone to their own tastes I suppose, but I also like the American Denver & Rio Grande Narrow gauge routes, just for the sheer fun of running over mountain passes and deep gorges, some with some very long loops to gain height and some routes that have the occasional swicthbacks.

These seem very interesting, particularly the US steam-era routes.

Is there a "catalogue" anywhere of these with the necessary download information?

You can get all these routes from Trainsim.com. You will need to register to download anything. Once registered, click on File Library from the top of the Home Page and choose View entire file section, from the drop down box. This will give you a list on the left hand side of the page of all the types of files available. Choose Routes from the list and just scroll page by page until you find the routes you are looking for. Most of the old routes will be from page 50 and before as these were made way back.
Most of the routes have several files and unless you are a Premium member, downloading is pretty slow. but there is no limit as to how many files you can download, just don't download more than two files at a time, because you can't download more than two at a time.
Some of these route files are in expanded zip format and each part will have to be unzipped so that all the unzipped parts of the route are located in the same folder, including the exe zip for the route. Clicking on the executable zip, with all the other unzipped parts of the route, will automatically unzip the route to your MSTS Routes Folder, providing that your MSTS is located in C/ProgrammeFiles/MicrosoftTrain Simulator. If not you will have to set the path yourself to whatever drive your MSTS is located.

If you want American Locos and stock. look in the appropriate lists in the file library.

I have downloaded the Harzquerbahn route and stock, been having an explore around the route and it looks very nice.

there is one area of the route where MSTS crashes back to desktop when I reach it, there is no error message, I have another old route that does the same, just crashes back to desktop when I reach a certain point on the route, anyone know what could cause that?

Today I have downloaded the two parts for the following on Trainsim.com

MSTS Gold Spike Xcellent V3 Route Parts 1 and 2. This route was first available on Otto Wipfel's personal site. A merger of Frank Carver's version of Marias Pass V3 with Rene Rump's Whitefish V7. Permission was given to share this excellent route with the members. By Moe Smith. - quote from Trainsim.

This was uploaded on 13/11/2014, but I'm not sure what the quality is like, but one would normally expect anything by Otto Wipfel to be good.

The only problem with activities for US routes is that they quite often ask for a locomotive and there it is in the download list and . . . you then discover that it is a repaint of a commercial item which you need to have! In and of itself this isn't a problem as it seems a good idea that the commercial area allows repaints, and it is has always been disappointing that on this side of the pond this hasn't been allowed. At one time in the not so distant past Making Tracks seemed to be considering this but to the best of my knowledge it never happened?

I did repaint their Class 201s for my own personal use, and then stretched them to create the Class 202s, etc.

The latest Marias Pass version 5, is not as good as GN Highline, which is the same route, but much longer. Not tried the Golden Spike, so I think I will download it and see what it's like.

Hi Chaps,
For those who like scenic routes, I can recommend Bernina Pass route, available here : http://rhbformsts.spoorpunt.nl/
It is a narrow gauge line between St Moritz (Switzerland) and Tirano (Italy).  The site is free to access and contains all the stock required.  There are a few patches for the route and stock, but I haven't come across any problems (famous last words!!).   It installs as a miniroute because it uses a "special" version of tsection.dat Details of the route are given together with full instructions for its installation.

This screenshot shows St Moritz station.



Cheers,
Ged

While I've not had a chance to run that route, I have seen a few videos of it on YouTube and very impressed by what I've seen.

Screenshot from the Federseebahn narrow gauge route........................................



As far as I can remember, it came bundled with the Jagsttalbahn route, both routes came with stock and installed into their own MSTS installation.

Jagsttalbahn route

hello Mark, Federseebahn & Jagsttalbahn both look very good,are they downloads from somewhere or on Cd,in either case where do I get it.......Pleeeeeeeze

neanderthal wrote:hello Mark, Federseebahn & Jagsttalbahn both look very good,are they downloads from somewhere or on Cd,in either case where do I get it.......Pleeeeeeeze

And Me Too............Pleeeeeeeze
Cheers
Andy

I believe that Jagsttalbahn can be found at

http://www.jagsttalbahn.de/

This is where I got it from....................

http://www.schmalspursim.de/Downloads.htm



Home page......

http://www.schmalspursim.de/

It's a long time since I downloaded and installed these routes, so I can't remember if the installation creates it's own MSTS installation (I think it does) or if I did it.

Some Dutch routes...........................

De Hoekse Lijn (Hook of Holland approaching ferryport)


Den Haag-Schiphol (leaving the Hague)


Hoogdam route


Utrecht-Arnhem version 3.1


De Hoekse Lijn

Den Haag-Schiphol

Hoogdam

Utrecht-Arnhem available up to version 3.5

Well I've managed to download Bernina Pass and its up and running.sadly though I not been able to install the Jagsttalbahn or the Federseebahn,as I cant make any sense of the instuctions for installing them.still I'm not downhearted 1 out of 3 is very good for me.

It seems everyone is having a continental fling on MSTS all of a sudden. There are some nice routes out there, but some of them are not my scene. However, I do like the Berne Pass NG Route, as the scenery is so typical of Switzerland and the Alps. As it is a Mini Route, I have copied over the Route Folder to my main MSTS install, so that I can get into the AE, as this is not possible from the Mini Route. You also need to copy the Global Folder as well as there are some special track/road shapes in this route. (I just added ORIGINAL to my main MSTS Global Folder and made a new Global Folder inside my main MSTS install from the Mini Route Global Folder.) Apparently, if choosing to use the steam loco in the AE, it crashes, (well it does when I have tried to make an activity with it) So I have added a few Ffestiniog Double Farlies to the Berne Train Set and these can be used without problems. Once the activity has been made, I copied the Activity, Service, Traffic & Paths Folders back to the Mini Route folder and the new Consists as well and the Ffestiniog locos look quite nice on this route and don't look out of place. Not sure if there are any European NG locos that could be used instead.

Markh5682 wrote:
Hoogdam route

I've always seen the Dutch railways as being a bit odd, their rolling stock is like no other, and this is the one that always makes me do a double-take!

Hi Geoff,
With the Bernina Pass route as a separate mini route, you CAN run the Route Editor and Activity Editor from it, just like you can from any other mini-route.  Just make a copy of the Desktop icon and change the Target line to read :
"........\Train Simulator Bernina\train.exe" -toolset
You will have trouble trying to incorporate it into a normal MSTS installation, due to the special tsection.dat file, unless you are using Train Store.

Cheers,
Ged

Niall wrote:I've always seen the Dutch railways as being a bit odd, their rolling stock is like no other, and this is the one that always makes me do a double-take!

Yes they do look odd, a lot of Japanese suburban units have those rooftop cabs too.

Hi Ged,

I have done as you suggested and I am now able to use the RE & AE for Bernina Pass Route. This is a very well thought out route and has had lots of specially built objects made for it.
The scenery is about the best I have seen in any route and it's a pleasure to run on it. The only real downside, is the fact that it is mostly single track, which doesn't give much scope for AI traffic, but other than that it is a little gem! It can be a bit heavy on the frame rates in some areas, but nothing too drastic.

I remember quite a few years ago, I came across a French NG route, which was also quite scenic, but I just can't think what the name of it was and from which site it was on. I did download it at the time, but it must have got deleted from my files at some stage, as I have searched all my CD downloads and can't find it amongst them, so not sure if I burned that one to CD or not.

I have now burned the Bernina Pass to CD, so I know I have it on a hard copy.

This site may be well worth having a look through, there are lots of routes covering Europe as well as other countries. There are a few French NG routes here as well, so maybe the one I was looking for is one of them.

http://www.activitysimulatorworld.net/Quelques_lignes.htm

Well sadly ,once again I have screwed up my MSTS,its stopped working.The answer I think is to stand back and take a break from it,anyway here are a few shots of the last trip I made :











Hope you like them.....

Hi Roger,
Nice pictures of the Bernina Pass route
You say your MSTS "stopped working" - did it give any error message/s before, or when it stopped?
I hope you have left it as a mini route, otherwise you will have some problems!

Cheers,
Ged

Hello Ged,Nothing like that,just crashes everytime I click on a Route,so I've Uninstalled it (yet again).Funnily enough the Bernina route shortcut is still on show and appears to still work even though everything else is gone,mind you I haven't actually tried to run an act on it.My own fault,I was having a whale of a time doing some foreign Routes,which appeared to be Ok until I tried to add the Trains/Consists bit.(Thats normally where I get into trouble.)Horses for Courses I think,and I'm a Donkey !!!!!.I'm sure I will reinstall it at some stage when I find any new Routes that come with Stock....Neanderthal.

PS,why wont my auto Translator translate PDF files as thats where I think I went wrong,Can't speak German or Dutch LOL.....

Copy and paste the German text into google translate a bit at a time if you have trouble understanding it.  Last time I used it to translate a russian cyrillic document it wouldn't translate the whole document, (it may have been updated since then) so I did it in bits.

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=google%20translate

Hi Roger,
All the instructions for Bernina Pass, both on the website and in the route documentation, are in English!

Cheers,
Ged

Yes Ged,It was not that route I was trying to install,that one was up and running straight away,I only mentioned Bernina Pass as it was the last route I drove BEFORE trying to download a German Route. ,and yes it did install as a Mini Route and worked very well.Some great scenery !

Hi Roger,
Sorry, mate
I haven't tried the other routes.  You said that your problems started when you added some consists and trainsets; if you can identify which consists were last added and remove them a few at a time then testing MSTS, you, hopefully will identify which one/s are causing trouble.  When you've found all of them, check which stock is used and remove them. Of course, if all the last added stock and consists have a specific prefix or suffix to their file and folder names, they will be easier to find. It can be a long job to find the culprits, which is why the recommendation to backup before adding anything to MSTS is so important!

Cheers,
Ged

Other than Mini Routes, which are self contained as a separate MSTS install, I always make a Trainset & Consists Folder for each Route in my Main MSTS Install. All these Routes run through  Train Store. I just keep the Trainset & Consists Folders, as Trainset & Consists inside the TRAINS FOLDER. All the other Trainset & Consists Folders for each ROUTE I am not using, I add the name of the Route to all the different Trainset & Consists Folders as such.

Tainset_Default
Trainset_SCP
Trainset_TM  (Thames Mersey)
Trainset_DC  (Dorset Coast)
Consists_Default
Consists_SCP
Consists_TM
Consits_DC
Trainset
Consists

Inside my TRAINS FOLDER above this list I add

Trainset& Consists In Use_TT

Which in this case is Thames Trent. This reminds me which Trainset & Consists are active for what route I am running with.
To start up the route, I just go into TrainStore, choose Thames Trent and the Activity I wish to run and TrainStore quickly does the rest. Trainstore only has to deal with the active Trainset & Consists Folders. As far as Trainstore is concerned, the non active Trainset& Consists Folders, don't exist, as these don't show in MSTS.

So If I want to change Routes and run say, SCP, I just add TT to the Trainset & Consists Folder names and delete SCP from their respective folders, and change Trainset & Consists In Use to SCP.

It's a bit long winded I know, but at least you know that each Route has its own Trainset & Consists Folders, without having just one massive Trainset & Consists Folder. I have used this method for the past five years now, without any problems and any need to reinstall MSTS. I usually have no more than six routes active inside my ROUTES FOLDER at any one time. (Plus the six Deafault Routes). Other ROUTES, TRAINSETS & CONSISTS are kept inside  Separate Folders, outside of MSTS and are just CUT & PASTED  either to or from my main ROUTES, TRAINS  FOLDERS if I need any of them, together with their respective Trainset & Consists Folders. To keep my main computer hard drive from being bogged down with MSTS, All non active Trainsets, Consists & Routes are stored on a separate external hard drive.

Hope this makes sense!

And finally for the Bernina Route,just to give a Scenic view and to show the gradient there on,













With a final passenger view,

Nice shots Roger.

This is one of those routes that crash back to desktop when I reach a certain point on the route, It doesn't happen in OR, it only happens in msts, it is set up in a miniroute as supplied and I haven't altered anything, it happens at the same point about half way through the route whichever direction I approach it from, anyone know what could cause that?

Hi Mark,
If you could post the location, I'll have a look.
Use the 0 (zero) key to show the compass at the top of the screen, then quote the longitude and latitude values shown when, or about when, you get the crash.

Cheers,
Ged

Hi Ged.

I'm off out in a mo for an appointment, I'll fire up the route later when I get back and try and make a note before it happens.

Thanks.
Mark.

Hi Mark/Ged,sorry I cant help,I'm no good at the technical bits, but have to admit that I have had no problem in running this Route,and I've done 2 of the full route activities.

Hi Roger,
Thanks, mate
When Mark comes back with the co-ordinates (that's the word I was looking for earlier!) we can both go to that position to check if we have the same problem!

Cheers,
Ged

Hi Roger, Mark and Ged,
Just a thought, I don't have the route, but just wondering if from what Roger is saying is because it is because it might be a heavily tiled route and just like Dorset Coast you have to save (Every so often) just incase because of crashes? Or failing that something is missing from the Installation? Sorry just throwing some ideas out there??
Also some fantastic shots of these routes guys!
Cheers
Andy

hi all,I don't know if this helps in any way but I saved at every station I stopped at,though did not exit the game at any point having to delete all the saves at the end of the Route.

Hi Roger,
I'm pretty certain that actually taking saves throughout a run doesn't do anything to help MSTS manage its resources! It's just when that crash does happen and you restart the sim the resources are all available again ... until the next time

Cheers,
Ged