RMD-4, Christmas Present almost ready

[landnrailroader]

Colleagues,

The RMD-4 has been uploaded. There are 8 spanned zip files as indicated. Maybe it will appear in the list by tomorrow - in any case this is my Christmas Present to the community.

J. H. Sullivan

[ssw]

Who says early presents spoil Christmas? :)

Been waiting for this one. Got some EF-4's with pans up, ready to charge the train line and pour on the juice! :)

[jpmurd]

As Tony the Tiger says,,,Grrrreat!!! John

[bcarswell]

I have now loaded this much anticipated route. Unfortunately, I am getting an error about a shape "pinkrock" not found. I checked the route with Route Riter and it also indicates that it is missing and not available in default routes. Any chance of getting this corrected?

[landnrailroader]

Bcarswell,

I checked the uncompressed copy I have on CD and there is no shape by that name, and the only reference to "pink" is a transfer called "Trans_US2pinkrock.ace" which is used as a transfer. This item is identical to the Us2pinkrock.ace found in the terrtex directory of the US2 default route having just been renamed to avoid confusion. There is a regular (summer) and snow version of this file in the textures directory.

Can you copy, and paste into an E-mail, the error you are getting as this buffaloes me - the route has been checked considerably after it was zipped - and then unzipped back into my system.

J. H. Sullivan, P.E. (retired)

jhsulliv@comcast.net

[mrmike]

It's not a shape file. It's an ace. file.

[landnrailroader]

What is the .ace file called. There is no pinkrock.ace as such used in the route, but there is the above mentioned Trans_US2pinkrock.ace which forms the grey texture in most of the cuts.

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

Just to be sure, I have RouteRiter running on my compressed route - which loads fine on my system, but if there is an error, I want to get to the bottom of it and correct is ASAP. Just got back from the movie "National Treasure" which I can recommend as a real edge of the seat flick.

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

Okay, here is the fix.

Dick Carlson sent me a complete description of what he was getting, as well as another "maybe" error.

For the missing texture, it is easy. In your Terrtex directory of the route, and the snow subdirectory of Terrtex, you will find two files of the same name: "US2pinkrock.ace". The

Copy/paste the file in the terrtex directory to the textures directory. Then Copy/Paste the file in the snow subdirectory into the snow subdirectory under textures.

Now, rename both files to "Trans_Us2pinkrock.ace" and this should fix the problem.

The "maybe" problem is this. Dick reports that he does not see any distant mountains, though he has them turned on. I am not experiencing the problem, but because high mountains are so close to the tracks, distant mountains are not as apparent as they might otherwise be. Watch for this, and in particular, you should notice a difference in such places as a couple of creeks to the left between St.Regis and Haugan, and also looking southeast up Dominion Creek valley.

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

Oops,

I should have mentioned that, if for some reason, you do not find US2pinkrock.ace in the terrtex folder to the RMD4, then it is in the terrtex folder of the US2 route. It should have been copied during execution of the batch file.

Jerry

[ssw]

I have the ace error, I see distant mountains, and i've broken a knuckle at the switch at EE Tarkio twice (same train, two attempts)

[landnrailroader]

SSW,

Note my comments above, as to how to fix the .ace error. I never broke a knuckle at the east end of Tarkio, going either way, and since it is nearly flat there, slightly downhill to the west, I would probably chalk that one up to your train handling skills----LOL. Perhaps I need to publish my settings as to how this route was tested.

Now on the Wallace Branch, it is another matter. I have got a knuckle going uphill in both directions, but never more than once at a particular location.

Check the distant mountains to be sure, and let me know. Dick Carlson, who is intimately familiar with the area says they are not working, and since he knows how to generate them, he is going to download some DEMS and check it out. I am waiting to see what he comes up with, and if, in fact, there is a problem, I will be uploading a correction file for it. Being a glut for punishment, and a die-hard NP fan, he ran a train from Lothrop to Wallace and stayed up until 3am EST to do it. West of Haugan, the branch is a 25mph and less railroad.

J. H. Sullivan

[stargate2013]

Folks, I am working up the DEMs to test the distant mountains but will be delayed for a few hours, as I made the mistake of saying to my wife of 40 years that we needed Christmas ornament boxes, which opened the door to "great let's go shopping"!!

The reason I think they might not be working is due to the RMD-2 distant mountains and how well the mountain range east of Butte can be seen from as far away as Silver Bow. I know the area in RMD-4 and there are several places where you should be able to do the same. I also tried turning them off and did not see any diference.

What a wonderful job Jerry has done on this route, it is fantantic to get to ride the NP once more. My last time by Motor Car was 1965.

Dick Carlson

[stargate2013]

FOUND IT:

In the mlwrmd4 route directory, mlwrmd4.trk has "Mountains ( 00000000 )" and should "Mountains ( 00000002 )".

I was having problems with distant mountains in 2002 and asked John Stanford. This was his reply.

"Two things to check:

1) make sure the lo_tiles quadtree still exists in the Route Geometry
Extractor - if you failed to save the quadtree after initially generating
the tiles they will not display in MSTS.

2) check the myroutename.trk file to ensure it includes the line:
Mountains ( 00000002 )
if this line has any value other than 2 then it won't display.

-JohnCS"

Thank you John.

Dick

[landnrailroader]

I have also verified the result, Dick mentions above, so there are two known problems. Both are easy to fix. Just copy US2Pinkrock.ace out of your US2 default route into the appropriate locations in the RMD4, and then rename it, as I mentioned above.

Then, using wordpad, edit the .trk file as Dick explains, and at the moment, we know of no other problems.

However, when you use distant mountains, you will see a white gap in some areas at the foot of the mountains.

J. H. Sullivan

[bcarswell]

John,
Sorry about my erroneous statement about my problems. It was the ace file which has now been corrected. Great route...brings back fond memories of the summer of 1970 spending a week with my father chasing trains from Avery to St Regis and back with a side trip to Paradise thrown in. I can still remember the milkshakes at the NP (didn't look much like the BN at that time) beanery next to the depot.
Thanks again for all of your teams hard work.
Bruce

[landnrailroader]

Well, I pretty much am the team, but I had a lot of remote advice and data from the folks I listed.

JHS

[landnrailroader]

Jaggies,

Looks more like a dagger to me. Those were not present in my route, so they must have appeared as a glitch in the unzipping or something. The location is called the "dry slide" and it is between Tarkio and Cobden. Just push that jaggy as the slope should be fairly smooth, pinkish, and with minimal vegetation.

Jerry

[landnrailroader]

Those Jaggies don't appear in my editor, and I never saw them when testing the route. Here was my procedure for delivering this route.

1 - use RouteRiter to "check" the route - takes a lonnnnnnnggg time.

2 - compress the route, but did not compress individual files.(RRTER)

3 - remove the .raw files (RRTER) and write the .bat file

4 - zip the route with RouteRiter

5 - Delete the route from my hard-drive

6 - reinstall to my hard drive using procedure given with route upload

7 - retest route after running bat file etc.

If they appear, only at certain viewing angles, it might be a glitch in the .ace file(s) possibly caused in the unzip process, or it could be a setting on your video card. Let me know if you find more, just contact me: jhsulliv@comcast.net

J. H. Sullivan

[SLSF_QLA537_RON]

Ok, will do. We had a few jaggies in the 2nd sub. I think it was west of Whitehall. Someone came up with a fix, but so far I havn't found my notes. Great route, really does look like Montana. I was just North of Wallace, in Herron,Mt, in November. Just didn't have the time to go any further South.

RR MP506 SLSF OK Sub

[SLSF_QLA537_RON]

Very good! I checked mlwrmd2 route. It has the same shape, but a different date. I think I will copy it to the mlwrmd4 shape file and see if that will fix the error.

RR MP506 SLSF OK Sub

[ssw]

I've run Tarkio-Cobden twice, haven't gotten the jaggies.

[jstarkey]

Jerry,

First, allow me to express my gratitude for your creating this excellent route! I am sure it must have been a labor of love and it is most appreciated.

Now, alas, I do have a problem. I , also, got the "Failed to open trans_PinkRock.ace" error message. The "pinkrock.ace" file was *not in the TerrTex Directory of your new route. I went over to the US2 route and got a copy of it and pasted it into the Textures folder of your route. I renamed it "Trans_Us2pinkrock.ace". Unfortunately, I still get the same error message.I can drive a few miles of the route (which is how I know it's great!) but then it freezes and I get the error message.

I have a feeling this is something simple I'm not seeing/doing here. First, since the Us2pinkrock.ace file was *not in the Terrtex folder of your route should I put a copy of it there? Second, why would this be the only file named "trans_" to be in the Textures folder of your route? As you can see, I don't know much about this but I learn a little as I go along. What is a "Trans" ace file?

Thanks for any suggestions. I have been looking foreward to your route and am sure this is something relatively small that I am missing.

Regards, James

[landnrailroader]

James,

You should not need a Us2pinkrock.ace file.

The reason there is only the one "trans_" file, is because I used Us2pinkrock.ace as a transfer. When you do this, you should, though it is not an absolute requirement, rename the file to something that indicates that it is a transfer file. So I renamed it to Trans_Us2pinkrock.ace. It is used in hundreds of locations, mainly
to provide the greyish rock in cuts and side hills.

You must be careful in renaming the file, but if it works for a short distance, it should be okay. Now it is possible for the program to simply die if your settings are demanding more than your PC can deliver. This occurred to me at one point during development, and I could "drive" for a few miles, then the system would freeze. What I did was go into my parameter window of MSTS and reset to the default values and then adjust just a few items. Here is what I am using _ hopefully others will read this.

System: 1G, Athlon, 512M Ram, 25G total disk capacity.
Video: Nividia Geforce FX5200 with 128M VRAM

Nvidia settings:
Screen Res. 1024x768
Refresh rate: 60hz
Color Depth: 32bit (Max quality)
Image Setting - Quality
Antialiasing - application controlled
anisotropic filterning - application controlled

Options settings for MSTS
General: Auto Fireman
Track Monitor
Next Station display

Keyboard: Default

Sound: all sliders to max. (1), no text captions

Display: 1024x768x32
Overall Quality: Next to highest level toward best graphics

Advanced:
Visibility: 2000
Terrain Error Threshold: 70%
World Object Density: 100%
4 sliders at bottom of page, all set to max.

Checked items: Overhead wires, Water, Shadows, Dynamic Shadows,
Textured Sky, Precipitation, Distant Mountains

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

Well, maybe, but the problem is that there is no shed where those images were taken. There may be a cattle shed across the river, but nothing to the right of the train.

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

I doubt you will. I think there is something peculiar about his video setup, or perhaps something got garbled at bit, but I would suspect his aliasing settings or something like that.

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

I will point out that several of Ron's barns are used in the route and some of his cattle sheds, but the nearest ones to the point in the images are across the river, and somewhat behind the locomotive as seen in the images. The same objects are used very close to the tracks, just east of Tarkio, and if you are running the NP side, you will come quite close to the above mentioned barns.

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

That is amazing. I never saw it in all my testing, and still don't, but the indicated shed is ahead of the train, and below to the left, so the anomaly must just really excite the old video. Anyway, you all see what the fix is.

J. H. Sullivan

[SLSF_QLA537_RON]

The jaggies are gone by replacing the aforementioned Shed shape file. I have run from Albertson to Wallace, no un-coupling. I used EngMod to check all my rolling stock settings. All works great. Wow the run to Wallace is quite exciting! With 6650 tons, total train, I used 3 SD40-2s from Albertson to Haugan. At Haugan I added 3 more SD40s, and at the top of the climb I was doing 10 mph. On the way down the other side I had to release 10lbs of air, dynamics are not enough. Very enjoyable run. The trestles are fantastic! Thanks Jerry!

RR MP506 SLSF OK Sub

[landnrailroader]

Ron,

Now let us discuss the real world. The Alberton to Wallace route was never a heavy haul line. Typical train tonnages in steam days were a max. of 750 tons in the summer, probably 650 in winter. In later years, GP-7s or GP-9s were the norm because of the timber trestles, and tonnage was slightly higher. The rules required that no airbrakes be used ACROSS the trestles, although retainers were normally used, which we don't have in MSTS.

Course, LOL, we can pretend it was anything.

Now the train you describe would have been legitimate for the Milwaukee line over St.Paul Pass, or for the NP line to Paradise. After the electrics were scrapped, the power being shutoff in 1974, Diesels with Locotrol distributed power were used, but helpers were also used. Toward the end, 10,000 ton trains were handled over St.Paul Pass, at least eastbound, without helpers, but instead the train was broken in 1/2 and the hill doubled to Roland. The expense of helpers was simply too much.

Now a question or two:
1. Isn't that an awesome sight when you just turn over Lookout Pass
and start down into the Couer d'Alene valley?

2. How do the timber trestles grab you?

Jerry

[jstarkey]

Hi,

I've checked carefully and the newly named files are in the appropriate folders in the new route. I'm still getting the error message "failed to open "Trans_pinkrock.ace" The sim functions well at the beginning of the route (from east to west) for a few miles but then get's the error message and locks up.

I have quite a few other routes and my computer runs them pretty well. Here is what I have for a system:

2.66G Pentium4, 1G RAM, 60G total disc capacity.
Video: Nividia GeForce FX5200 with 128M RAM.

Nvidia settings:

Not sure about these as I have no experience adjusting them...

My computer seems similar to yours. I did set my MSTS settings to pretty much the same as yours, but no go.

It's a mystery. I wonder if I should try a reinstall? As I said, I have quite a few other add-on routes and lots of add-on engines and cars and they all run pretty well.

Well, thanks for any further suggestions.

James

[landnrailroader]

Send me an E-mail at jhsulliv@comcast.net, and I will zip up the files that I have, which I know work. The only other item to change would then be the value for "Mountains" in the data file (see other postings about this), but regardless of what that value is, it should not affect operation of the sim, only distant mountain display.

I would then suggest you do a reinstall, and then use the files that I send you. The zip file that I will send, will have two directories in it, each with one file. One directory will be "summer" and the other "snow". The summer copy will go into the root textures directory, while the "snow" copy will go into the textures\snow directory.

It'll be tomorrow afternoon before I can send them.

J. H. Sullivan

[SLSF_QLA537_RON]

The timber trestles on the Wallace Sub are a work of art. I just came east from Avery. What significanse is the cross at MP 1755.2?

RR MP 506 SLSF OK Sub

[landnrailroader]

Ron,

Since you are the first to notice the cross, here is the story.

When the 1910 forest fire swept through the area, and had died down. A charred body was found under the Kelly Creek trestle, near the east end. It was believed that a trackworker had either jumped or fell to his death. The body was given a Christian burial beside the right of way at, or at least near, the place I have the symbolic grave, and until the expiration of the Milwaukee Road in 1980, it was maintained by the M/W workers with considerable reverence, much like that given to the grave of an unknown Confederate Soldier who is buried next to the CSX R/W (formerly NC&St.L) near Allatoona, Ga. After the demise of the Milwaukee Road, the Forest service has continued to maintain the site which is now next to a hiking and biking trail laid on the old R/W. We do not know this persons name, nor even their sex for that matter, but we know that they perished in the fire.

This fire swept millions of acres of prime, in many cases previously unlogged, timber and covered extensive areas from near Missoula west to beyond Avery & Wallace. The Milwaukee Road ran a number of special trains evacuating anyone that got on - one of these trains had to stop inside Tunnel 22, but everyone on it survived. That tunnel is 2100' long and tangent. Another track worker survived by crawling into a "water tunnel" near Falcon. (long tunnel like thing under a big fill - I have put a few of the bigger ones in place)

The "S" trestle and others on the Wallace line were destroyed. Even the steel trestles were damaged such that some members had to be replaced.

J. H. Sullivan

[bcarswell]

I just had a strange one. I was heading east around Superior (not sure the exact milepost as I was enjoying the scenery) when the back end of the frame under the E33 boxcab detached. Took me a couple of seconds to figure out what had happened because the rest of the locomotive set kept going. My #2 view jumped because I had it set to the first car behind the power and by time I swung it around to look back the train had derailed. Has anyone experienced this before? I was doing under track speed with throttle on about 75%. This problem is somewhat prototypic as the old GE motors had a number of frame problems in their later years but I suspect something more sinister with the Sim.
Bruce

[landnrailroader]

I haven't experienced anything like that, and I have used the BoxCabs on both the RMD-2 and 4. But like you said, it was somewhat prototypical.

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

Let us see if anyone else has this problem. The track is slightly upgrade eastbound, all the way from St.Regis to Alberton, but it is not severe and I do not believe there is any track anomoly at that point.

Tim Muir produced these boxcabs, perhaps he can comment on it. It could be that you have set up a heavy train and there is a slack runout at this point?

J. H. Sullivan

[bcarswell]

The train is not overly heavy and it seems to do it no matter how I operate the train. It is acting like a track anomoly as it almost appears the train is anchored to the spot. I can pull slack out after recoupling but before the rear end moves something derails.

I will set up a train with the E25 set and see if it does the same thing.
Bruce

[landnrailroader]

Would you do a couple of things.

1. Send me a list of what you have in the consist, and

2. copy your consist file to me via E-mail

jhsulliv@comcast.net

J. H. Sullivan

[choo2466]

HI: Jerry
The route is very well done. Enjoying the route very much.I have run the E70 with the present consist, and no problem. I have changed the Consist to run with three Milwaukee EMD F45's, and changed some of the wagons to Milwaukee wagons, and everything is working fine. On Both desk top and Lap Top.
Thanks again for all you time and effort, this is class AA.
Gerry

[SLSF_QLA537_RON]

Hey, Jerry I have just been over the St Paul Pass again. I am curious, is the young man wearing a pair of jeans with a hammer loop/with hammer you? Boy that guy is fast! I see him at the East end of portal, and by the time I get to the West end of the tunnel, he’s already there waving as we go by. Still enjoying the route, everything runs fine. I included by computer set up this time.

Ron Real
MP506 SLSF OK Sub




Options settings for MSTS
General: Auto Fireman
Track Monitor
Keyboard: Default
Sound: all sliders to max. (1), no text captions
Display: 1024x768x32
Overall Quality: Best graphics
Advanced:
Visibility: 2000
Terrain Error Threshold: 0%
World Object Density: 100%
All sliders set to max.
Checked items: Overhead wires, Water,
Textured Sky, Precipitation, Distant Mountains
------------------------------------------------------
Additional System Information
------------------------------------------------------
Time of this report: 12/26/2004, 19:29:56
Machine name: DELL-8300
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)
System Manufacturer: Dell Computer Corporation
System Model: Dimension 8300
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A05
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 329MB used, 2134MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

[landnrailroader]

Ron,

No I got the carpenter from a western wear catalogue, the same one as the ladies in western wear came from.

You will find me, and my wife, in the sim. however. Zoom in to the space between the nice depot and the ratty depot at Alberton, and note the couple in Square Dance attire - matching colors etc. It was taken at the 46th Nation Convention a few years back. My wife is now on a different job (I am retired, and work only part-time, she has another 10 years to go) so we don't square dance as much as we would like.

J. H. Sullivan

[philmoberg]

>Now let us discuss the real world. ...

This raises a really good question: is there a published table of tonnage ratings for MILW motors between Haugan and Avery? I have a 3500 ton train (according to ConBuilder) behind E33 which I can't get from Haugan to Saltese. Maybe the broader question here is whether there is a published source discussing operations generally. Thanks kindly for any direction you may be able to provide... -Phil

[charlie]

Jerry,

The screenshots above looked familiar and unique enough so that I thought of SRV_Shed1. There's a patch for SRV_Shed1, "srvshedpat.zip" in the library from about 12/20/2002. From the readme:

"The original SRV_Shed1 has a corrupt shape and does not display the roof properly. It has been known to cause Send-Don't Send errors or do strange things in your display. The error was so strange as to not be noticable and has taken a long time to track down. I knew what the problem was when I noticed that the roof is missing even though TSModeler displays it properly. Normally, you can create shapes with unjoined parts - except in this one example."

regards,
charlie

EDIT: Since some folks may presently be having difficulty getting into the library, and since it's only 4Kb, here's srvshedpat.zip...

[landnrailroader]

Friends,

The RMD-4 should be uploaded to the library later this evening.

As usual, I have a TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORin which the instructions refer to 7 ZIP files being involved, when in fact there are 8. Always get thrown off by that first files have a odd name, like .000. This, like the RMD-2, is a spanned set. I have followed myown instructions (a copy of Mike Simpson's instructions, editedappropriately) and had no problem re-installing from the zips.

The route, as downloaded is 7 files of approximately 23Mbt and 1
file of about 20Mbt. The fully installed route is approximately
550Mbt after running the .bat files, recreating the buffers, etc.

Serious simmers, will also want to download whatever Milwaukee or
NP material, there is in the library - a lot of both. If you have
previously downloaded the RMD-2, and have downloaded the various
electric motors, etc., the same equipment is appropriate for this
route. To avoid some of the RMD-2 problems, I have not compressed
any .ace files.

Attached is the load image for this route.

J. H. Sullivan

[Idahojeff]

Found it! It's not a terrain error, it's a corrupt shape specifically, SRV_Shed1.s. I just deleted the 5 (IIRC) sheds in the vicinity and the jaggies go away. I found it in RE by zooming to the area of the jaggy until the sky filled with the anomally. Hit the F2 key, then drag the cursor over objects with a similar color. See the attached pic for the clue you get.

Jeff

[SLSF_QLA537_RON]

I have found an area with some jaggies. It depends on the viewing angle. Attached are a couple of images with Lat/Long. Really great route! Lot's of curves, grades, and sags.

RR MP506 SLSF-OK Sub

[SLSF_QLA537_RON]

I finaly found a word document with the same problem and fix for RMD-2. The info follows:

RMD2 Help

LAST EDITED ON Feb-07-04 AT 01:01 PM (EST) Hello, first off thank you Jerry for making this route. All of the problems I had, have been fixed with the update but one. When I start at either end of the route I get a triangle across my screen in any view when the train gets into the mountains. The pictures below are from starting at Three Forks and the last one is a little after Jefferson Island. Sorry for any repeats for pictures. I hope the lat. and long. is visible in the pictures.


Jack,
I have tested RMD2 from one end to the other on both NP and Milw several times trying to help Jerry to find any anomalies that might be and I have never encountered the problem you have. You probably are not going to like this but, a year ago I did encounter a similar, not exactly the same problem with MSTS. Video in cab view and outside looked like lighting strikes and funny squares and such. My video card had over heated due to a fan failure and it must have blown some memory on the card. MSTS seems to really exercise the card. Amazing enough when I tried other high demand video with the card that overheated like FS 2004 the card worked fine. Only thing I could think is that FS 2004 used a different set of memory.
I am currently running with a G-Force FX 5600.
Dick

I recognize the problem. It is a bug in Train Simulator when handling objects not connected. It is being caused either by SRV_Shed1.s or SRV_Barn1.s
Download the attachment below and replace the s and sd files using the objects in the route.
If that doesn't solve the problems, it may be one of the other barns in which case, I will fix them as well.
SRV Ron
Thank you Dick and Ron for your help. Ron you where right, the SRV_Shed1.s was the problem. I went from Three Forks to Butte without a problem . I also should have been clearer that the triangle only happens on the RMD2 route, not on any of my other routes.
Thanks again,

Attached is the file listed above.

RR MP506 SLSF OK Sub
http://www.trainsim.com/dcforum/User_files/402820d32adc9cd0.zip

[bcarswell]

I got it to recreate this problem (in fact now I can't get it not to do this). It occurs just prior to the west switch at Superior. The first screengrab is at the exact monent it detaches. The second is to show it as the locos move away. Going slowly, the train does not immediately derail. I can back up and couple up (the coupling view confirms this). I can then start off but after moving a couple of car lengths, I get the dreaded "Activity ended. car derailed"

If I travel through this point at speed, the train derails after the rear unit detaches. Refer to the last screenshot.

Any help would be appreciated. Never had this problem on RMD2 with this exact consist.

Bruce