Schwarzwald/Neu-Murg route

[CRQ5508]

well I feel like trying a different kind of route. I run mostly American and Canadian lines but I have the urge for something different. I'm thiking of downloading the Schwarzwald/Neu-Murg route just recently introduced in the f/l, but because of my total lack of knowledge of German railways i don't know what kind of rolling stock would be appropriate. What out there would be prototype for this route? thanks

Tom

[elmo313]

Hi Tom:

If you're not sure what to use, may I suggest that you try Wupper Express 10. IMHO, it is the best of the German routes available. It also comes with an activity and a stock pack (separate downloads) that will take the guess work out of German prototype for you, which can be very confusing (a posting in a German forum stated that German railfans know their passenger equipment only until the loco passes, because the rest is too complicated). You can download it at The-Train.de (http://www.zugsimulator.de/new/_cms/index.php?new_lang_is=en). If you don't want to create an account there, you can get Wupper Express 8, plus stock and activities in the file library here at train-sim. Search "All File Sections" for "Graphics 15" and you should get everything you need.

If you stay with Schwarzwald/Neu-Murg, you can get German prototype equipment at The-Train.de.

Hope this helps.

Douglas

[streamline]

Hallo!
I'd also prefer Wupper Express (Not only because it's located near my home town, but also because of a fine scenery at good framerates.) if I downloaded my first German route. By the way, you needn't necessarily create an account at the train, but the download speed is lower for users not registered, and sometimes the download section is blocked because of too much traffic. (similar to the FL at train-sim.com when a new route has been uploaded)
Here are some more download sites for fine German freeware models (You don't need all of them for the activities.):
http://www.train-sim-werk.de/ my favorite, fine steamers-the last ones were in service up to 1977-, electric and diesel locos
http://www.thopil.de/ electric and diesel engines, equipment needed for Wupper Express
http://www.virtual-train.nl/ electric engines of the classes 110, 140, and 141
I hope you'll enjoy your virtual visit to Germany.

Keep on steamin'!
Dietmar

[landnrailroader]

The best European route that I have seen, and one of the most challenging to operate is Michael Vone's Albula II and there is also an equipment pack for it. I believe it is in the MSTS library.

The New-Murg route has only a small finished portion and should anyone tackle completing it, the first thing would be to remove all of the signals etc. and there are hundreds of those. I loaded it into the Geometry Extractor and found that the sim. covers a major portion of Southern Germany. It is far larger (in mileage) than anything that I have attempted and also it has numerous interconnecting routes. It is beautiful, but I am going to download the Wupper myself. I envy the Europeans - they know how to haul people, whereas here we are forced to make a fly/drive decision. Fine till you hit my and my wife's age, and then uncle arthur (itis) has a say in the choice. So with no train going where we need to go, my wife is unable to travel, and in a year or two, I'll be the same way.

Jerry Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

There is an Austrian route in the MSTS Library that showed last year. I forget what it is called, but a search on "Austria" in the routes library ought to turn it up. It also has a seperate activities and stock download. I just started the download of Wupper-10. Slow, will take about 3 hours, though I am on cable, but I'll look forward to it. Even when I don't clutter my disk with a route for very long, I save it, intact to a DVD or CD and still get ideas from it for making my own route better.

Jerry Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

I would recommend that you not attempt the Wupper-10 route. It is great, it has nice stuff, but the rolling stock has lots of problems. After downloading and installing the complete set of material for this route, I got into a problem that I could not solve any other way than to restore my TRAINSETS and CONSISTS directories from backup. Whenever I add something to my system, and get it working, I always back up the new toy and the above routes. Then in something blows up later, I can restore.

I believe the Wupper-10 route rolling stock has been modified to work with BIN and my route is not set up for BIN. BIN is great, but I don't plan to use it until and unless, it appears to be stable. I am suspcious that certain .eng files were modified in the default equipment.

Jerry Sullivan
aka landnrailroader

[oldiedaddy]

I was quite suspicious vs. MSTSBin, too.
Now I installed it, after a backup, and, yes, it not only works, but works a lot better, much less instable.

BTW, Jerry, I tend to classify Wuppex (version 11 to get released soon!!!) as one of the very best freewares ever released, superior to any Pay, and had no pb with their stock...

[Swissie]

Hi guys,

1) the Austrian route Jerry is referring to is the Loeben route. Overall well done, and comes with its own stock and a wide variety of activities that make it stand out.

2) As far as traffic on the Schwarzwald/Murg route is concerned: The route actually covers a large region, namely the Black Forrest in Southern Germany. The route is an entire system of both mainline and branchline track.
The principal mainline is the mainline roughly following the Southern Rhine Valley. Trains coming from the North of Germany via Frankfurt am Main will enter the route in the Karlsruhe region and travel south via Offenburg to Freiburg (where the MSTS route ends) and finally on to Basel on the German/Swiss border, where they transit onto the Swiss railways' turf. The electrified mainline is very busy, hosting anything from local passenger to fast freight, e.g.:
- bi-modal Stadtbahn cars of Karlsruhe that run both on the city's trolley tracks and on local commuter runs into the black forest region
- conventional push/pull commuter trainsets with electric locomotives and dual-level commuter cars
- Conventional EuroCity trains (locomotive plus 11 to 16 cars)
- ICE highspeed trains of DB
- Manifest freight trains of DB/Railion
- Bulk fuel and intermodal freight of DB/Railion and various competing operators, including foreign RRs (SBB Cargo, BLS, HGK, ERS, soon also SNCF...)

Various branch lines extend into the valleys of the Black Forrest region. They tend to be very scenic, single track with passing sidings winding its way uphill. Some of them are electrified, some are dieselised. They'd mostly feature local passenger service roughly on an hourly basis, either with DMU/EMU trainsets or with conventional push/pull consists with one locomotive, 3-5 commuter cars plus a pilot car. Some years ago, that used to be a classic ground for DB's 218 diesels with the "Silberlinge" (stainless steel commuter cars), or the 110 electrics with the same type of carriages.

You might also see a local freight train or two on workdays, but the branches are mostly passenger lines these days.

If you modell an even earlier period, you'd be using the 144 electrics with three-axle post-war commuter cars rebuilt on the undercarriages of equipment destroyed during the war.

3) A few more "must-have" international routes:

- Italy, modern times: Romio-Brenno by Nello. Extremly fps-friendly and well-done Italian fantasy route system with a easy-to-recognize prototypical touch (Romio is a simplified Rome, Brenno is the Brenner Pass at the Austrian Border, and a lot of towns en-route are also easy to match with real-world locations). Good for many hours of running and discovering details. Insider tipp: Some of the best and most extensive sets of night textures around - don't miss running it at night! Available at trenomania.it/

- Italy, 1900 Steam era: La Porretana (Firenze - Bologna) by Renzo Grassi and Milano - Bologna route by Giuseppe Monina: Both have a beautiful steam era feeling, well detailed. La Porretana is a rather challenging, steep mountain route, Milano - Bologna features 200km of smooth and relatively fast dual-track mainline running through the many towns of Northern Italy. Downturn: I am repeatedly having problems with AI traffic stuck at signals when setting up more complex activities. Available at http://www.ildeposito.net/

- Spain: Utrera-Moron by Antonio M. Sopena. Very well done with beautiful attention to detail. Relatively short route modelling two single track branch lines arranged in a "Y" style layout. Available here at Train-Sim.com

- New Zealand: Southrail and Northrail, both routes by Neville Brooks. Again, very accurately modelled and detailed, a bit heavy on fps in some urban areas (Southrail around Dunedin, Northrail around Wanganui), but with a very realisitic "New Zealand Feel", down to the accurate and custom vegetation. Note that Northrail requires Y-tracks. Routes and Y-tracks available here at Train-Sim.com

4) On a side-note: I'm also reluctant to go for the latest bin versions as with every new version, two new bugs seemed to show up for each previous one that got fixed. I'm sticking with the perfectly stable Bin 1.6.092223. After experiencing some of the more serious issues that plague later versions (light cone bug on .wag files, stuttering AI and road traffic, sticky switches in activities, rigid couplers causing trains to jump tracks over S-switches and wyes, throttle not going past notch 1 in AI and ITR mode...) I wont go beyond that version until another perfectly stable version has cured all of the above-mentionned fatal issues.

Lukas a.k.a Swissie

Edited for links

[landnrailroader]

Now Lukas, you whet my appetite here. Where are those Italian routes found, especially the fantasy one that you mention. I am interested in any route that does not (at the moment anyway) require X-tracks. I have not installed BIN yet, but I am interested in your comment about a stable version. I think I have downloaded every version so far, for safe keeping, so I probably have the mentioned one somewhere.

Have you ever released version 2 of my RMD-1. It was certainly a vast improvement over my effort at it?

Jerry Sullivan

[Swissie]

Hi Jerry,

> Where are those Italian routes found, especially the fantasy one that you mention.

links added, sorry I forgot to mention them. I'll post some screenies over in the screenshot forum later today.

> Have you ever released version 2 of my RMD-1. It was certainly a vast improvement over my effort at it?

It's been worse than you'd think: I had a graphics card melt-down on my old computer about a month ago, resulting in a total loss (typical answer of the repairman at the outlet where I bought it: "That's going to cost a fortune, why don't you buy a new one?") So I went on vacation for two weeks and decided on swallowing that sour apple called "Vista" when I had returned. I am still slowly returning / re-installing everything on a new machine. MSTS is working under Vista for me, but getting some of the essential tools to run is still a head-ache.

As far as the Milwaukee Road is concerned, I do still have to re-build ca. one week of tweaking twinkling tree trextures on the RMD-1 that I lost in that incident. Luckily I haven't lost more, with most of the project files being backed-up regularily on two external HD drives...

There's still some loose ends with the sounds, I recently got more recordings for Carlo (including the EP-2!), and I have to forward them asap to him for even more prototypical sounds on the equipment!

Lukas a.k.a Swissie

[landnrailroader]

I've heard too many horror stories about VISTA and even had some friends demand that the computer they buy (new) have the latest XP on it. I plan to acquire a new machine next year, but not until:

1. at least one service pack is released on Vista
2. a new simulator comes out

As it is, my XP/Pro SP-2 handles everything I want to do fine. The techies where I work, that maintain our machines, will (so far) have nothing to do with Vista. We have either 2000 or XP-Pro on our machines, mostly XP.

Jerry

[Swissie]

Hi Jerry,

I wouldn't have switched either if I didn't have to...

Here's the link to a batch of 10 screenshots from Romio-Brenno, as promised: http://www.trainsim.com/ts/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=13&topic_id=85952&mesg_id=85952&page=

Lukas a.k.a Swissie

[mstsbe]

Well, to return on-topic, can someone guess where this is in the route ?
http://members.lycos.nl/mstsbelgium1/Fotos_MSTS/quiz.jpg

Previously there was no scenery at all, so it should be a lot easier now to guess the location.. I have deliberately removed the coordinates as they were too close to the real location..

[Swissie]

Hi Denis,

uh, that's a mighty old post from yesteryear that you stumbled across. As this kind of threads "bumping up" old stuff tends to get locked quickly by the moderators, I would just like to suggest to you that it would probably be better to just start a new post, and simply include a link to the old one, whenever you want to re-start a previous topic. I hope you take no offense in this statement, I just want to avoid any disappointment should you find this thread locked one day.

As for your question: My first guess was Could be Freiburg i.Br., looking down from the streetcar stop on the bridge across the tracks. But then I remembered that the last time I was there, tracks 1&2 were electrified, as they serve the mainline, so I'm probably wrong...

Cheers, Lukas

[mstsbe]

Yes, it's indeed Freiburg im Breisgau. It still needs a lot of work though, the tile already has 867 objects and I have only finished probably a quarter of the city scenery.. Like other German cities, the Freiburg area is quite densely populated and will need to be filled in MSTS as well to look realistic..

If I progress further I will make a new thread in the Route Design forum, so this will be the last post in this one..