Can anyone help me.

[Jeffrey Nice]

I just downloaded the Red Mountain Gorge narrow gauge railroad and msts keeps showing an error message saying NO TRACK DATABASE! can any one help me?:confused:

[longiron]

I just downloaded the Red Mountain Gorge narrow gauge railroad and msts keeps showing an error message saying NO TRACK DATABASE! can any one help me?:confused:

Jeffery,
You are missing a file with a "tdb" extension. You can find it in the download zip file. Must have missed unzipping into the route folder.

[Jeffrey Nice]

I found the file you told me about and now it says FAILED TO LOAD TRACK DATABASE. What do I do now?

[Vince]

The Narrow Gauge Route version 3 REMEMBER:
THIS ROUTE IS STILL BEING DEVELOPED.SEND ALL COMMENTS TO:
cumbres487@----.com or jonathanmlewis@----.com
This is Fantasy route based in coloardo in the 1890's
using Narrow Gauge Track.
This route is about 10 times as long as the last route.
It has Dual Gauge track as well as Narrow Guage lines
going up to four different mines.
If you >>>>snipped<<<<<

Hi Jeff and welcome to the forums.
It sure would be nice if route authors clearly stated in the readme/install instructions what the requirements of the route were. :rolleyes:

This being a narrow guage and dual-track route I 'know' that the route will require X-Tracks.
I know that but noobs don't and I think that is quite unfair AND disrespectful to them.
There may be other additional add-on downloads, like Bin, NewRoads ect. needed to make this route run but just what will remain a mystery until the route authors get busy and write a proper install instruction.

You'll see that problem a lot with download add-ons for MSTS. Very talented artists producing some really beautiful routes and rolling stock and then releasing them with a useless set of self-aggrandizing (non) instructions.
I suggest you attempt to contact the author(s) and ask what the requirements for the route are.

Good job guys - - produce a beautiful route that a novice cannot install!
The install instructions for this route carry obsfucation to a very high level!
To the author: Sorry Jonathan, but I call 'em like I see 'em and this is a bust in my book because of missing instructions for what the install requirements are, X-Tracks for one.
You have to do better than that.

[conductorchris]

He does say it is still being developed. Maybe documentation is part of what is still being developed.

This is a common issue on open-source projects: somebody develops a plug-in of some kind and doesn't do documentation, or doesn't do much. All kinds of reasons, some quite understandable (for instance, they are Czech and understand code but not English). The skills of a coder or route-builder and a clear technical writer are different.

[Vince]

Sorry Chris, but that dog wont hunt.

If someone releases a route, even a basic alpha-test version, it should at least contain the pre-requisites of what the route requires to install it.
That is so basic it cannot be 'still under development'

[baldwin]

This route was released back in 2003. Checking back on an earlier version of this route from 2002, the readme file was almost the same. Xtracks was relatively new back then as well, and I think most everyone knew that NG was part of Xtracks, and Dual Gauge was a separate download.

[kmanc21]

He does say it is still being developed. Maybe documentation is part of what is still being developed.

This is a common issue on open-source projects: somebody develops a plug-in of some kind and doesn't do documentation, or doesn't do much. All kinds of reasons, some quite understandable (for instance, they are Czech and understand code but not English). The skills of a coder or route-builder and a clear technical writer are different.

As a retired programmer I can tell you that attitude has started to take over the industry. I know that documentation is a PIA, but it is also one of the most critical things on a project. Its like the old saying - If you don't know where you're headed you will surely get there.

I share Vince's frustration with the lack of good documentation. I can't count all the hours I have spent trying to get a route or rolling stock to work in MSTS because there was poor or no documentation.

I'm not saying I don't appreciate all the efforts of the content creators, but I wonder how many others may have had problems trying to figure out how to make something work and just deleted the item and the creators hard work was for naught.

[Jeffrey Nice]

OK It works now that I got xtracks ,dyna trax, and some additional tracks.Now another route says a whole bunch of error messages saying FAILED TO LOAD SHAPE FILE. It is the New river gulch railroad. I don't think it has anything to do with the changes I made to the other route. It said the same thing right when I got it. What do I do??

[buttercup]

I'm sure we don't want to discourage anyone from uploading MSTS content here simply because the documentation doesn't meet a certain standard. There are excellent utilities that can help one find out what is missing in their installation. Route Riter will produce a list of missing files. A search should find where these files can be obtained. If not questions posted here will help solve the problem.

[baldwin]

New river gulch railroad is not one I am familiar with, never heard of it in fact. MSTS routes generally, although not always, have a file called install.bat or installme.bat which copies files from the seven default routes when run. Before you ask, the seventh route is Template.

If the route did not have one of these files, use Route Riter to check the route. It will copy in any missing files it can locate and give you a report at the end which will include those it could not locate in your routes folder.

[Jeffrey Nice]

It has a INSTALLME.bat file, and I ran it. It didn't work. I'm thinking it might be a glitch in the file.

[baldwin]

If you can give a link to download from, I can take a look at it.

[Jeffrey Nice]

Never mind.:) It is working now. Route riter took care of it ,and now it works fine. Thank you all for the help!
PS What would be really cool is if someone could design the cass scenic railroad and all of the locomotives. I can't find anything to download that pertains to cass! Too bad.