Trainsimulations NS/Sou Locomotives

[CSX FAN]

To who can help,

I, for the life of me, can't find what I need to do to get the lights to show up on the short end hood on the Trainsimulations GP38s. I would like to run them short hood forward as well as long hood, but there are no lights on the short hood end. Could someone help with what I need to put into the light section of the eng file to make this work?

CSX FAN

[anderson martins]

To who can help,

I, for the life of me, can't find what I need to do to get the lights to show up on the short end hood on the Trainsimulations GP38s. I would like to run them short hood forward as well as long hood, but there are no lights on the short hood end. Could someone help with what I need to put into the light section of the eng file to make this work?

CSX FAN

I believe you will get something useful from here, but if you go to OPEN RAILS, the values will vary

https://msts.steam4me.net/tutorials/light_glow.html

[SD40-2]

Sorry, but that's not pertinent to the discussion. It's about a MSTS issue that doesn't affect the set.

While I haven't worked with lights too much, I'd guess you'd start with copying the front light entries, flipping them, and studying some other light codes to have them be off while LHF, and be on SHF.

Other people can probably chime in with more info.

[ossie]

Hi Darrell.... I can't tell from reading your post how much experience you have had with editing lighting in .s files. I'm no expert but I would be happy to try to help but it would help me to know if you're starting from scratch with editing lighting or if you are reasonably familiar with moving lighting positions around, adding lighting etc.

[CSX FAN]

Thanks for the responses. I have done it before, but that was years ago, edited the lighting section in the eng file. I slightly remember that there was something that I had to copy but I can't remember all that had to be. Just need a little refresher on adding lights.

CSX FAN

[ossie]

If you've done some .eng light editing before, then hopefully the short answer will work. I'm no expert so hopefully if there's a better way someone else chimes in, but the way I'd do it would be to find a loco that has working rear lights, the closer in size to your GP38 the better I guess. Then just copy the rear light section from that loco .eng file and paste it into your GP38 .eng file. Check it out in the sim and then make the necessary adjustments to the position lines to get the lights exactly where you want them.

I've never set one up to run in the opposite direction to the way it was released, and no doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd say your only 2 options would be to do it quick and nasty and just increase the rear headlight radius and run it in reverse or if you want to do it properly, I'd guess you'd have to reverse the loco in SFM, create a new .eng file for the reversed unit and then swap the lighting positions in the .eng file so that your rear headlights become the front ones and vice versa.

I don't have the set you're wanting to edit so I'm not sure what cabviews came with it, but keep in mind, reversing the loco will also mess up your cabview and would therefore require some additional editing to get them pointed in the correct directions (if it came with a reverse cabview that is) but I've never tried to do that so I have no idea of exactly how that process would need to be done.

[ebnertra000]

Shape Viewer has an option to view light positions if you open an .eng file in it. Makes locating lights a snap

[mmax45581]

Also check out the Lights section of this site:
http://coalstonewcastle.com.au/physics/

[wwhall]

OK, here is a lighting section for the TrainSimulations NS GP38-2. This modification will likely only work in OpenRails. I no longer use MSTS, so I can't test it there. To use this, back up the original .eng file. Then, replace the ENTIRE Lights section of the ,eng file with the contents of the attached .txt file:

ns gp38-2 lights.txt

It will give you headlights, ditch lights, and sphere of lights when you are running short-hood forward IF you have a car or locomotive coupled to long-hood side of the locomotive. If the locomotive is running light, you won't have the short hood headlight, ditch lights, and spheres of light. Unfortunately, there is no code in OR that will allow one to reverse the lights when a light locomotive is based on the direction the locomotive is going. Ideally, the OR programmers should enable a "Reverse" conditions for lights where they will illuminate based on the position of the reverse lever, for example: Reverse-ON, Reverse-OFF, Forward-ON, Forward-OFF, Forward/Neutral-ON, Forward/Neutral-OFF, Reverse/Neutral-ON, Reverse/Neutral-OFF.

Also, I corrected the location of the truck/ground lights. I moved them to the correct location under the cab--their purpose is to allow the Engineer or Conductor to look down at the ground from the cab at night to see if the locomotive is moving.

[Rick-MONON]

An old fashioned invisocar or eng would do the trick.................