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Tag: TRainz

Another item!

Ok, I had a bit of a random thought with this one, hence why I had a change of project for the time being. You probably can guess what it will be, but I started as a believe it or not, a Class 416 DTSO model. Unusually, I also spent most of my time developing it in a Virtual Machine – as the item of software I used is soo old, it doesn’t work on my desktop at all. On my laptop, it crashes if it goes to sleep, so a Virtual Machine was seen as a solution – which is running Windows 11. I might stick it in either a Windows 7 Virtual Machine or Windows 10, I’ve not decided, but it will take a while to set up.

Virtual machines also have other uses, but that is not for this blog. And do bear in mind, I’ve only spent a few hours on this model, so it won’t be right straight away. (As mentioned, I built the base in 2006 too!). Theres also a few errors that have appeared in the mesh for some reason, from MAX > FBX > GLB, so you can inspect the model

What was interesting, when I was developing this item, I had a look at a lot of other vehicles (I.e. Class 207, NIR Class 450 – which is tempting to make, NIR Class 80) that have the same engine, which is the English Electric 4SRKT, have a similar layout, but not the Class 73 locos.

05/09/2025
Did you know? (Trainz)

That the Trainz forum is now 25 years old today?

They went live on the 01/08/2000 to promote what was Trainz Community Edition. I joined the forums on the 14/08/2000 looking for a train simulator that was more engaging than what I was using, that’s when I discovered after many hours of trawling through search engines (I can’t remember which one I used, Yahoo maybe? Google wasn’t on the horizon). For those in Trainz, if you noticed, my KUID author number (Koolthingz Unique IDentification) is actually a very low 30051. Yep, that low.

Auran as it was back then, had a LOT of big plans for Trainz, digital downloadable content was thought of way back in 2002, but didn’t happen until much later. Despite being in the community for a long time, I’ve also only met 2 employees from Auran, I wonder what they are doing now? Ironically, that was in London Victoria way back in 2004. I should really visit n3v, but getting to Australia is a bit more difficult and possibly requires a long stay.

One other thing, I was actually 14 when I joined, I’m now nearly 40! How time flies.

Of interest, I’ve got a draft blog post as I write this of a very rare version of Trainz that I plan to update in the future, let’s just say this, its rare as it never was released. The NDA has long expired, so I don’t think I’ll come to any disrepute over it. All I will say is, that you will be surprised, it was talked about, it exists but never made it to market, it was abandoned almost just before it was released.
I think it’s because the Apple Mac’s were going through their second transitioning stage, I can’t remember the exact reason why the plug was pulled. I also still retain the computer I was testing it on as well, it’s on the shelf of shame in my room,
untouched from when I played with it years ago in 2 forms. Again, if I get a chance to talk about it and spend some time in my really packed diary to finish the post, I’ll explain more.

Hopefully, I’ll finish it before Trainz turns 25 and it will be interesting to see if n3v still has the original source code, I don’t think they do.

01/08/2025
Bugs (Trainz work this time)

This is why I never consider anything finished.

So latest thing is, I uploaded my EPB unit to my site which if you looked, you’d notice its a pretty old model. In preparing it for Trainz 2019+, which required a lot of changes (I mean a lot!) and plenty of dependency and bug fixing, I noticed a big problem with the cab that I completely forgot about, I took this screenshot in TS2010 as I didn’t think ahead… again! It was build for the JET engine anyway. It works in the E2 engine as well, which suprised me.

The biggest glaringly obvious problem is the brake handle and the power handle, both rotate the wrong way. A few hours of tweaking and it works properly. 4 notch controller doing a 180 degree spin and the brake handle now rotates 90 degrees. At this point, it still has 4 notches and the real thing has between lap and apply, an infinitive amount of notches on the brakes, its EP self lapping. Driving it on “Auto-brake” in Trainz is honest to god – hell (at least to me)! Unpredictable and either you slam on the brakes too much or too little. So I added a ton of notches, the brake handle hated it, test, test, test. Still hates it until I realise I got a tag wrong. If I remove the word “lap”, it functions like a normal EP brake handle.

Then clean up the rest of the controls, some work ok now, some don’t, the AWS button doesn’t work yet properly, but its on the list and I plan to make that a push button anyway.

Then it was the turn of the DTS in the Class 416. The way I done it is that 415 DMBS does both units (in reality, there is little difference between the 2.). Getting them to function like Driving Trailers wasn’t hard, it was easy infact, one tag.

Then the physics, I used TEE (Trainz Engine Editor) which I still have a copy somewhere, installed it, dumbed down the power as 500hp per DMBS and it STILL shoots off like a rocket. But its more playable. Its tempting to then mess with the body, I figured out how to show blanks and tail lamps in TS2019 plus, just model a red square and redo the headcode box. If you look at the flying brick, I’ve employed this method for the tail lamp which paves the way for mesh attachments.

At least the Class 416 DTSO (Semi Compartment) has its passenger view back, but I really need to remove the Monkey Bars, which I don’t think they were fitted to BR Designed units, or at least not 3 of them as some may of been fitted for the Oxted Tunnel (that was 2 of them).

18/07/2025
LEV 3/R3 Railbus

On my main blog, WordPress blog, you may have noticed I was making this:

You may of noticed that I’ve actually used the exported model in the model above and not that you can’t see it at all, there is some detail missing, this is deliberate as I managed to split the assets up into individual ones then use the attachment point to clone them. So, the seats are one mesh and reference through a mesh table, likewise for the windows, which using a modular approach, you change these 2 elements quite easily – or add your own.

Theres one other very good upshot – LODs! LOD’s take a LONG time to incorporate into a model and it’s not easy; by going through a more modular approach, it means one seat has one trainz.lm.txt file and the computer does the rest. It also means sub meshes also update instantly with a trade-off being that the text file gets more complex over time. (Hence if you download the file, you will quite quickly find that the model has a lot of weird attachment meshes). It also has a cab view that… is doing my head in! Thats another story for another time as the gauges are a problem now, trying to get the brake gauges to vaguely work has been a mission. Thats not the only problem, getting the brake gauges to read correctly has been a big mission, at least the Speedometer is nearly there, just got to change the texture on the sticker and make it look like something used a “Brother P-Touch 2000” label maker to remind drivers of the maximum speed.

28/05/2025