Coals to Newcastle

Route Building Tutorial

Aim - is to teach railroad enthusiasts the basic skills to build a railway route that can be operated in the Open Rails Train Simulator.

If you wish to provide any feedback on this page, please use the contact page. It would be great to have some feedback as this helps to ensure the accuracy of the information provided.

Index

Introduction

Train Simulator Route Explorer

Route Building Tutorial Instructions

Route Building Support Documents

Useful References

Introduction

The Route Building Tutorial will guide you through the steps required to build a small railway route. The tutorial route will be modelled after a historic short branch line of less than 10 miles, between Matakana and Mt Hope (Australia). Building the tutorial route will allow you to practice your route building skills and to gain the knowledge of the different tasks, tools and actions that you need to build a route of your own desire.

During the course of the demonstration tutorial, the builder will undertake the following different tasks:

Route Research
Setting up a Route File Structure
Creating New Route
Creating Terrain Tiles
Creating Route Terrain
Laying tracks and roads
Adding static objects
Adding vegetation objects
Adding interactive track and road objects
Running your first train in Open Rails

The Route Building Tutorial, including all resources needed to build your tutorial route and research information on the historic Matakana to Mt Hope route are stored in a resource pack. Download instructions for the OR Route Building Tutorial resource pack can be found in the Route Building Tutorial Instructions section below.

Train Simulator Route Explorer (TSRE) is the main tool that you will use to build the route. See the Train Simulator Route Explorer section below for more details and how to download and install the route editor.

The Route Building Tutorial assumes that you have already installed the free Open Rails Train Simulator game engine that can be downloaded from the Open Rails web-site. The Open Rails Manual is a great reference with instructions on how to use the simulator and to get an idea of all the features that Open Rails has to offer. It is recommended that you install and run the Zig Zag Railway in order to verify that your Open Rails installation is operating .

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Train Simulator Route Explorer

TSRE is a free route editor created by Piotr Gadecki (who goes by the name of "Goku" or "GokuMK" in the forums). The downloaded package contains a Route Editing Tool, a Shape Viewer and a Consist and Activity Editor.

TSRE Route Editing Tool

Download the latest TSRE EXE file from the TSRE website
Copy the file to a folder of choice ( for instance (C:)/TSRE ) where the program will reside.

Notes

The installation instructions on the TSRE website have not been updated recently so please follow the above steps.
The TSRE manual by Pete Willard is a great resource for working with TSRE.
The Open Rails Route Building Tutorial is based on TSRE version v0.7.012 but should work with newer versions.
The first time that you run the EXE file it will add the resources that TSRE needs to operate.

TSRE Consist Editor

You can assemble trains out of locomotives and wagons into consists with the TSRE Consist Editor. The editor can be started by opening the Consisteditor.bat file in your (C:)/TSRE folder.

TSRE Activity Editor

With the TSRE Activity Editor you can create activities (operating scenarios) for your trains. Examples of activities are: a scenario to operate a passenger train according to a time schedule or a scenario to pick up freight cars in a train yard and drop them off at an industrial branch line on your route. The Activity Editor can be opened within TSRE by selecting "Activity" in the TSRE Tools menu. This TSRE Activity Editing Manual will help you with using the Activity editor.

TSRE Shape Viewer

The TSRE Shape Viewer lets you preview tracks, roads and other static objects like trees, houses, stations, etc. that you can use to build your route. The shape viewer can be opened within TSRE by selecting "Shape Preview" in the TSRE Tools menu. The shape viewer can also be started up as a separate application by opening the Shapeviewer.bat file in your (C:)/TSRE folder.

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Route Building Tutorial Instructions

Download the Open Rails Route Building Tutorial pack. Running the EXE file will create a folder in the root of your hard drive called Open Rails Train Simulator - Mt Hope. Within this root folder there will be the folders needed for the demo route (Global, Routes and Trains) and a folder called Route Build Resources where you will find the following documents:

The Open Rails Route Building Tutorial with filename or_route_building_tutorial_v002f.pdf. You will use this tutorial to create your own route. Create a link to this document or store it in a spot convenient for you.
Research documentation on the route, including:
Topographical map
Parish Map
Historical map of NSW
Track layouts for the stations/yards covered and gradient diagrams.
A folder called DEM with Digital Elevation Model data (terrain height maps) that will be used when building your route.

Route Building Tutorial Instructions (Compiled in collaboration with Henk De Jonge)

The example route "Mount Hope Railway - Example Route" is a basic unfinished demo of the Mount Hope route that you can use to practice your route building skills and study the potential outcomes. This route will provide all the resources needed when building your own route, per the instructions in the tutorial. The Mount Hope example route has interactive (moving) objects for demonstration purposes.

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