Edit the IsTenderRequired parameter in your .ENG file: it should read
IsTenderRequired( -1 )

Some diesel locomotives have radiator and dynamic braking cooling fans. Depending on the model of the locomotive, the fans can be located in the hood/nose unit, or in the motor compartment body,  or on the roof, or a combination of both.   Due to a strange quirk of train sim's hardcoding, you can add animated fans to MSTS diesel locomotives by utilising the wheels object labels normally assigned to steam locomotives.

The object labels wheels1 through to wheels5 are available for fans.  The downside is the fans only operate when the locomotive is moving. The animation frame sequence* can be over 0-4, 0-8, 0-16 frames. (* See warning below.)

Fan objects can be animated to spin around either a vertical or horizontal axis, with the pivot point set in the usual manner. Fans with their axis offset from either the vertical or horizontal plane are trickier to setup and animate; I know this from sad experience. The fan objects (labelled as wheels#) can linked to the main, or any object of the hierachy except bogie#.

Although I have not experimented with this idea, it may also be possible to use one of the wiper object labels as a fan, assigning a rotation instead of 'position' animated motion. In which case the object (fan) would be controlled by the wiper switch key.

:::Warning:::  this tip may affect the animation of other wiper** objects, so do the usual thing ~ experiment.
(** Wiper objects are the only official animated parts assigned to a diesel, according to Kuju's scheme.)

(Barry "Captain Bazza" Munro.)
I am not the originator of this idea, it was discussed in early threads at train-sim.com's MSTS forums, I am reiterating it for those who may not know the tip.

Non-bogie wagons, or locomotives without leading and trailing bogies, do not track correctly over curved sections of track or through points (switches).

To fix this problem a 'false' bogie is added to the model's heirarachy. The wagon's wheels are parented to the false bogie, which is labelled bogie1, and the wheelsets are labelled wheels11 and wheels12, respectively. The false bogie is parented to the model's main heirarachy object.

A 0-4-0T (tank) locomotive also requires a 'false' bogie, labelled bogie1, with the two driver wheel sets labelled wheels1 and wheels2, respectively. Use the same technique for an 0-6-0 locomotive, whether it is a tank or tender type.  In this case the extra driver set is wheels3, a child of bogie1.

The 'false' bogie must be textured, of course, and it can be placed out of sight between the frames and its pivot centered as per a normal bogie. The pivot should be centered in relation to the axis of the main parent of the heirarachy. The lateral movement of the 'false' bogie about its pivot is minute and in most cases the wheels' lateral movement in relation to the center axis of the main parent, is also undetectable.

(Barry "Captain Bazza" Munro)
04 January 2004. (Re-edited 5 Jan 04)
Note: I don't claim to be the originator of the idea. I believe it may have been discussed on one of the early train-sim.com posts, but I am reiterating it for those who don't know about the tracking fix.

Drag the speedpost off at an angle to the side and down the tracks from the marker. Right at the extent of its radius you should see the red bar going from the marker to the adjacent track dissapear.  Obviously this won't work if placing the speedpost between the two tracks however.
(John Stanford)

That's usually caused by having very long track sections, such as the 250 and 500 meter straights, or long curved sections crossing a tile boundary. Make a note of what tile the rebuild stops at and replace the long sections at the edges with shorter ones.  You may have to repeat the process several times before you get a succesful rebuild.
(Lloyd Engel)

This goes for ALL the compressed type files in MSTS):  all these files are processed in memory in their tokenised uncompressed format for loading into the memory resident database. That format is 'halfway' between what most folks refer to as compressed vs uncompressed.

Uncompressed:
- text format (unicode). Easily  read by humans, requires equivilent of a compilation to be used by MSTS. Occupies the most space (on any medium).

Tokenized
- binary equivilent of the text files. Akin to the object code created when a source program is compiled. Takes up less space due to its structured format, and is what MSTS really wants internally.

Compressed
- the result of taking a tokenized file and and applying a zlib compression to the module. It also is binary, but cannot be directly processed and occupies even less space. Same compression as found in zipped files, that is why they don't compress any further when loaded with a route in a zip file. MSTS can decompress them fairly fast and on the fly as they are being read.

FFEDITC can move between uncompressed to compressed and visa versa, but does not leave an option for selecting just the tokenized format.

Compressed is generally better because of less space and they are quicker to read from the disk - no memory benefit.
(Martyn T. Griffin, Paul Gausden)

The rule is quite simple:  when you start or load an activity, MSTS checks the front engine for a passenger view. If it finds one, that is what you get on view 5, if not it goes to the next wagon, then the next, until it finds one or runs out.   Now, if you don't have a passenger view, you never will have, unless you save and reload after picking up something with one.   Further, if your only passenger view is in a brake van, and you uncouple, you lose this.

Solution: after coupling/uncoupling your relevant rolling stock, save, exitand reload the activity. If the train you are using still has a passenger view available to it , this will restore that view.
(Alan Salmon)

Find the file camcfg.dat in your Train Simulator\Global folder and open it in a Unicode capable text editor (Wordpad etc).
Search for the section beginning
Camera ( camtypespotter

This is the camera used for View No. 4

Change the FOV setting from its default setting of FOV ( 50 ) to something narrower, e.g. FOV ( 30 ) gives a telephoto type of view. The figure is the Field of View angle in degrees.

As long as you keep a backup of the camcfg.dat file, you can fiddle with all the settings to see what results you get. There are a lot of changes you can make.
(Mike Simpson)

Click on F9 key (terrain tool):  select a spot (best viewed in the wire frame view, the W key) where you want to know the height, press the F9 key (or click on the tool button, outlined in red, below) right click, select Set Height, and the height of that point will be displayed.
(Fred Huntly)

Press F5 (as if to place an object), so the cursor turns to a + sign, and watch the y value shown in the Placement window; this y value gives the terrain altitude at the position of the cursor (+ sign). As you move the mouse, this y value will continuously show the altitude at the location of the cursor.
(Michael Vone).

Short answer: Open Explorer. View | Folder Options | File Types .  Scroll down to packaged activity. Click on "Packaged Activity".  Click "Edit". Click "Edit".  Change Application used to perform action to
"E:\MSTS\Utils\TSUnpack.exe" "%1"   where MSTS is your MSTS directory:  ie change "|" to "%1".  Click
Ok | Close | Close.
More detailed answer:  http://www.train-sim.com/faq/msts/activity.htm#6.5

Put this line in near the top of the file - PassengerCapacity ( 40.0 )

Unfortunately the PassengerCapacity line went amiss in a number of older passenger coaches, motors, trolleys etc; most authors have since become aware of its importance for the loading / unloading function to work. Nevertheless, if you notice a file where it is amiss you simply can edit it in yourself, a good location is next to the name line (if available), the shape line, or the sounds line.

Just for clarity: "PassengerCapacity" is not required for the coach to be recognised as passenger carriage with regard to ConBuilder, the Consist Editor in the AE, or the speed posts applying to your train (notice that in a combined passenger/freight consist, freight overrules passenger speed limits).  This distinction is done by the line "Type" way up in the .wag file ("carriage" as oposed to "freight").

 Even with a "PassengerCapacity" line in the file, you may find it difficult to get the loading / unloading to work if the interactive platform area - see the space between the two blue marks that designate the location in the activity editor - is very short. For the loading / unloading to work properly, a coach with PassengerCapacity line should fit fully into the interactive platform area, and not each unit in your consist has such a line.

Let me illustrate that with an example: A passenger train headed by an F7 ABA set will probably have an RPO and a baggage car up front in the consist, so the first unit with PassengerCapacity will be a coach coming in 6th position. Lets assume the following diner, sleepers, lounge and tail cars have no such line, either. If the platform is ultra-short, as some of the purely informative platform markers on Marias Pass (Conkelly, Coram, Summit, Bison, Sundance, and some more come to mind), then the loading and unloading will only become available if you stop your train precisely with coach 6 within the platform markers. If you use F6, that means the blue pole denominating the platform should stick through the center of coach 6 - else the loading will not work.
(Lukas A Lusser aka "Swissie")

 
You may be missing one or more of the following folders in your route:  TRAFFIC, PATHS, SERVICES, ACTIVITIES.  If any of these folders are missing create them with the File | New | Folder command in Windows Explorer.

Special note to route-builders creating Clickteam installers for distribution of their route :
When setting up your install files, note that InstallCreator or the older InstallMaker do not copy empty folders. This affects TRAFFIC, PATHS, SERVICES, ACTIVITIES folders in many distributed routes.
The fix is to create a non-empty file called say blank.fil  - note file must have something in it eg "This file required for installer to work correctly - you may now delete it".  The folder will then be copied into the installer.

IMPORTANT NOTE/BUG REPORT:
The option in InstallCreator in Files Tab, Misc Tab for
"Do not install file, but create directory"
is broken in the free version (ok in paid-for versions >patch 17) and won't be fixed till the end of the year (shame as it would clean up this problem nicely).    If you use it, the installer will halt, no doubt throwing the enduser into complete panic <g!> - it will also create a 1413k corrupt file in that folder.  It's so much simpler to let it copy the 1k blank.fil and thus place the folder.
(Yuri Sos)

1. You cannot animate a texture by itself - but you could carefully sequence a series of textures attached to a number of objects, which are animated;
2. You cannot 'scale' an object between frames of an animation sequence. (that is - change the object's dimensions or shape);
3. You can only apply one type of animation per object per frame;
4. You can apply different types animation to different objects in a frame, but must obey the above rule;
5. You can apply different types of animation over a progression of frames, provided you obey the above rule;
6. All faces of an object must have a texture;
7. You can only apply one pivot point per animated object;
8. You can animate a locomotive over more than 0 - 8 frames, ie 0 - 16 and 0 - 32 frames. You need to make compensating tweaks in the ENG;
9. You can animate a scenery object over a much greater range of frames, 200+ but there may be a limit;
10. You can 'scale' the timing of the animation sequence, too. This is very helpful to cut back the speed of the animated object in the sim;
11. Long objects, with a pivot point at one end may exhibit an unfortunate oscillating effect at the other end in the sim, no matter how good it looks in 3d prog. This is a conversion problem, and is apparently caused by some coding algorithm routine;

Plus a million other rules, some known, some unknown and yet to be discovered.
(Barry "Captain Bazza" Munro)

In Route Editor, set the "Terrain Error Bias" to zero.  You will need to do this for every tile.

Important notes:
 

• Setting the terrain error bias to zero does not mean it stays there. Sometimes after reshaping terrain, the bias reverts back to one;

 
• it stays at "0" if you do a save right after you change the value. If you forget and move on to something else, and get over into another tile, then it does not.  Probably related to the way the scenery buffers work;

 
• it will also change back to 1 if you change the texture on that tile. And if you don't save after changing the texture and move away, when you come back it will be the same as before;

 
• One of of things that irritates me is having to manually set error bias to zero on so many tiles, especially not knowing where it's already done leaving one to hunt through each and every tile. I  solved the latter problem: If you move the camera 300-500m above ground and turn on wireframe mode it becomes visually very obvious where the error bias is zero and where it is not.  It's still a bother setting the value but at least now I click on only those tiles that are still set to 1.

(Dave, Nelson, Bill Burnett, John Sullivan, Austin Yoder)


---

Batch files generally run well inside XP Pro (exceptions: "Choice" for conditional batch files no longer works, needs a "%%" switch instead, among other differences).

Press Start | All Programs | Accessories | Command prompt.
In the Command Prompt window, type Xcopy /? <enter>. It should find Xcopy and list all the parameters.

If it doesn't, your computer path may be corrupted.

In the Command Prompt Window, type path <enter>. It should show your computer path:

path=c:\windows\system32;c:\windows;c:\windows\system32\wbem
(Replace c: with your drive partition if it's not drive C:)

If you need to correct the path, press
Start | right-click My Computer | Properties | Advanced | Environment Variables |
Path | Edit.   Make your changes as above then exit.
(William Sieffert)

One way I found to reduce the number of the never ending red lights, is go in and change the endpoint and start point. I found that you never ever should end a path at the end of the track. Always go in and put the endpoint in a few feet short of the end of track. The same for a start point, never use the end of a track as the start point.
Since I started doing this I have cleared up all kinds of problems with signals not clearing.
(Kevin Arceneaux)

PS.  Kevin has written a few superb tutorials on activity creation which you'll find in the "Important Topics" of his Lone Wolf Activities forum, part of the forums at 3DTrains.  Click here to visit that site.

The exhaust beats of a steam loco depend on the 'timing' of the loco. On a two-cylinder loco, the power strokes are arranged to be even, so a loco will have equal intervals between chuffs. The cylinders are at equal height above the rails, the cranks are arranged at 90° to each other (left-side:right-side), and each cylinder is double acting (powers the piston in each direction by turn).

Things get a bit more complicated with extra cylinders. On a Bulleid Pacific, the middle cylinder is mounted higher than the outer cylinders, and the cranks are set at angles to allow for this, so there are six chuffs per rev at even intervals.

On a King, the four cylinders are arranged so that the left outer cylinder and right inner cylinder power strokes occur together, and then the right outer and left inner occur together, so the (big) chuff is from two cylinders at the same time. This makes for four chuffs per revolution.

On a Lord Nelson the cranks were set for even power strokes and it produced eight chuffs evenly spaced per revolution.
(Tony Wood, Webmaster Mid-Hants Railway)

As long as a .Wav is 16bit 11kHz, you shouldn't have any problems.  If the .sms cab file you want to change the sound in already has a wiper sound listed, just name your .wav the same as the existing wiper sound (rename that one something else of course) and you won't need to make any changes to the .sms file.

If it doesn't have a wiper line, you can place a line like this in your .sms file along with the other cab control sounds like your light switch sound.

Discrete_Trigger ( 19
           PlayOneShot ( 1 File ( "my_sound_file.wav" -1 )
                                   SelectionMethod ( SequentialSelection )
           )
)

("my_sound_file" would be whatever you decide to name your .Wav)

You will also need to change the number of triggers in this section.
(Jeff "jeffed" Isaac)

If you want to get changing (ie not just idle) sounds from both AI-locos and Helpers then you need to use a separate .sms file than the one used by a Player loco. The Player loco .sms can be edited to get AI loco's sounding better, but not Helpers.

The reason for this is related to which section (called a ScalabiltyGroup) of the .sms file each loco type uses. Player loco's use SG's 1, 3 and 5, which relate to Low, Medium and Hight sound level setting in the main MSTS sound menu. AI loco's always use SG 0. Helper loco's use SG's 1, 3 and 5 to match the Player loco. But the catch is that AI and Helper loco's only respond to the Speed variable, whereas Player locos need to use Variable1 (wheel rotation), Variable2 (applied power) and Variable3 (coal shovelling rate) if they are going to sound as we are used to to them. So, if a Helper is using a Player SG 5 (say) setup it will only respond to the Initial_Trigger which gets the idling sound started.

If you have AI loco's working OK then here's what to do. Make a copy of the Player .sms and rename it. (I use the convention of putting a # at the beginning of the file name, but you can do as you wish). Then open the file for (unicode) editing. Scroll towards the bottom half of the file and locate the ScalibilityGroup( 0 line. Copy from (including) this line down to the end of the file, except for the last line with a ) in it. Now this copied section needs pasting over the SG 5, 3 and 1 sections above the SG 0 section you have just copied. Be VERY carefully to not loose or gain )'s. You now should have a file which contains only two sections, both labled SG 0. The final edit then is to change the first SG 0 to SG 1. ie ScalibilityGroup( 1

Now save the file and point your AI/Helper loco .eng file at it.
(Stuart "scefhwil" Williamson).