Activity Readme ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Activities for Version 2 and Version 1 of the Route? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This and the following activity downloads contains most of my old (version 1) acts and also some as of now unreleased ones. If you have installed and played activities already with version 1, you can safely let them be overwritten. You might notice some changes in some consists, but in general the acts are still the same. If you would like to keep the old acts as they are, simply do not allow the files to be overwritten. They should be able to run nonetheless. If you run into problems launching the activities, a possible solution could be deleting the *.ASV files present in your [MSTS]\Routes\Allegheny\Activities directory. More info? ~~~~~~~~~~ For up to date news, updates, more activities and information, please visit: http://www.gnpaintshed.de.vu/GNOldShort/AActs/aacts.html Prerequisites ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Before you install and play the activity, please make sure that your MSTS installation meets these prerequisites. These might appear to be some work at the first glance, but are simply necessary to make it fail-safe: 1) All rolling stock items listed in the "required rolling stock" file have to be installed in their default directories (if you are not sure about it, the necessary directory name is also listed in the file) 2) You have made no changes to the route's track database (i.e., you have not edited the route's trackwork or interactive objects in the route editor) 3) You need to have fixed the front coupler bug as you might need to do some front coupling. I highly recommend using the MSTS-Bin patch to achieve this. Installation ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Simply copy both folders ("Routes" and "Trains") to your MAIN MSTS INSTALL directory. Don't worry, none of your route's or rolling stock files will be overwritten. Playing the Activity ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Open MSTS and start the activity as usual. All work orders etc. are provided from within the game's activity briefing menu. Most importantly: have fun! I tested the activity and they performed well on my system. However, there might nonetheless be some glitches or possibilities of not being able to finish the activity. Please don't get frustrated then, just try again or, if you found serious errors, please inform me about it so I can fix them! A Note on Flagstops ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When building the route I designated several station stops as flagstops. This means, that the train only stopped there, when there were actually passengers waiting to get on or off the train. As this is impossible to model properly in MSTS, flagstop stations will be included in the activity's timetable, it is up to you then to decide on which of the flagstops you will stop, and on which ones you will roll through, ignoring the MSTS timetable (F10 display). This procedure will give you a penalty in the actvity de-briefing, but is the most realistic option I could think of. Standards of my Activities ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I am trying to follow some naming standards when creating activities so it is easier to modifiy or delete them later: 1) File naming conventions: Activity, Player Path and Service, and Traffic files always share the same name. The convention is: [RR Company(-steam)]_[Act Type]_[Number].file-extension. RR Company is either BO or BLE, Act Type is P, F, or S for Passenger, Freight, or Switching runs. Example: BO_F_01 for the first B&O Freight Activity. Or: BLE-S_S_05 for the fifth B&LE Steam Switching Activity. ...and so on. 2) Several of my activities may share player consists, traffic services and traffic consists. This is to reduce the total number of files present in the activity related directories (having too many there might crash MSTS). 3) All my activities also follow naming conventions... ... for Consists: All single engine-only consists are called "[RR] LOCO [engine name] [number of engine/lashup]", all trains are called "[RR] TRAIN [F/P ] [type of cargo/stock] [number of cars]". ... for Traffic Services and Paths: All my traffic services and paths start with a "TR" in their filename, followed by a description of the item. One file might be shared by several activities. Disclaimer ~~~~~~~~~~ 1) Feel free to do what you like with the activity. 2) Although it is very unlikely to happen at all, I shall not be held responsible for any damage any part of this archive might do to your system. Michael Stephan email: MichaelStephan@gmx.at train-sim.com: GreatNortherner