Rw_tools_help.pdf

RW_Tools V5 Instruction Manual Utilities for Train Simulator 2014 Copyright Mike Simpson - ©2013

Snow at Katoomba Station

RW_Tools - Introduction. RW_Tools is a suite of utilities which allow users of TS2014 to edit many of the simulator's files in a manner which is not possible using the utilities supplied with that program. This program was originally written to provide file editing and re-skinning abilities to Rail Simulator before the official Development Tools were released in November 2007. Unfortunately, there appear to be some glaring omissions in the official tools (Still no easy means of reading .bin files etc., so I decided to keep on adding bits to the Editor. - Now that Rail Works has been replaced with TS2014, the saga continues ) As few details of file formats have been released, this program has been developed from experience gained with the Microsoft Train Simulator utilities (Route_Riter) which I wrote. Users should be extremely careful when using this programs to edit their files and you should have made backups of all of your Assets and Content folders before you even start. The editor does however make backups of all edited files with '.bak', .bak1 etc suffixes. This program is entirely unofficial and has nothing whatsoever to do with RailSimulator.com, who did’nt even have the courtesy to let me know I would not get access to a beta of TS2014 before the release date so that I could produce an early update to RW_Tools. No responsibility is given for any errors which occur if you use this program, you do so entirely at your own risk. If you don’t agree with this, then please uninstall RW_Tools from your PC. Credits: 1. The texture file viewer in this program was made possible by the use of Martin Wright's mwgfx.dll package, without which it would not have existed. MSTS users will know Martin as the author of TGATools2a which is included with my Route_Riter program and as a major force in utilities for Flight Simulator. 2. Many of the ideas for adding suffixes to the names of rolling-stock items to enable changes to be made to existing wagons/locos, such as providing versions of locos with no drivers, adding headlights to steam locos etc and for providing a Scenario Packager which will automatically create subsets of Locos and Wagons for use in a scenario from existing rolling stock came from Russell Westwood in South Africa. Russell has also extensively tested many of the new features. 3. Many thanks to Dave Brindley for permission to include his UK headlamps & taillamp models for use in adding lights to UK Steam era trains. And to Stefan Schmidt for the German taillamps. 4. Mike Hammett has allowed me to produce thumbnail versions of all the pictures of Assets in his fine ‘Railworks Pictorial Asset Library’ which is available in full from uktrainsim.com - These form the backbone of the Thumbnails in the asset viewer in this version of the program. Many thanks to Mike. Note: RW_Tools is not freeware but is distributed as a fully operational 21 use version after which continued use requires a donation for which a license key will be sent. Note2: Although most options in RW_Tools do make backups of files which are changed. I highly recommend that anyone using this program makes a FULL backup of the TS2014 folder on a USB external drive or spare hard-drive to save angst if things go wrong. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED... Please advise me of any bugs, problems, suggestions etc. I will try to update the program as often as possible on my site at www.rstools.info you can also see my forum at http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewforum.php?f=315 Mike Simpson - 24 Nov 2013 - [email protected]

Running the program - First time Before you can use this program, you must go to the Options Menu and set up several ‘Paths’ so that the program knows where to find the files it is to work on. TS2014 Path - Most importantly you must set up the path to your TS2014 files. Usually by default this will be c:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\common\railworks but can of course be anywhere. Once you have set this path, the files Serz.exe, stlport_vc10.5.2.dll and zlibwapi.dll will be automatically copied from TS2014 into the RW_Tools folder. (If you get serz.exe error messages, manually copying these files should fix it). Viewer Path - Although RW_Tools now includes a built in texture viewer, you may also wish to set up a viewer to look at .dds files. Irfanview with a .dds plugin is a suitable one. Texture Editor Path - To re-skin models, you must set up the path to a paint program suitable for Editing .DDS files (Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop are suitable if you download the .dds plug-in from Nvidia.com. Paint.Net should also work). Make all RW files read/write- Because on some systems the files are installed as Read Only and as such cannot be edited by the user. If you receive an Error 75 while using RW_Tools, this may be an indication that there are some Read Only files which RW_Tools is trying to write to or to back up. (But see the comments below re Windows 7/8 requiring Administrators rights) PDF Reader Path - As this Help File is in .PDF format, you should also set a path to your Acrobat or similar PDF reader from this menu. Clear the Screen and Clear Temp Files . Clear the Screen just removes any text from the editor screen. While Clear Temp Files cleans out the RW_Tools\TempFiles folder of any temporary files the program has placed there while processing certain options (this option is usually called by the program automatically whenever the folder is accessed, but might be needed if you exit the program in the middle of a process.) Select Language - If you wish to use a foreign language version of RW_Tools select it here. Don’t Ask on Closing Down By default RW_Tools asks if you really do want to close the program when you click on Exit or on the Windows close button. If this annoys you, select this option and RW_Tools will close immediately. View all Paths Displays all paths chosen above. Start with Editor maximised - by default the program starts with the editor screen the same size as it was when you closed down, but some users like to keep it maximised, you can do so here. Warn if Edit not saved - If you open/alter a document in the editor, this option will warn you if you have not saved it. PreLoad Folder - If you wish to make your own Quick Drive Consists, then you need a PreLoad folder to keep them in, this Option points to where your PreLoad folder is.

Vista & Windows 7 Users RW_Tools can change files in the Program Files or Program Files (x86) folder on your PC, so must be installed and run with Administrators rights. 1. Right click the installation program and select ‘Run as Administrator’ when first installing the program. 2. Right click ‘RW_Tools.exe’ once installed and select Properties/Compatability and tick the box to ‘Always run program as administrator’ then it will always run as administrator and no further action is required. Editing .bin Files Many of the files used by TS2014 have a .bin suffix. These files are compressed, but can be modified to editable .xml files by use of the file SERZ.exe which is included with TS2014. RW_Tools makes use of this file to modify selected .bin files to .xml without the user needing to open a CLI window and enter difficult text strings To open a .bin/.GeoPcDx or .XSec file, go to the File Menu and click on 'Open TS2014 File' When you select the file, it is converted by the serz.exe utility to an .xml file and displayed in the Editor. The text can then be edited, and you can either save the .xml file by clicking the Save As button, or save it back to its original TS2014 location by clicking the 'Save TS2014 File' menu option. When you save as a TS2014 file, the original TS2014 file is backed up by adding .bak or .bak1 etc to the filename so that a series of backup files (up to a maximum of 50) are available. The .xml text may be Hi lighted by clicking on the HighlightXML button. (However on a long file this may take a long time). Open 2nd Window - This new option allows you to open a 2nd window in the editor below the existing one, thus allowing you to view 2 files at once for comparison or cut/paste purposes. When you select this option the menu changes to ‘Close 2nd Window’ and an option to ‘Open 2nd .bin’ file appears. Open 2nd .bin file - Allows you to open a 2nd .bin (or .geopcdx) file in the bottom window and copy/paste text from the bottom to the top file (you can’t edit the bottom file) - If the 2 files are similar (e.g. different versions of the same file), clicking on a line in the top file will position the bottom file to the same line. Editing .GeoPcDx Files These are the equivalent of MSTS shape files, and may be opened and viewed in the editor with this option. The files may then be saved back again as with .bin files above. Once again, backups are produced. Note: In earlier versions, some .GeoPcDx files have proved to be impossible to re-save in their .GeoPcDx format because Serz.exe gave an error while trying to convert the .xml file to its binary format. - These included most locomotive files. However in TS2014 the new version of Serz.exe provided appears to open most .GeoPcDx files and can also resave them, so this limitation is no longer apparent. Backups There are two back up options - Backup TS2014 does a backup of your Content and Assets folders from TS2014 plus the Source and Root folders. Incremental backup backs up unchanged files since the previous full backup. However, better results are gained by downloading the Microsoft program SyncToy 2.1 from the Microsoft site.

RW_Tools and .ap Files With TS2014, RSC have started packing many Routes and Asset packs in a type of .zip file with .ap suffix. Each of these packed folders contains all the files a route or locomotive etc needs to run in TS2014. Unfortunately, they have rendered many of the existing options in RW_Tools unusable. With routes/assets so packaged, it is no longer possible to check routes for missing items, edit locomotive .bin files, re-skin rolling stock, or swap rolling stock in scenarios. Fortunately, these .ap files can be unpacked using the command line version of 7zip packaged with RW_Tools, once the .ap files are unpacked, the contents can be used as before. Please note that doing this will DOUBLE the size of your assets folder as the .ap file must remain so that Steam can carry out its upgrades, and if there are Steam upgrades, then the new .ap file will have to be unpacked to get hold of any new contents but take care if you have modified your files as any new files will be overwritten during the unpack process, but see below. Find all .ap files As the name suggests, this option searches your Assets folder for any/all .ap files therein. This may take a little time as there are a lot of files to check through. Once the files are found, a list like the following appears, your list will be somewhat different as this list includes some home-made files to test the system.

As can be seen above, the list contains packages of both Assets(rolling stock etc) and Content(routes etc). New files will display as ‘Not unpacked’ then once unpacked they will change to Unpacked. If you wish to see what is in a particular pack, click on the .ap file to select it and click the ‘Unpack Selected .ap files’ button. This will display ALL of the files contained within any particular .ap file. If you just want to access 1 particular file within the package, you can go to the Extract Files/Extract Selected menu and this will extract the chosen items. Alternatively you may wish to extract all the files, this can be done using the option ‘Extract All’ which will place the extracted files into a folder of your choice, or ‘Extract all to same folder as .ap’ which will establish the complete folder tree as you would have seen under TS2013 and place all of the files so that they are now visible from RW_Tools as in the past.

Unpack with 7zip As a faster alternative to the above, you may select as many .ap files as you wish in the list of .ap files and click on ‘Unpack with 7zip’ this then gives you a list of alternative unpack methods you can use as can be seen below. 1. Unpack .ap files to a new folder - this places the folder tree in a folder away from your Assets folder and may be useful if you don’t wish to overwrite Modified files, you could unpack to a spare folder and check for changed files. 2. Unpack .ap files to same folder as the .ap (first time unpack) - Use this if your folder only contains the .ap file as it fails if there are existing files in the Folder tree. 3. Unpack .ap overwriting all destination files if they exist - Use this if you have no modified files in the external folder tree - it will unpack all files including updated ones and update your whole folder tree. 4. Unpack .ap skipping any files which already exist - This will only unpack new files in the .ap - and will NOT unpack new versions of files you already have. 5. Unpack .ap appending number to any NEW file which already exists - Probably not much use as it adds a numeric suffix, e.g. Scotsman_1.bin to the new version if Scotsman.bin already exists - OK if it was a small archive, but if you have thousands of files in the tree, a lot of work… 6. Unpack .ap renaming existing files by adding a number - This unpacks all of the new files and keeps the old ones but renames them by adding a numeric suffix as in 5 above.

Editing .xml/.cost etc files The .xml/.cost/.tgt files are all uncompressed text files (in .xml format), these can be Opened/Saved by using the appropriate menus. The .cost and .tgt files should not be changed as they are produced automatically and for all practical purposes may be deleted as they are not used in the game and just take up disk space. Using the XML Viewer As there are several differences in the way which TS2014 and its tools parse .xml files compared with the way Microsoft handles these, I have changed RW_Tools so rather than having an XML editor, it only has an XML viewer with which you can inspect the files in a tree view, but not change them. The original .xml editor did not save .xml files correctly if they contained accented letters and certain other features. I have not found a way around this yet, so if you wish to edit the files, you must use the normal RW_Tools editor. However, it can be useful to view the XML files in TreeView mode, so the XML viewer is included for experienced users. The illustration below shows the contents of a Scenario.bin file in TreeView mode. You can search for Nodes in the TreeView by using the Search box and clicking the Find option - This will hilight the first item found and ask if this is the one you are looking for, you should then click Yes or Continue.

Backups There are options on the file menu which allow you to Backup TS2014 files in the Assets/Contents/Source and root folders of TS2014. Once you have a backup, you may then use the ‘Incremental Backup’ option to backup only those files which have changed since the last backup. However, I prefer to use the Microsoft Synctoy v2.1 program available from Microsoft on line without charge. This allows you to set up daily or weekly backups of any folders you wish and when combined with the Scheduler to do this automatically. This saves you having to remember to do any backups. Route Builders backups - Route builders need to back up the route they are building on a daily or weekly basis. To accommodate these people, I have put a stand-alone program on my site at http://www.rstools.info/downloads/Route_Backup.zip - this archive contains full instructions and backs up your route under construction on a daily or weekly basis to for instance a USB drive. Each backup is placed into a separate dated folder, so you can always revert to an earlier version if you have a catastrophe. Editing Texture Files To open a texture file, go to the Files Menu and click the 'Open Texture File' option and select a texture file ( .TgPcDx suffix ). The texture file will be converted to an .xml file and appear in the editor as an .xml file DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EDIT THIS FILE MANUALLY RW_Tools has a built in image viewer, you can view the image of the .TgPcDx file you have just loaded by clicking the 'Show Image' button.

To edit the Texture, it must now be converted to a .dds format file by going to the Graphics Tools menu and selecting 'Convert .TgPcDx to .dds' The converted texture file will be placed in your RW_Tools\TempDDS folder and will have the same filename as the original texture, but will have a .dds suffix. Once it is converted, you will receive a message like the following which tells you the type of .dds file it is and the number of MipMaps, you should note these down as they are required when you come to save your edited texture in your Paint program.

You can now either view this .dds file, or open it a Paint program for editing by selecting the appropriate menu option. Alternatively if you need to save memory, the editor can be closed at this time and the texture edited in your Paint program. (If possible, keep RW_Tools open while re-skinning the file as the it saves the details of the texture in a .dat file in the TempDDS folder so that the texture can be re-exported back to TS2014 at a later date, so it is safer to keep RW_Tools open so that the .dat file is not unintentionally erased). Once you have edited your texture file, you must save it in EXACTLY the same format as the original texture file or you will not be able to re-export it back to TS2014. You must also save it with the same filename back into the TempDDS folder (when you click Save in your Paint program, you should get a requester as follows):-

Clicking on 'Yes' then 'Save' will bring up a requester similar to the following (Depending upon your paint program, this is the Nvidia .dds plug-in for Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop, other programs have similar requesters):-

You must select the .dds type in the top box (usually DXT1 or DXT3 ARGB, or may be 8.8.8 or A 8.8.8.8), also make sure the Generate MIP maps is selected and that the number in the box is the same as you noted above under the Convert Menu. Leave the other items at their default and click Save. The .dds file in your TempDDS folder should now be the modified one. You can check it by using your Viewer program.

Converting the texture back to TS2014 format Go to the Graphics Tools menu and select the 'Convert .dds to TS2014 format' option and select your new .dds file in the TempFiles folder. You will be told that you are about to replace the original .TgPcDx file with a modified version and that a backup will be made. Click OK to proceed.

Important Note: With TS2014, some developers have started using a new texture format named HC_IMAGE_FORMAT_COMPRESSED_INTERP_ALPHA

RW_Tools can open these files and send them to external paint programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro as .dds files, however they can’t be viewed in the RW_Tools image viewer. Using the new Serz.exe, textures up to 4096*4096 can now be opened/saved with RW_Tools, the earlier size limitations are no longer valid.

.TgPcDx Viewer RW_Tools now includes a built in viewer for TS2014 texture files, just click this option in the Tools menu and it will bring up a simple file viewer. Convert RW time to hrs/mins This option allows you to convert 'Time' entries in the .bin files to Hours and Minutes. Times in the RW files are 5 figure groups indicating the number of seconds after midnight. e.g. 53427 is the equivalent of 1550 in 24 hour times or 3:50pm Note Re Files: You may set up any of the RW files in Windows Explorer or utilities like Directory-Opus to open automatically in RW_Tools by making this program their default opening tool.

Route Building Tools Menu

Checking a Route Select a route by clicking on it, then you will see several options you can use on the selected route, e.g. click the 'Delete Selected Route' to get rid of all traces of your route. You may of course use this option to see which folder holds a particular route, then click the Exit button to leave the screen without making any alterations. When you run the 'Check Selected Route' option, you will get a report showing missing Assets in your route. After which you can also check for missing Textures etc. On the missing Assets report, there is now an option button to allow you to substitute missing Assets with those you already have, see 'Substitute Missing Items'. From this screen, when you select a route, it will list all the Scenarios associated with it. If you have been experimenting with Scenarios which do not work, you may select them here and click the Delete Selected Scenario button to remove them.

Checking Scenarios for missing Rolling-Stock Select a Scenario and click the 'List Stock used by selected Scenario' button and after the process runs you will get a screen listing all rolling-stock used by the scenario. When you first view this screen, you may notice many duplicate wagons etc (it lists each wagon and loco found), click the Remove duplicates to clean this up. If you click the Check for Missing Stock button, a list of Missing Stock will appear. Clicking on Report will produce this screen in a printable format with Print and Save buttons so that you can save the report. Clone Route Rather than make modifications to existing routes, it is recommended that you make a copy of the original route and change it. Then if file changes are made to the original route by the Steam download system, your own modifications will not be overwritten. To Clone any route, just select it in the top window and click the ‘Clone Route’ button. This brings up a box asking for the new name of the route, Here I have just made a copy of the Hagen to Siegen route by adding #2 to the route name. Click OK and a CLI window will open and the files will be copied across. Next time you run TS2014, you will find your new route listed.

Clone Selected Scenario Same as for Clone Route above, this will clone any selected scenario with a new name. The modified scenario will not then be affected by ‘Steam’ updates to the original route/scenario but will maintain any changes you have made to the scenario.

Substitute Missing Items Once you have run the Check Selected Route option, you will get a report screen which now includes a 'Substitute Missing Items' button. To do this, click the 'Remove duplicates' button so that you just get a list of unique missing items. Highlight those you wish to substitute (remembering that if you substitute an Asset, it must be with something similar, swapping a shed with a factory will cause some problems, especially if near the track.) The Substitute for a missing Asset form will be displayed with the top portion filled in for the first item selected. Click the '....' Button and select the item you wish to substitute for it as under.

Click OK and the item will be substituted. Once the data is saved, the above form will appear again for the 2nd selected item and so on until all the items have been substituted. Close everything and check your route again, this time it should show no missing Assets. Substituting/Deleting Existing Items First select the route, then click the Substitute Asset button. Select the item to remove in the top box by clicking the '....' button and select the item to replace it with in the bottom half of the screen. Click OK

To delete all instances of an item, select it in the top half of the box and leave the bottom half blank, Click OK and all will be done. This is especially useful for removing Gantries from electrified routes etc.

Miscellaneous Items on the Select Route Screen. There are now a number of Miscellaneous buttons on this screen which are mainly self explanatory. 1. Show Location of all Assets - Produces a list of assets as in the Check Route option, but also displays the tile they are located on. 2. Raise or Lower Track - Some 3rd party track has higher/lower profile than standard track, this enables you to raise/lower ALL the track in a route by a few cms if you have changed the track. 3. Package this Routes Assets - Mainly for route builders to pack all assets to send to beta testers. 4. View route details - Displays internal details of a route such as Template used, weather used etc 5. Check Scenario Properties - Checks the validity of the ScenarioProperties.xml files for each route. 6. List Stock used with wagon numbers - Select a scenario and click this button to produce a list of all stock used in the scenario and the wagon numbers used by each item. 7. List Stock used by all scenarios - Gives a list of all stock used by all scenarios in the selected route. 8. Print list of all Routes and Scenarios - produces a complete list of every route installed along with all of its scenarios. 9. List ALL rolling stock used by all routes - Lists all rolling stock currently in use. 10. View Route Details - Displays items like Route Name, Sky, Weather and Terrain files it uses and Lat/Long of the start of the route. Miscellaneous Menu A. Remove terrain textures - will remove all terrain textures in the selected route and replace them with the default grass texture. Really only of use to route builders who decide to use a new texture set for their route. B. Make Asset folder also for route builders who wish to build a folder including just those Assets used by their route, e.g. for sending to a tester.

Reports Menu The Reports Menu allows you to view the various reports which you may have saved into the RW_Tools\Reports folder. These may be in .txt, .csv or Excel format.

Set Up Developer Folders The RailSim 3rd Party Developer & Product Setup file advises users to set up a Developers folder in the TS2014 Source folder. This option will help you to automate this procedure using correct folder names as outlined in the above document. Once the Developer main folder is set up, you must then set up the folder trees as recommended by selecting the Tools\Set Up Folders menu which will bring up a screen as under:-

Select the Developer folder you set up above, then type your Project name in the box and click Confirm. This will set up all the folders for you A set of folders with the same names will also be set up in your Assets folder..

Direct Route Setup New on the Route Building Tools/Blueprints menu is 'Direct Route Setup' this allows you to prepare a new Route Template without having to use the Blueprint Editor at all. 1. Click this menu item. 2. Tick if the route is European or U.S. Based (just changes the default weather etc). 3. Enter your Provider Name, e.g. Fred Bloggs 4. Enter your Product Name e.g. MyRoutes 5. Enter Longitude and Latitude of the starting point of the route 6. Enter the Routes Name 7. Click Build Route - Your Route Template will be made automatically and when you run TS2014 it will be available in the list of Route Templates when you select to build a New Route. There is also an advanced route builders option, which if selected, opens up extra boxes on the above screen where you can enter all of the above plus:8. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter skies 9. Weather 10. Terrain These allow you to add non-default environments to your Route Template and in this case you should click the Build Advanced button to complete the template. See the tutorial following this page

Edit Providers This option allows you to see which providers/products are selected for your route and allows you to add extra Providers, or delete any which are not actually used e.g. A route author might add a lot of providers while planning the route, but not actually use any of their assets in the final build. This option in combination with the Check Route list of Assets allows you to remove Providers/Products not actually used but listed in the RouteProperties.xml file. Clicking ‘Hide unused’ then Print allows you to print a list of providers used by your route.

Starting a New Route using RW_Tools Before you can start building your own routes in TS2014, you need to set up your own Developer structure of folders in TS2014 where your work will be held. The TS2014 Wiki describes how your work should be set up and recommends a folder structure to hold your work and which you should abide by. This involves you setting up about 30 folders and sub-folders in the RailWorks\Source folder and the same in your Assets folder. It is much easier to have RW_Tools do this for you as it only involves your typing two words and clicking a couple of buttons:1. Run RW_Tools and from the Route Building Tools menu select ‘Set up Developer Folder’. 2. This brings up a simple box into which you may enter your Developer’s name, e.g. MikeSimpson it must be Alpha characters only with no spaces. Click OK and your Source\YourName folder is set up. 3. Now select the Set up Sub-Folders menu and you will get the following window:-

4. Click on the Developer folder you set up, i.e. Source\MikeSimpson from 2. Above and enter your Product name, e.g. Routes in the box where indicated and click ‘Confirm’ 5. You will be advised when your folders are set up.

Starting a New Route There are several ways to start off your new route like using an existing template from TS2014, but this means you can’t add your own Route Description or Route Startup Picture screens as these are called from the templates. The second method is to set up your own Route Blueprint using the Blueprint editor, however for a beginner this is daunting to say the least and involves filling in a lot of boxes, the meaning of which can be very confusing to those who have not delved into the midst of such esoteric documents. To save users having any such problems, I have now added an option to my Route Building Tools menu named Direct Route Setup which produces an individualised template for your route and which only requires you to fill in 5 boxes all of which are quite clear as to what is required:-

Direct Route Setup On the Route Building Tools/Blueprints menu is 'Direct Route Setup' this allows you to prepare a new Route Template without having to use the Blueprint Editor at all.

1. Click Blueprints and on the pop-out click ‘Direct Route Setup’.

2. Tick if the route is European or U.S. Based (just changes the default weather etc). 3. Enter your Provider Name, e.g. MikeSimpson 4. Enter your Product Name e.g. Routes 5. Enter Longitude and Latitude of the starting point of the route 6. Enter the Template Name (This name will appear in the list of Templates in TS2014) 7. Click Build Route - Your Route Template will be made automatically and when you run TS2014 it will be available in the list of Route Templates when you select to build a New Route.

There is also an advanced route builders option, which if selected, opens up extra boxes on the above screen where you can enter all of the above plus:-

8. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter skies 9. Weather 10. Terrain These allow you to add non-default environments to your Route Template and in this case you should click the Build Advanced button to complete the template. These options are for more advanced route builders, just click the .... Buttons and select the various files you wish to use and the boxes will be filled automatically. That is all you need from RW_Tools for the time being, now you must run TS2014 and from the main screen, select Routes / New Route (bottom right of the screen) then you will see the Choose a Template window, scroll down and you should see the template you set up.

Select your template, and click the Create button.

Click the ‘Create’ button and you will be asked to enter a name for your new Route and after a short while you will get a screen as under.

The black earth is not very inspiring, but this is because the route template probably gets its grass from Kuju and you have not yet added Kuju as a provider of Assets for your route. To add Providers and their Products to your route, click and pin the 3 left hand pop-out boxes, and on the middle one click on the Provider button as shown”. This will open the right-hand pop-out as under, scroll

Down to Kuju and select RailSimulator (it sometimes takes a little while for the green tick to appear in the box), you may also select RailSimulatorUS at this time if you are intending to use any of the US assets in your route, also any other Providers which you are intending to use. No assets will appear in the left-hand boxes until their providers are selected. Once this is done, click F2 to save your route, and exit the World Editor. Go back to the TS2014 route selection screen and you will find your route listed there. Select your route, click on Edit and this time you should see a flat grassed area where you can start building your route.

I have done my best to explain how to set up and get started on your route, however building it is all up to you. Good luck.

Adding a Route Description Once your route is looking good enough to show to other users, you might like to add a Route Description which is the text which appears in TS2014 when you click on a Route’s name in the list of available routes. Usually this is the History of the route in just a few short paragraphs as well as the route author’s name etc. Although this is quite a simple document, TS2014 does not provide a simple editor for you to use for this purpose, so RW_Tools has an editor which will handle the task for you. Just run RW_Tools, go to the Route Building Tools menu and select Add Route Description. Just select your route from the list of installed routes and click the ‘Add Description to Selected Route’ button (right-hand button, middle row). This brings up a screen which just consists of 5 text boxes for Title, Sub-Title and 3 paragraphs. Empty boxes are ignored, so just type in what you wish and a suitable Route Description will appear next time you run TS2014.

Adding a Route Loading Picture A route loading picture is the graphic which appears after you have selected a Route and Scenario in TS2014 and which appears on the screen while awaiting the loading of the program. Usually it is a map of your route along with the Route’s name, but can be anything at all. Before using RW_Tools to insert the graphic, you must first make your own picture. For Rail Simulator there were some restrictions as to the size of the graphic at 1024x512 pixels, but TS2014 appears to be able to accept larger pictures. The graphic must be saved in .dds format, type DXT1 - ARGB and with 8 mip maps. If you use PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro with the Nvidia DDS plug in then you can select these settings when you save the graphic. 2. Then run RW_Tools and select the Easy Blueprints\Add Route Loading Picture menu option. You will be asked for to select your route and to select your picture (which can be saved anywhere). 3. Click OK and the picture will be converted to loading_'your routes name'.TgPcDx and will appear when you are loading your route.

Good luck with your route, and I hope the above helps in your endeavours.

Marker File Blueprints Once you have your basic route set up, if you are building a real world route, you will need to set up some Marker files to make track laying easy. RW has two types of marker files, Named (which show the name of points on the route such as stations etc), and Series which draw a line across the terrain allowing you to accurately lay track. You can use Google Earth to produce .kml files for either of the above types of markers, or you can use a GPS such as Magellan which can produce waypoint (.wpt) files, or you may already have MSTS .mkr files Which ever you choose, RW_Tools can convert them to the .csv files required by TS2014. Important Note: You must not save ‘Named’ and ‘Series’ markers in the same .kml file if they are for use in TS2014. Although you can save such files in Google Earth, TS2014 requires separate files. Once you have your .csv files, copy them into the 'RouteMarkers' folder in the folder tree set up above. Use sensible names for the .csv files like LNER_Named.csv and LNER_series.csv to avoid confusion if you are building multiple routes. Assuming you have both types of .csv files you will need two Marker BluePrints for your route. RW_Tools will provide both of these for you, once again, go to the Route Building Tools menu and select Markers - Named, this will bring up a box where you select the path to your Source\RouteMarkers folder similar to the one where you chose your TemplateRoutes folder. Click Confirm and you will get the following box:-

Enter the name you want for the Named Markers file and the name of your Named .csv file(there is no need to include the .csv suffix as the program adds it if it is not there). Click Make Blueprint and that is that. Now do exactly the same for your Series Markers file. Close RW_Tools and run your Asset Editor and under RouteMarkers, you will see your two BluePrints listed. Double click on LNER_Named and it will open in the editor, then click Export to send it to the Assets folder, then do the same with LNER_Series. Close the Asset Editor and run TS2014, open your new route in the World Editor and you should see your markers. (If they do not appear, remember that markers are turned off by default, you need to click the Markers button in the bottom left hand window of the World Editor) Now all you have to do is import some DEM data, lay your track and a bit of scenery and you have the makings of the world's greatest route. TS2014 Marker Files There are 2 types of Marker Files in TS2014, the Series Marker file consists of a .csv file containing a list of Longitudes and Latitudes separated with commas, e.g. 150.7194882631302,-33.75814810939878 150.71225434541702,-33.756406490330676 150.71146845817566,-33.75617679913151

The second type, Name Marker files are similar except that they contain a 3rd field with the PlaceName of the marker included, e.g. 150.6965077230589,-33.75002974878843,"PenrithStation" The first type draws a line across the ground linking the traced points so allowing you to accurately lay your track, whereas the Named markers place a flag with a name label on it at the selected points, Railsim have recommended using Google Earth .kml files which are extracted by placing points along the path of your track, however this is a cumbersome method of marking out a long route as just placing a single pin requires several actions. Therefore I recommend this method for making the Name Marker files and just marking places which you require names for such as stations, junctions and road bridge crossings etc.

Making Series marker files using Google Earth To make Series marker files, you can use Google Earth and use the Path method of tracing your tracks and roads. 1. On the left hand side of the Google Earth screen in the 'Places' box, right click on My Places and using the menu options, Add > Folder, add a folder to contain your Series Markers. Open this now empty folder so that your markers are placed in it.

2. Then click the Paths button in the Google Earth toolbox on the top of the screen as under.

This will bring up a box where you can name your marker or just leave it as Unnamed, it does not Really matter. You can also select the colour of your paths from this box. Click OK when finished 3. Place the cursor on a road or track where you want to start tracing your path and it will change to a vertical arrow, and drag it down the path, only mark a single path with each trace, e.g. On the picture below, I have traced the red road from centre top to bottom right as one line, and from mid left to the bridge over the track as a second path, with a third road joining them.

5. Make sure you save the file in .kml format, not the default .kmz and save it somewhere safe. 6. You can now go to the Convert Markers Direct to DCSV to convert your new .kml file directly into your route with no need to fiddle about with blueprint files to do this.

Converting Marker Files Once you have created a number of marker files as above (in mkr, kml, gpx or wpt format), you will need to convert them to TS2014's .csv format. RW_Tools now has an option, Route Building Tools\Marker Files\Convert Marker Files to do this. Select the above menu item and you will be asked to select the folder where you wish to save your marker files

This should be in your Source folder, e.g. RailWorks\Source\Mike\AddOn\RouteMarkers.

Once you have selected your SAVE folder, you must click the Proceed button and your screen should look like the following:-

Select the folder where your markers are, and select those you wish to convert to .csv files then click Process and they will all be converted and placed in your Save folder which will normally be your Source\YourName\YourRoute\RouteMarkers folder.

DCSV file Precision For some reason, known only to Kuju, when you run the Asset Editor to convert your .csv marker files to the RW .dcsv format, the converted files are only accurate to 4 decimal places, even if your .csv files are accurate to 10. RW_Tools can correct this anomaly by reading the original .csv files and placing the correct figures into the .dcsv files. Just go to the Tools\DCSV Precision menu and you will be asked to select your .dcsv files (in your Assets folder, e.g. Assets\Mike\AddOns\RouteMarkers folder. Select all and click Process and they will all be fixed. Note: This anomaly may have been fixed in TS2014, in which case this option is no longer required.

Simplifying this Marker Business This process of converting .kml/.mkr etc files to the .csv format, placing them in your Source folders then running the Asset Editor, setting up a Marker File blueprint then exporting everything to your Asset folders so that you can use them in your route is far too convoluted , I have therefore written a routine which will take your Marker Files, convert them and place them in your Assets RouteMarkers folder with a couple of key clicks. Go to the Route Building Tools\Marker Files\Convert Markers Direct to DCSV menu and you will be told to select the place to SAVE your files, this will be the Assets\YourName\YourRoute\RouteMarkers folder, you select the path to this file on the following form:-

Select as shown and click the Proceed button. You will now be asked to select the Folder where your Marker files are held. You may select any number of Marker files and they may be of mixed types, e.g. .kml files from Google Earth, or .mkr files from MSTS. These files may hold named or series markers. If they are Series Markers which draw a line tracing your route in the World editor, then you may select the colour you wish for each marker file, however if you wish to use say Black for the track, Yellow for roads and Red for major buildings, then you will need to select each type separately. Click the Convert Fully button and the files will be converted from their original .kml/.mkr etc format directly into .DCSV files and will bear the same name as the original file apart from the suffix. A corresponding .bin file will also be written. Once you have converted the files, they will be available in your World Editor (remember to turn on Markers in the World Editor by selecting the appropriate button in the bottom left-hand fly out screen.

Selecting the colour of the Series Marker lines is done by moving the respective sliders, red, green and blue until you get the shade you wish. (Do this before you click the Convert Fully button or you will end up with Black...).

And now for something completely different - RWDecal After all this discussion on marker files, I have to confess that the only markers I use now are the named ones to show the position of stations etc. I have given up using markers to lay tracks and now use the program RWDecal to grab decals from Google Earth and lay them on the terrain as a photograph of the actual track/buildings/fields/roads and even individual trees. Once you have laid your scenery, you can then delete the decals and be sure that everything is in its proper place. RWDecal can be obtained from its author, Jim Nobbs at http://www.rwdecal.co.uk where you can find full details of this (donationware) program and also YouTube tutorial videos.

Package Assets: This option is included as an alternative to the official Package Manager. It allows you to save your Assets in a .zip file, thus allowing the downloader to unzip the files to a temporary location and ascertain that he really wishes to install your package. Running the Tools\Package Assets menu brings up the following screen (which you may resize).

To build a package, move through the folder tree on the left of the screen to the Folder you wish to add to your package (you can only add folders, not individual files). In this case, I have selected FreightWagons\8PlankBirchCoppice, clicking on the Add to Package will show you the selected folder in the bottom window. You may now add another folder. Folders may be from any of the Assets Developers, including the Kuju folders, and any mixture you like. Once you have selected all you wish to package, click on the Process button. A CLI window will open and after a few moments you will be advised that your files have all been copied to a sub-folder in the RW_Tools_TMB folder with the name of the first package selected, in the above it will be named 8PSuncole. A setup program named AssetSetup.exe will also be copied into this folder. It is then just a matter of including a ReadMe.txt file in the 8PSuncole folder, zipping up the whole folder and uploading it.. The user then just unzips the package to any Temp folder he likes, checks the contents, runs the AssetSetup.exe and it will be installed correctly in his TS2014 folder (the user does get the opportunity to change his RW path if he has more than one RW installation on his PC). For advanced users, if you wish to run a batch file to run after installation, a Batch file named InstallMe.bat placed in the folder RW_Tools\TempFiles\RailWorks\Assets before zipping will be activated on installation.

Package a Route Although TS2014 include a Route Packaging utility, several users have been unable to either get it to work, or to understand how it is supposed to work. The Package Route entry on the Tools menu should help you get started. Firstly, select the route you wish to package on the screen as under:-

If you wish to include the route’s Assets with this package, you should first have run the ‘Check Route’ option and saved a list of Shapes/Textures/Audio files used by your route from within this option. The Save option will automatically name these as ‘RouteName’_Assets.csv, ‘RouteName_GeoShapes.csv’, ‘RouteName’_Textures.csv and ‘RouteName’_Sounds.csv and save them in the RW_Tools\Reports folder. All Default assets used are marked in these files, they will not be saved with your route. Only 3rd party Assets will be included in the package and it is up to the route author to get permission to distribute such items. Then click the 'Package Selected Route' button. This will :Make a folder in the RW_Tools folder named the same as your route, e.g. 'Italian Alps Route 1.1' Make a set of sub-folders, 'RailWorks\Content\Routes\' Copy your Route into this folder Place the files 'RouteSetup.exe' and 'Route_Setup.xxx' in the 'Italian Alps Route 1.1' folder

At this point you will be asked if you wish to include the Assets for the route This operation takes a little while and at the end you are asked if you wish to zip the route automatically at which time the whole package is assembled for you. All you then need to do is to add a read-me to the zip file, and if necessary include a list of rolling stock needed for any included scenarios.

Package a Re-skinned model: Although the Package Assets method above allows you to package your Re-skinned locomotive or wagon, if you have reskinned one of the Default models your package may include a lot of files which already exist in the Default model folder. This new option actually checks your reskinned model folder for any files which are EXACTLY the same in the default models folders and makes a package which only contains files which are not in the default folder along with a batch file which will copy the necessary files from the end-user's own stock. This option is similar to the InstallMe.bat files which Route_Riter provided in MSTS and once more depends upon the end user having the Default rolling stock installed on his RW setup. The following is the screen which appears when you select the Package Reskins option:-

Select your reskinned loco folder in the left hand list and the Original models folder you reskinned it from in the right-hand list and click Process. In the example show, you would then end up with a folder in your RW_Tools_TMB\PON294US - You then just have to zip up this folder, include a readme telling the user to unzip it anywhere and to click on the AssetSetup.exe file in the package and it will be installed for him. See tutorials on my web site for reskinning scenery items:http://www.rstools.info/tutorials/Reskinning_Scenery_Objects_in_RailWorks.pdf And http://www.rstools.info/tutorials/Tutorial_Reskin.pdf

Packageing Scenario(s) Packaging scenarios is much the same as packaging routes (above). Click on the Package Scenario item in the Tools menu, and you get a list of Routes in the top box. Click on the Route you wish to work upon and a list of Scenarios available for the Route appear in the bottom box. Click on a Scenario to select it and click the 'Add to Package' button, the hourglass cursor may stay active for some time, as some Scenario files are very big and take a long time to process - Progress is also displayed in the Status-Bar at the foot of the window. Once the cursor returns to an arrow, you may select a second then further Scenarios to add to your package. When you have added all your scenarios, click on the Process Package button and the package will be built. You will be advised when this happens and you will be asked if you wish the program to automatically produce a .zip file of the Scenario(s). Click OK, and a window appears showing the base contents of the zip file. Click exit and your file will be placed in your RW_Tools folder ready for distribution.

Convert Package from Rail Simulator to TS 2012 Several routes were packaged using my RS_Tools program for use in Rail Simulator and these are still available for download on the internet. Although you can still install these packages into Rail Simulator and use them, or transfer them from RailSimulator to RailWorks. If you do not still have Rail Simulator installed then this is not possible. This new option on the ‘Copy from RailSim’ menu will convert the package from Rail Simulator format to Railworks format and enable you to install the package directly into RailWorks. To use, just select the above menu option and you will see a screen as under:-

Unzip your package into a spare folder on your PC, and navigate to the folder using the above screen, then down into the folder which holds the RouteSetup.exe file. Click Process and the package will be converted for use on TS2014. In your new package, click on RW_RouteSetup.exe and your route will be installed.

Editing Scenarios Brings up the following screen which automatically displays a list of those Routes installed . Click on a Route to select it, and the scenarios applicable to that route appear in the second box. Click on the scenario you wish to use and in the 3rd box down you will see a list of saved Scenarios for that route, if any. These will only appear if you have saved Named copies of any specific scenario using RS_Kickstart/RW_Tools. Users who only use TS2014 itself can only save one version of a scenario, saved as CurrentSave.xml and it is overwritten each time you press F2 while running it. Alongside each Route and Scenario listed is the Folder-Name for that particular item. These folder names are the GUID of each item, so I have included these to make it much easier for users to discover which folder holds which route or scenario.

Edit Selected Scenario To edit a selected Scenario, click the ‘Edit Selected Scenario’ button and the main Scenario editing screen will appear. Display Selected Scenario Displays full details of the selected scenario. Display Work Order Displays the Work Order for the selected scenario (if there is one).

Reverting to Default Scenarios To revert to the Default Scenarios.bin file for your particular route, select a route and click the button labelled 'Revert to Default Scenarios.bin file for seleced Route' - This will take you back to where you were when you first started using RS_Kickstart on this particular route.Similarly, to revert to Default settings for one of the Scenarios, click on the 'Revert to Default Scenario.bin file for selected Scenario'. Please note that these two options remove all intermediate backups of the Scenarios.bin and Scenario.bin file leaving you with just a single version of each and no more backups. Remove Empty Scenarios from selected Route Empty Scenarios appear to be a bug in RW and seem to occur if you completely delete loose consists in the World Editor, the rolling stock names are removed,along with the Scenario.bin file, However the Scenario folder e.g. Scenarios\6c228943-7203-47ef-832c-d982aff718cb is not deleted. Saving Multiple TS2014 Scenarios To save a scenario while you are running TS2014, you press F2 at the point you wish to save it, and the scenario is saved at that point and is in a file in the Scenario’s folder named CurrentSave.xml. If you then attempt to save again further along the route, pressing F2 will overwrite the first Saved item. Note:- It is quite possible the reason that RW does not allow you to have multiple saves is because the CurrentSave.xml file can be very large, so take notice of this before overusing this feature. RW_Tools now gives you the opportunity to save multiple versions of a Scenario. As an example I started the Long Hop scenario in the York-Newcastle route, and as it started pressed F2. I was running RW_Tools behind a windowed version of RailWorks. Brought RW_Tools to the front and used the ‘Save CurrentSave.xml as’ button to save it as Leaving York Default.xml. I then exited RailWorks and used the Edit Scenario option to change the season to Spring and weather to rain, and the locomotive to a Virgin Class 47, and ran RailWorks again. This time at the same point I saved it as 'Leaving York Virgin Spring.xml' I closed RailWorks, ran RW_Tools again, and upon choosing Long Hop have 2 optional named Scenarios. Click on either of these and click the Overwrite CurrentSave.xml with Selected File and run RailWorks . Select the Route and Long Hop, and in the RailWorks scenario screen click on Continue and you will be running in the Scenario you have chosen.You may save as many versions of a Scenario as you like. Note: ‘Overwrite CurrentSave.xml with Selected File - Use this if you have saved while going through a red-signal etc. This will allow you to revert to a previously saved position.

Editing Selected Scenarios When you click the Edit Selected Scenario button, the Scenario Editor screen now opens. The left half of which is displayed . It is fairly self explanatory and many items display ‘Tool-tips’ if you hover your mouse over them. You may manually edit any of the items displayed in the first column. Start time must be entered in 24hour format (00012400) If you click the ‘Change all consists’ box then altering the Player Consist by 8 hours will similarly alter the running times of all consists in the scenario so that it will play just like the original but at a different time of day.

Changing the Season will give you a drop down list of possible entries To change the weather you must click the ‘Set Weather’ button and select the Weather item you wish to use. Most of these are in the Kuju\RailSimulatorCore\Weather folder. Note that weather files are listed as .bin files, e.g. Snow.bin but when transferred into the Scenario editor this is changed to Snow.xml Also on this half of the page are the ‘Save’, ‘Run’ and ‘Close without saving’ buttons, explained later.

Clone Scenario with a New Name This option allows you to make a complete copy of the selected scenario (with any changes you make to it on this page). To use this, you MUST change the Display Name, e.g. You could make a change to ‘Up for the Cup Winter’ and change the weather to Winter. This option makes a completely new Scenario which appears in the TS2014 list of scenarios when you select the route. It is saved in a new folder with a new and valid GUID folder name. When you make a scenario clone, as soon as you have given it a new name, save it, exit RW Tools and restart to edit the cloned scenario further. Note: The scenario marker for the cloned route is in exactly the same position in the World Editor as the original one was, so you may need to drag them apart if you are wishing to make changes there. Scenario Types Each scenario can be one of the following types:1. Standard Scenario 2. Career Scenario 3. Freeroam Scenario 4. Tutorial Scenario The current type of scenario will have its ‘radio button’ set to on. You can change Career Scenario to Standard or Freeroam scenario. Standard may be changed to Freeroam You can’t make other scenarios Career scenarios or Tutorial scenarios. You can’t make Freeroam scenarios anything else. Altering Consists The buttons under the Consist list allow you to:1. Delete the selected consist 2. Duplicate the selected consist (to do this, select one of the available markers first and the duplicated consist will be placed there - Make sure the area you are placing the duplicate is empty or you will end up with 2 consists in the same place. 3. Rename Consist - allows you to rename the selected consist.

The right hand half of the Scenario Editor is shown above. It is laid out as follows:· The Current Driven Consist used in the Scenario · A list of the rolling stock used in any consist selected in the Consists list box The middle column shows a list of Available Rolling Stock. The available rolling stock type is selected by clicking on the respective entries, e.g. Diesel, Electric etc. Then by selecting the appropriate RailVehicles folder in the Assets as shown. E.g. You might select from Kuju\RailSimulator\RailVehicles or from MikeSimpson\MyModels\RailVehicles etc. Once you have set this up, click the ‘Find Available Rolling Stock’ button to fill the box.

Selecting the DMU and EMU buttons will display those items like the HST set where the passenger carriages are stored in the same folder as the locomotives. Note: If you are using a non-English version of Windows, then the RailVehicles folder may be named something else, e.g. ‘Rollmaterial’ in GermanRailroads downloads. Or if you select a folder other than RailVehicles, then, RW_Tools will still work, but may be much slower. Other changes you can now make to your scenario are:Change a Rolling-Stock item in a Consist · Select the Consist in the Consists List, this brings up the stock being used in the Selected Consists list · Decide which item you wish to change, e.g. You may wish change a SD40 for ES44 Locomotive. So click on the Diesel button and select Kuju\RailSimulatorUS\RailVehicles in the folder box and click on ‘Find Available Rolling Stock’. · Select the Loco you wish to substitute from this list, e.g. BNSF ES44DC and click on the SD40 in the Selected Consist list. The new loco/wagon will bear a number chosen at random from the appropriate .dcsv file. · Click the ‘Swap Single Item(s)’ button. Change all Identical Items As above, but Click the ‘Swap All Identical Stock’ button. Change all items in ALL consists It is also possible to swap the same items in Every consist in the selected scenario (this takes a little while for a large scenario by using the ‘Swap in EVERY consist’ button. Change Driven Consist From the Consists list, select the Consist you wish to drive when the Scenario starts, The contents of the consist will appear in the Selected Consist box. Click on the main locomotive in the Selected Consist listing. Note: The box 'Driven Loco Index' shows the number of the LOCO in the list which is the driven one, where numbering starts at zero and continues down from the top of the box, so on a train with 4 locos, they would be numbered 0, 1, 2 and 3 When TS2014 starts, upon entering this Scenario you will now be driving this Consist (as long as a driver was given to it in the Scenario editor). Adding an item to a consist If you wish to add an item to a consist, you can do this by duplicating an existing item in the consist, then using the ‘Swap Single Item’ button to change it for the item you wish to import. Delete Item Select an item in the list and click Delete Item and it will be removed from the consist. Note: Do not use Delete Item to delete the only item in a consist, e.g. A Light Locomotive. Instead use the new Delete Consist button as this cleans the now empty consist out of the file.

Duplicate Item Click on any item in the consist and click the ‘Duplicate Item’ button and a second identical item will appear in the consist. (When you duplicate an item, the program will attempt to provide you with an appropriate rolling-stock number, by adding 3 to the number of the cloned loco this may not be a correct number for the type of stock, but at least is better than having 3 Locos all with the same number. Names are not changed). Load/Unload Selected Wagons When you click on any item in the Current Consist list, a small window will appear giving you:· File Path of the rolling-stock item · Whether or not the item is loadable · If loadable, whether or not it is pre-loaded (starts in the game in a loaded condition) · Whether the item is Forward or Reverse Flipped. (Note: This is relative to the direction the consist is moving, so a consist heading North might have all items shown as Reverse flipped). - Start time - Destination - Loco/Wagon number Clicking the ‘Load Selected Wagon(s) or Unload Selected Wagon(s) buttons will load or unload them as necessary provided that the wagon in question is loadable (this is set by the author of the model) so that when you run TS2014 the wagons will be loaded for you. Saving changes Once all your changes have been made, click the ‘Save Changes” button and the Scenarios.bin and Scenario.bin files referring to this scenario will be altered to reflect the above changes. If you are making multiple changes to a scenario, make them all at once. Once you click Save Changes, you can not make any further changes without leaving the program and starting over again. Buttons are provided to allow you to start TS2014 from within RS_Kickstart once you have made your changes. Using these buttons will shut down RS_Kickstart. (Buttons allow you to run any version of Rail Works, including the TS2014 Editor with Logging activated). Note: When these files are altered the first time, Scenarios.bin is renamed Scenarios.bak and Scenario.bin is renamed Scenario.bak - Future edits will produce files named Scenarios.bin1, .bin2 etc. Thus if you ever need to revert to your Original Scenarios - Renaming Scenarios.bak to Scenarios.bin and Scenario.bak to Scenario.bin will bring you back to your original settings.

Swap in EVERY consist A new option which allows you to swap a missing or old model for a new one wherever it occurs in a scenario. Operates in the same manner as all 'Change a Rolling-stock item in a consist' above, except that now it changes every instance of the item in a scenario. IMPORTANT NOTE: You can only swap like for like, I.e. You can only swap a diesel loco for another diesel, not for a Steam loco. Furthermore, some swaps may not work due to the content of each locos .bin files not being compatible. Also swapping wagons in scenarios where there are options to pick up wagons number 12345 etc will not work as the new wagon will have incorrect numbers.

Change Origin or Destination of a Consist The right-hand column of the Scenario Editor screen displays a list of markers in your route. You can select one of these and set it as the Origin or Destination of your selected Consist. Please note you should be careful with this as it will break many scenarios, however it can be used to move some consists in a Free Roam scenario and might be of use to some users.

Duplicate Consist This option allows you to duplicate a consist and place it at the marker selected from the Available Marker list. This is useful for filling yards as you can duplicate a consist multiple times and place each copy at a different marker. Change Properties of selected Rolling-Stock When you click on any rolling-stock item, a box as under appears.

You may change the Start Time, Wagon/Loco Number and Service Class in this box then click the appropriate button such as ‘Change Start Time’ to confirm the change. Flip Selected - This changes the direction of the selected item within the consist. Pinned items - There are now buttons under the list of Available Stock to Pin Stock, or Unpin Stock. Normally when you exit the Scenario Editor or when you click the Find Available Stock the list of Available Stock is cleared. However if you click the Pin Stock, the list turns Red indicating it is pinned and you can click the Find Available Stock button to add extra items (e.g. From another provider) to the list. By holding this list, you can then go through and edit several consists in the same session. Because exiting the Scenario Editor does not clear the list, you can substitute stock in one scenario, save it, then edit a second or subsequent scenario and your list of preferred stock will still be available. Thumbnails of Available Stock - When you highlight any item in the ‘Available Stock’ list, if a thumbnail is available in the RW_Tools\Thumbnails folder, then a picture of the item will be displayed in the bottom right of this screen, thus allowing you to see which loco/wagon you are substituting in the consist.

Ed iting Saved Consists If you have saved consists from within RailWorks, these are saved in the folder RailWorks\Content in a file named ConsistTemplates.bin unlike MSTS where each consist is saved in a separate .con file. Many users apparently don’t know that you can save consists in RailWorks and place them wherever you wish from within the Scenario Editor. This is accomplished by building a consist as under, here I have just used a default Black 5 with some mineral wagons.

Once you have built the consist, you can select ALL the items in the consist at once by clicking the CONSIST icon in the top left hand window shown by the arrow in the picture above. This places a grey cube above every item in the consist. Double click on any of the cubes above your new consist and a right-hand pop-out appears into which you can enter a name for the consist. Once you press enter to save the consist name, it will appear in the list of available consists in the centre left-hand pop-out if you click the Consists icon. These saved consists may then be used in your scenarios just like selecting a locomotive or wagon. If you select the Consist Select button in the bottom box, then clicking on any item in the consist will select the whole consist and you can use the orange arrows to change its direction just like flipping a wagon. However, this can be quite a cumbersome business, especially if you are building a long freight consist for use on U.S. lines, involving constant clicking to position rolling stock and getting them to couple up correctly. So I have added a new option to RW_Tools which enables users to build and save consists while not running RailWorks. I believe this will make this operation easier for some users. It also allows you to edit existing consists by adding/deleting stock from consists you have already saved.

In dexing your Rolling-S tock in RW_Tools Before you can edit the ConsistTemplates.bin file, you must have indexed all your Rolling-Stock. This ability was added to RW_Tools recently and to set it up, proceed as follows:Go to the Edit Assets screen and navigate to the main Assets folder in the folder window, click the 'Rolling Stock Only' box and click 'Add to List' this will take quite a long time, but will add all your rolling stock to the grid. Then click the Save Index button and an index file named Index.csv will be added to your RW_Tools\Reports folder. This can be reloaded back into the grid with the 'Load Index' button at any time. This new Index.csv file is used by both the options Edit Scenarios, and Edit Saved Consists on the Scenarios menu.

Us ing the Consist Ed itor The following screen is accessed from the Scenarios/Edit Saved Consists menu.

The top section of the screen is a list of the items in your saved consists. The bottom section consists of a list of all your rolling-stock as contained in your Index.csv file. It is sorted on the Category column, i.e. whether Diesel, Freight etc. You can change this by clicking on any column header to sort on that column. If you have no Index.csv file, you will be advised to compile one. If you have no existing saved consists, you will be asked if you wish to add a saved consist and you will be prompted to add the name of your new consist. Clicking on any item in the bottom box will display a picture of the item if a thumbnail exists.

All changes to the Saved Consists are made by selecting a rolling-stock in the bottom screen by clicking on it then selecting a row in the top screen and right-clicking to bring up the pop-up menu as under:-

1. Add New Consist If you select this option, you will be asked for a name for your new consist. Type in something useful like Class47_30Mineral - Don’t make it too long as the display box in RailWorks is not very wide. You can then build your consist by clicking on rolling stock in the lower window. You can search for items by name, e.g. enter Mallard in the ‘Search for Name’ box and you will be taken to the first instance of Mallard found, click the version of Mallard you require and it will appear at the bottom of the top box. Clicking on the Next button a few times will take you to the various Mallard tenders. After which you will probably want to find suitable passenger coaches so entering DT MK1 in the box and pressing enter will bring up the Digital Traction MK1 coaches, click on these in the order required and your consist is finished.

2. Delete This option will delete the selected rolling stock item from the consist it is in.

3.Flip This option is a toggle and will change the orientation of the selected rolling stock - 0 indicates normal direction and 1 indicates the item is running backwards. Usually this option is used for locomotives, or for some multi-item freight models.

4. Insert after selected Inserts the selected rolling-stock item from the lower window into the line following the selected line in the top window. The remaining stock is moved down by one line.

5. Insert multiple times As above, however with this option you are asked how many instances of the selected item you wish to insert. this can be as many as you like to build a consist. For most railways this would be less than 100, but there are railways who run larger trains.

6. Rename Consist Select ALL the lines for the Consist in question and click Rename Consist and you will be asked for a new name. Once you have updated all of your consists, click the ‘Rebuild ConsistTemplate.bin file’ button and your file will be saved (a backup with .bak suffix is made) . It is now ready for use.

Note: ALL rolling-stock in a saved consist MUST have the Provider/Product ‘green ticked’ in the Provider box for the Scenario in question, or the saved consist will NOT appear in the list of saved consists.

Edit Assets

This is a very powerful tool, which allows you to scan your whole system for specific types of assets, and make new ones (variants) from the existing ones in some cases. This is particularly useful for (but not limited to) rolling stock. Add to List When you first open this screen, the list at the bottom is empty. To list particular assets within Rail Simulator, navigate to the top level folder you wish to view, this may be RailVehicles, or further down the tree at say ‘Steam’, just remember the higher up the tree you begin, the longer it takes. You can also enter items in the ‘Filter’ boxes on the top row, the first defaults to ‘*.bin’ as you will normally only wish to work on .bin files, however you may enter something like *_MT.bin to show only stock with the _MT suffix. The second filter box allows you to enter a category like ‘Tender’ and will thus limit the display to Tenders. Once you have completed these, clicking Add to List will work through the tree and just list those items required.

Examples Let's work through a few examples on this one. The first example will show how to remove the unwanted driver from the rear of a DMU set. The second will make a "dead" diesel locomotive: no exhaust, no driver, and no noise. The third will put the right headlamps onto a UK steam locomotive. Example 1 — Remove Unwanted Driver The more precisely we know the target vehicle, the faster this process will be. We need to drill down the folder heirarchy (top left window) until we reach the folder in which we know our vehicle lies. Let's say we want to work on the Class166 FGW Neon DMOCL. The top left box starts on Assets. Scroll down until you see Kuju, and click on it. Now click on RailSimulator, RailVehicles, Diesel and then Class166. Now you can see all the different liveries you have for Class 165/166. Select 165_FGW_Neon and DMOCL. Now click on Add to List (top centre) Note: Typing ‘Diesel’ in the Category box on the top row will only list the Locomotives and make the list easier to handle The bottom half of this window shows all the assets that we have selected and can now work on. In this case there may only be one item listed: FGW (Neon) Class 165 DMOCL. If there are more, these are probably variants that have previously been created. Select the DMOCL with no variant code (_DO, _PO, _MT, etc) and click on Display Child entries for selected item (top centre) above. You should see a list of 7 children: Cab Sound, Driver, Engine Sound, Horn, and Passengers1, 2, and 3. We want to remove the driver, so click on and highlight the Driver child entry. To select more than one child (we can safely delete the horn and cab sound from this vehicle), hold the Ctrl key down whilst clicking on the subsequent children.

Now click on Remove Selected Child Entries, below the children box.

A new dialog now opens:-

When you now indicate which variant this item now represents (by clicking on one of the radio buttons if not Empty), the appropriate variant code is added to the filename (and internal filename). In this case, select Passengers Only (the variant suffix for this is _PO) and click OK. Read the section Edit Scenarios ... Edit Selected Scenario for how to change an existing rear unit to one with Passengers Only. Example 2 - Make a "Dead" Diesel Locomotive This time, we are going to make a dead Freightliner Class 66. Dead means no sign of life: no driver, exhaust, or other animation. If you don't have the Class 66, try this on a Class 47 of your choice! At top left, scroll down under Assets, and select RSDL, RailSimulator,RailVehicles, Diesel, and Class66. Select Default, Engine, and click on Add to List. The Item we want has the Name Class 66 Green. Select this and now click on Edit Rolling Stock on the menu bar at top left. The second item on the drop-down menu is Make Selected Stock Dead. As before, it doesn't change the original vehicle, but makes a copy with the selected changes applied to the copy. Note that if we clicked on Add to List when we reached Class66, then we would see all liveries and other .bin files. You can select any number of files at one time, to apply the chosen variation to.

Hint - Using the Filters If you want to see all steam locomotives (for example) you can use the Category filter (top centre) - enter "steam" and click on Add to List from the top of the folder tree: Assets. Now this is going to take a long time (depending on your PC) to build, but when it completes, you will have a list of all steam locomotives on your system, and nothing else. You could even find one or more you didn't know you had. The categories available for selection are those listed in the right-hand column of the bottom window, which in turn are those categories available from the TS2014 Asset/Blueprint editor. Hint - Deleting Multiple Files The first filter box normally defaults to ‘*.bin’ so that it only lists binary files, however you can edit this to show any suffix. E.g. Change it to ‘*.bak*’ (without the quotes), select the Asset folder in the folder box and click Add to List and you will get a list of all backup files in the Asset folder and all its sub-folders. Select all the files (Click on the top one to select it, then scroll to the bottom and Shift-Click to highlight them all) and from the menu select ‘Delete all Selected Files’ to delete all backups in the Assets. You can also use this method to delete all .cost and .tgt files which are not needed and just take up space on your hard-drive. Hint - Saving the list for export to a SpreadSheet program You can save the Asset List as a Comma Delimited .csv file which can then be imported into a spreadsheet program such as Excel. This allows you to compile a complete list of all your Assets and work on it as you wish. Example 3 - Adding Headlights to UK Steam Locos Now we are going to put a Black 5 onto a Parcels train. Select the loco(s) you want to work on and from the Edit Rolling Stock menu item (at top) select Add headlamps to Locomotive. You will see 2 selection lists pick one from List A and one from List B and click OK. Below is a handy table which shows the variant suffix and lamp codes for each headcode, where the lamp, positions are: 1- top centre, 2- left, 3- centre and 4right buffer beam as seen from in front. XP-Pass Stop-Pass XP-Meat XP-Freight Thru-Frgt Light Parcels Thru-Min Stop-Frgt

24 1 12 14 13 3 23 2 4

Express Passenger Stopping Passenger Express Perishables or Empty Coaching Stock Express Freight or Ballast train Through Freight or Ballast Light Engine(s) Parcels, Newspapers, Fish, Meat, Milk or Perishables Through Mineral or Empty Wagon train Stopping Freight train

It might prove useful to print one or more of these lists, particularly after making a number of variants, to save time when planning to build a new scenario, for example, or just to see what other scenario builders have added to your system. (read on)

Making a Scenario with Variants Before we get into this, there is just one thing we cannot stress too much: If you modify someone else's scenario and wish to publish, you MUST get the original author's permission. Actually this applies to any object. Even if you reskin and your download does not include any of the original material, you should still get permission to have your reskin applied to someone's else's object. OK, that's got that off. It doesn't matter whether you are building a scenario from scratch (first do so in this case) or modifying your own or someone else's scenario; the suggested procedure is the same: 1. Select Edit Scenarios, select route, select scenario and Edit Selected Scenario. Change the Display Name of the scenario (first field top left) and Save as a Clone: this will leave the original scenario intact. Now exit RW Tools, come in again and open the clone. 2 - Go through the scenario and select each of the consists in turn, noting (use the separate Item Properties dialog) the path and filename of each item you want a variant of. If you want to know which end of the train (DMU set for example) the driver should be sat. check the box that shows Driven Loco Index. 0 means the first (driveable) vehicle in the consist list starting from the top. For any other index value, you must count the driveable vehicles until you reach the index number. So index 1 with 2 diesel locos at the bottom of the list means the last loco in the consist (ie train is going the other way). Index 3 on a 6-car Class 166 DMU set means the last item too, cos the 3rd and 4th cars are DMOCL or DMOS units (the D means driveable). 3 - Exit RW Tools and come back in, only now select Edit Assets. For each item you want a variant of, use the procedures outlined under Edit Assets, to create all the desired variants. 4 - Exit RW Tools, come back in and edit the cloned scenario again. Now as you go through each consist, you can use Swap Selected Item(s) or Swap All Identical Stock to replace the original asset with the correct variant. Save when done. 5 - If you wish to publish the modified scenario, select Tools, Package Scenarios, and follow the instructions Before you upload your masterpiece, please open the file scenario.qqq (drag it onto Wordpad or Notepad) and check it very carefully. In particular you should look for variants listed for which the corresponding Base version is not included in the list. Whilst this can simply mean you are only using a variant, it is more usually due to the wrong base item having been chosen as the source for a variant. The 3 reskins of the Class 47 Railfreight have similar and confusing fielnames. In this case, rework and repackage the scenario until you are satisfied it requires no more stock than it would without any variants. Installing a Scenario with Variants If the uploader has done his job well, and you have a full house of add-ons, this should pose no problems. In practice you are most likely going to get the following messages when you run the copy of AssetSetup.exe included in the package: You do not have Item xxx_VV but you do have item xxx.bin. Do you want it created? - or words to this effect. vvv being the fileid of an existing asset, and _VV being the suffix identifying and distinguishing the asset variant. Just say Yes. At the end of this process, you may get a display showing assets (required by the scenario) that were not found on your PC. You can do one of several things:

A - You can forget the whole thing and take up golf. B - You can acquire the needed assets, but this will take time (just finding the blessed things) and may cost money. C - You can substitute assets you have for the ones it says you don't have. To do this, you can use RW Tools (just like a Pro) to Edit the Scenario. Select each consist in turn. As you select a consist which has an asset missing from your collection, a dialog will show you the details of this. Simply select the asset(s) indicated and use Swap Selected Item to change it to something (suitable) that you do have. At the end of this process, you should have a scenario that runs.

Add Conductor to a Diesel’s cab A new option on the Edit Assets/Edit Rolling Stock menu. This option allows you to duplicate the driver in a Diesel/Electric loco’s cab so that the second crewman appears in the spare seat.

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Adding Passengers to Empty Coaches There have been several sets of passenger coaches released, both freeware and commercial without passengers. Similarly, there are many sets of passenger coaches available which are only available with passengers. This means you can end up with yards full of loose consists with passengers sitting in them at the same time as they are being passed by express trains of empties. RW_Tools allows you to produce Empty versions of populated coaches, and to provide populated versions of those which are supplied empty. Adding Passengers 1. Go to the Edit Assets menu 2. Select your folder where the coaches are stored 3. Type Passenger in the 2nd filter box (under the 'Category' title in the top row) 4. Click Add to List - this should bring up a list of carriages 5. Select the ones you wish to add passengers to 6. From the Edit Rolling Stock menu, select 'Add Passengers' 7. Each empty coach will have the passengers added, the empty coach will be renamed with a '_MT' suffix, so you will now have a selection of coaches consisting of full and empty ones. Removing Passengers Follow the Example 1 - Remove Driver option on page 35, but remove Passenger 1, 2 and 3 (if 3 sets exist) and save the file with the '_MT' suffix.ab

Clone Selected Asset and Clone Selected Default Asset These two items on the Edit RollingStock Menu of the List Assets screen are virtually identical, and are usually used to Clone rolling-stock items for re-skinning. Unfortunately as some modellers have set up their folder trees differently to the recommended setup in the TS2014 Developer Docs, I have had to use 2 different methods for doing this. 1. Clone Selected Default Asset This is used where you wish to clone a Locomotive and it is in a folder like the Kuju Default rolling stock, e.g. Kuju\RailSimulator\RailVehicles\Steam\5MT_Black5\Default with the remainder of the tree being subfolders of Default, such as Engine, CabView etc. 2. Clone Selected Asset This is used where the item to be cloned has its .bin file in the main folder as in the case of some German Railroads stock where the folder tree is GermanRailroads\Rollmaterial\Elloks\BR143 and the locomotives .bin file is in the BR143 folder - This option can also be used to clone some Scenery and Wagons where everything is in the one folder (plus its sub-folders).

Instructions Select the .bin file of the object you wish to Clone from the Assets List, and select the appropriate menu item as above., you will get the following window.

The form will be partially completed with the name of the original asset, e.g. BR143_ all you need to do is complete the entries as shown and press OK. The loco BR143_Green should then be available for your route and ready for re-skinning (it will be exactly the same as the original BR143 at this point). It will be in the folder as shown on this screen.

Find Zero Length Files Even in the Default installation of RailWorks, there are a number of files installed which just consist of a file name and nothing else. If you look at these in Windows Explorer you will see that the file length is zero bytes. These files are not required and in fact in some instances can cause RailWorks to fail. To use this option, click the ‘Clear List’ to empty the box, navigate to Assets in the top left hand folder tree, and click the ‘Find zero length files’ button. Once the ‘hourglass’ cursor changes back to normal, click ‘Select All’ then ‘Delete Selected’ and all these extra files will be deleted. Make a Stock Index To make a complete list of all your rolling-stock:1. Click the ‘Rolling-stock only’ box 2. Navigate to the Assets folder 3. Click the ‘Add to list’ button This will add ALL your rolling stock .bin files to the grid. 4. Click Save stock index and a file Index.csv will be saved to your RW_Tools\Reports folder. This file may be used on the Scenario Editor page to save time while selecting rolling-stock. If you wish to make a list of all the Assets you have installed in RW_Tools, you can proceed as above, but starting from para 2. Above. This will list all assets including rolling stock. To save this, click the ‘Save List’ button and provide a suitable file name, e.g. Assets.csv. Both the Index.csv and Assets.csv can be loaded into the grid with the Load List button. Customising the grid There are various boxes/buttons on this screen which allow you to hide various columns on the grid, and also boxes where you can search for words in selected columns. a) Filter box now allows multiple items, e.g. *.bin;*.xml will list all .bin and all .xml files b) Filter box now allows pattern matching, e.g. *.bak? will now list .bak1, bak2 etc files c) Not new, but some users did not know that clicking column headings will sort on that column. 1. New option on Edit Assets, 'Add Wheelspin to Steam Locos' which either modifies the
Check Loco for Missing Files Select a Locomotive(s) and click this menu entry and all files called by the locomotive’s .bin and .geopcdx files are checked for and if any are missing a report is produced. Note: This does not, at this time, check for files called by sub-files, e.g. It does no check for missing .dav files called by the Audio files.

Show files used by loco As above, but does not check for missing files, just lists all the files required.

Edit Rolling Stock Physics (Diesel & Electric) & Edit Rolling Stock Physics (Steam) Two new options to allow experienced users to edit the Physics of rolling-stock without having to edit .bin/.xml files (there are separate menu options to cover Diesel & Electric Locos and for Steam Locos which have different parameters). To use these option, go to the Edit Assets menu on the main screen and select the folder where your rolling stock is installed. E.g. GP9, then click the 'Add to List' button. From the list which appears, select the locomotive you wish to edit by clicking on the Path column of the loco to select it. It will turn blue. From the menu, select 'Edit Rolling Stock Physics' and you will see a new screen with two tabs on it, one headed 'Engine Data' and the other tab headed 'Engine Simulation Data' The engine data is that contained in the engine's .bin file, whereas the Engine Simulation Data is contained in the Simulation file (which is usually contained in the Simulation folder but may be elsewhere, the path of the Simulation file is shown under Engine Data in the item 'EngineSimulationContainer'

Numeric items in the Data column may be edited by double clicking on the item, at which point you should see a text-editing cursor. Once an item has been edited, press Enter to confirm the change. Note: On the Engine Data screen, items relating to controls all have the same name, e.g. Minimum Value, Maximum Value etc. To ensure that the program edits the correct line, first click the Control Name Data, e.g. EngineStart and then double click the item you wish to edit. Once you have finished editing, click 'Save Changes' and the appropriate Data or Simulation file will be edited (backups are made). Users who are intrested in editing these Physics files, may also be interested in the data which is contained in the various .dcsv files held in the Simulation folder. If you click the Show Graphs button on this screen, a new screen appears as under which displays the data of 4 of these .dcsv files (all 4 files might not be available for each locomotive, this depends upon the author).

Graphing the DCSV files

The 8 different .dcsv files may be displayed by clicking the appropriate button (4 for Diesel/Electric and a different 4 for Steam locos). The boxes up the side of the screen display the x, y points on the graph, you may change these to alter the performance curve. Clicking 'Redraw' will display the new settings and the fill may then be saved by clicking the 'Save .dcsv file' button. Once again backups are made when saving files. The two boxes at bottom right of the screen show your current mouse readings for the X and Y positions on the graph, and can be used to select the best values to enter to fix the curve. It should be noted that editing the Simulation and .dcsv files will affect all Locomotives which use these particular files, e.g. The default ES44AC does not have its own 'DynamicBrakeEffortVsSpeed.dcsv' file, but uses the one for the SD40-2 so if you do not think these should both be using the same file (I do not know, maybe they both have identical characteristics), then you should copy the SD40-2 file into the ES44AC Simulation folder, and edit the ES44AC.bin file to point to the new copy in the ES44AC\Default\Simulation folder, then edit the new file to suit your requirements. Note: When graphing steam locos, the 'BurnRateVsSteamUsageGraph' has about 50 points, so can not be displayed in the x/y boxes to the right of the graph and can not be redrawn. Changes to the BurnRateVsSteamUsageGraph can only be made using a text editor.

Thumbnails In RW_Tools I have added the option to use Thumbnail pictures of assets which can then be viewed in several options - The Asset Editor screen, the Edit saved Consists menu and the Scenario Editor. The thumbnail library is a separate download to RW_Tools due to its size and I hope to add thumbnails to it when time permits if there is any interest in this project. The vast bulk of the thumbnails have been produced from Mike Hammett’s RailWorks Pictorial Asset Library with his kind permission. The library is obtainable from uktrainsim.com and is well worth having as it includes full screen pictures of most assets including seasonal textures and further details of each item. To these I have added thumbnails of most of the default rolling stock and some 3rd party stock. If anyone wishes to contribute extra thumbnails they will be gratefully received. Thumbnails must be 325*203 pixels in size and in .jpg format. Filenames must be the internal name of the item, i.e. The name which appears in the World Editor list of assets. Note: Some rolling-stock authors have used internal object names which include characters which are illegal in file names, e.g. Colon and double-quotes. If you wish to make thumbnails of such items, then you should use semi-colon instead of colon and single-quote instead of double-quotes and the program will find the correct thumbnail for you. Clicking the Name column in the Assets Editor as under will display the thumbnail of the item if a thumbnail exists (otherwise as in the past, a copy of the first .tgpcdx file for the item is displayed).

Substitute Missing Items Once you have run the Check Selected Route option, you will get a report screen which now includes a 'Substitute Missing Items' button. To do this, click the 'Remove duplicates' button so that you just get a list of unique missing items. Highlight those you wish to substitute (remembering that if you substitute an Asset, it must be with something similar, swapping a shed with a factory will cause some problems, especially if near the track.) The Substitute for a missing Asset form will be displayed with the top portion filled in for the first item selected. Click the '....' Button and select the item you wish to substitute for it as under.

Click OK and the item will be substituted. Once the data is saved, the above form will appear again for the 2nd selected item and so on until all the items have been substituted. Close everything and check your route again, this time it should show no missing Assets.

Display Details of Selected Scenario This new button appears on the Edit Scenario screen, click it and details of the selected scenario will appear. Note: Because some of these details are obtained from the tracks.bin file for the route, and tracks.bin can be huge on complex routes. I have extracted much of the required information from the Default routes and a few commercial routes and placed it in Index files in the folder RW_Tools\Index. This saves the same data having to be read over and over. If you make changes to one of these routes, or if you wish to find details of a scenario from a route which is not included in the Index folder, then the route will need to be reindexed. To do this, if a file with the route name appears in the Index folder, e.g. Newcastle to York.txt then just delete it and when you run this option a new index file will be written (this can take a long time on large routes). On routes which have never been indexed, the method is identical, just click the Display Details button and you will be advised that the route is to be re-indexed and it will take a while. After that the Details will appear as under. This screen may be printed, or saved in Excel format.

Identify Assets This is a new option on the ‘Route Building Tools’ menu. To use this, it is easiest if you run RailWorks in a window, then when in the World Editor, if you find an object which you wish to identify, double-click on the object and a right-hand pop out will appear with an entry like “scenery~clutter~containers03.xml”. Highlight the section ‘containers03.xml’ and click Ctrl-C to copy this item and paste it into the RW_Tools box as above where it says Asset Name: - Click Scan and all files named ‘containers03.bin’ which is the name of this file in RailWorks will be shown along with their Category. If you are not running RailWorks in windowed mode, you can write the ‘containers03.xml’ in a notepad and type it into the Asset Name window.

Editing Providers and Products When you add new Assets to a route you are editing, in order to make the items visible within the route, you have to click the Blue cube with Orange triangle on it in the editor, and select the Provider/Product in the right-hand fly out. However, if you do not use the item in your route, there is no way to unselect the option in the World Editor. I have now added an option on the Route Building Tools menu named Edit Providers. On starting this option, two lists of all your routes and all your Providers are compiled. If you click a route, then those Providers/Products used by the route are indicated in the Providers list by having an ‘X’ in the Used box. As under. You can unselect or select items by clicking in this column. Once you finish, clicking the Update Providers button will save the route.

Recently added miscellaneous items Not new, but some users did not know that clicking column headings on the Assets grid will sort on that column. 1. New option on Edit Assets, 'Add Wheelspin to Steam Locos' which either modifies the
New option on the Check Routes screen 'Show Location of all Assets' - This is much the same as running 'Check Selected Route' and selecting 'Show all Assets', however this one lists all the assets used PLUS the tile(s) they are located on and should prove helpful to route authors. I have also changed the Graphics Tools options so that the TempDDS folder is no longer automatically emptied/deleted when you close RW_Tools - this will help reskinners who need to refer back to items saved there. (Users must now empty TempDDS from time to time, so an option to do this has been added to the Graphics Tools menu). I have changed RW_Tools so that it automatically checks all the RouteProperties.xml files when you click on the ‘Check Route & Scenario’ menu item – it does this by copying the RouteProperties.xml file to a temporary folder and using Serz.exe to attempt to change it to a .bin file – if this fails then the RouteProperties.xml is reported as having errors. In the case of ScenarioProperties.xml you are able to select all the ScenarioProperties.xml files for a route and there is a new ‘Check ScenarioProperties’ button which works as above.

New option on Scenarios\Edit Scenarios of 'Display Work Order' - this works for the selected scenario where it produces a work order for scenarios, particularly those where wagons are required to to be picked up and dropped off. Although a similar Work Order is available in the game by pressing F1 this only displays the first 7 wagons in any rake. This version allows you to make a printout so that you can have a better idea what you need to do.

Change to the UKLights.txt file The UKLights.txt file has been changed to add 3 extra parameters as under - Users who have modified their own UKLights.txt file will need to update it in accordance with the following:In the UKLights.txt file, the parameters are:1. Wagon or Loco name (appears in the list of stock available) 2. Path of the light in RailWorks\Assets – you could place your models in the same Kuju\RailSimulator\Scenery\Animated folder to simplify things. 3. x position of light +/- distance in metres from centreline of model 4. y position of light – height above track 5. z position of light +/- distance in metres from COG of model 6. y2 position of top light – height of top light above track 7. z2 position of top light – distance in metres from COG of model 8. z3 position of centre front light on locos with curved fronts – can be further forward than side lights. 9 thru 11 refer wagons only, for Locos use ,0,0,0 for possible future use. 9. -1.0000 or 1.0000 - if 1.0000 the lamp is rotated 180deg. 10. 1 or 2 this is number of lights on wagon 11. Suffix added to wagon name e.g. _rear or _ZS etc

Updated the option to add Armstrong Powerhouse's Mk1 and Mk2 Passenger carriage sounds All possible menu items (assuming you have all the AP packs) are now:Add MK1 Mk2 a/b/c Coach Sounds Add Mk2 d/e/f Coach Sounds Add Mk3 Coach Sounds New Wagon Sounds Old heavy wagons Old Heavy Rattly Container Flats 4 Wheel Wagons

The Armstrong Powerhouse Mk1-Mk2 Sound pack automatically updates Default Mk1 and Mk2 coaches plus RS.com Network SouthEast Class 47 Pack RS.com Class 86 Pack RS.com Flying Scotsman Pack RS.com Hall Pack RS.com Jubilee Pack RS.com Tornado Pack RS.com V2 Pack and has patches to convert the DT Mk1s and Mk2s plus the coaches in the Class 67 pack. However to update other coaches such as re-skins, you must manually patch the .bin files for each coach. The new options allow you to update all such coaches simultaneously. Check Assets/Where is it used - Select any rolling-stock item in the Asset Editor and click the 'Where is it used?' button and you will be presented with a list of Consists and Routes/Scenarios where that item is used. This is useful if you wish to say upgrade all your old Kuju Mk1 coaches for some better ones but can't remember which scenarios they are in. Note: This option is fairly slow as it needs to open every Scenario in every Route to check for the item in question. List stock in Selected Scenario - Updated the 'List Stock in selected scenario' to 'List Items in selected scenario' this now lists all assets as well as rolling stock in the scenario and is useful for checking scenarios which include unique scenery items within the scenario for missing assets.

Changes made from v3.0.14 onwards Edit Assets/Zero EmissiveAsVec - this alters the line(s) in .GeoPcDx files of the selected Asset(s) <EmissiveAsVec to make all values zero. This stops selected assets made for RW2 being too bright in daylight and glowing in the dark. Changes to Scenario Editor screen - Added 2 extra boxes to the Scenario Editor screen which show Author (in Standard and Freeroam scenarios) Start Location (Freeroam only) These enable you to add these items if they do not already exist in the ScenarioProperties.xml and these will then appear in the main TS2014 menues when you select the route. The Scenario Editor also tells you if a selected Scenario is a Career Mode Scenario and can't be edited. Start with Editor Maximised - Has been added to the Options Menu. Restore button on Asset Editor Screen - If you load a list of Assets into the grid then use the 'Look For' option to look to for example all 'Diesel' locos, this will just display the diesels. Clicking 'Restore' will then refill all the data into the grid. Check selected stock for missing files - This checks all selected stock (Locos and wagons) for missing files and produces a list of same. Should highlight any locos likely to give a SBHH error in the Scenario. Find in Multiple Files - New option on the Search and Replace menu. This option enables you to search/replace multiple text lines over multiple files. e.g. It enables a user to substitute items or change parameters in every Scenery file in a route - see the file MultiFind.pdf in this package for an example of changing water decal colors in a route. Improve Default Snow - Improves the default snow textures to look like deeper white snow as was used in my Route_Riter for MSTS. See separate .pdf file in this package for instructions. Correct Mass/Capacity of selected wagons - Users can select as many wagons ALL OF THE SAME TYPE, e.g. 2 bay hoppers, in the Edit Assets section and click the menu item Edit Rolling Stock/Correct Mass/Capacity of Selected. You are then asked to input the new Mass and Capacity figures. Upon clicking OK, the Mass and Capacity items in the wagon's .bin files are all updated. If the CargoDef section is missing from the .bin file, this is added. This option allows you to load wagons which did not originally have freight loads such as closed boxcars etc, and the loco will start/brake in accordance with the loaded/unladen weights. It is up to you to work out what the weights should show. Mass should be the unladen weight of the waggon, Capacity should correctly be the weight of cargo and hopefully TS 2012 adds Mass + Capacity to give the gross weight, but this as usual does not appear to be documented anywhere except in the original Kuju docs which said that Mass is in Imperial Tons and Capacity is in pounds or gallons. This does not make sense as some default models have a Capacity of under one hundred which would be less than a sack of coal. So I think imperial tons is correct for both. Colour code in Scenario Editor - In the Scenario Editor, Consists which are AI trains in FreeRoam Scenarios are now shown in red. In Standard/Career scenarios Consists which are AI trains or Driven trains are shown in red. Scenario Editor screen size - The scenario editor screen size is now saved on exit and will reopen in the same format as it was exited. Don’t Change numbers when swapping stock - Select whether you wish wagon numbers changed or retained when you swap stock. Retaining the original numbers keeps you from breaking scenarios because of missing stock numbers, however wagon numbers will not appear on swapped wagons if they are not from the same batch as the original wagons.

Addendum to RW_Tools Help File for V4 With the release of TS2014 A few changes have had to be made to RW_Tools so far (there may be some hidden changes in TS2014 of which I am unaware which could break some options in RW_Tools - if you find any problems, kindly advise me as soon as possible.) One change which has been made in TS2014 is that the Route Loading Picture no longer appears at the beginning of your route, unless you are running the route in ‘off-line’ mode, i.e. you are not connected to Steam.

Adding Consists to the Quick Drive routes The most obvious change in TS2014 is the ability to use the new Quick Drive feature where you can choose from a number of Locomotives/Rolling-stock items and drive them between various locations on suitable routes. This is similar to the free roam type of driving in MSTS where you could select any consist for the route and drive it between stations. Although RSC have included a lot of consists for you to drive, there is no easy way to add your own consists, especially 3rd party rolling stock to the Quick Drive routes (it is possible to add extra items using the Blueprint Editor but this is so complicated as to be beyond the ability of many users). So I have added an option to RW_Tools v4 which allows you to do this reasonably easily. Introduction to QD 1. QD can’t be added to your own routes, they rely on special markers which are only available to RSC route builders at this time. 2. Routes with QD will have a PreLoad folder in the Assets folder, usually something like Assets\RSC\ShermanHill\PreLoad however there are also PreLoad folders in some of the RSC rolling stock packs as well, e.g. Assets\RSC\TornadoPack01\Preload - To add QD Consists using RW_Tools, you will need to set up your own PreLoad folder AND select it from the RW_Tools Options menu. If you set up your Developer folder and sub-Folders from the Route Building Tools menu, a PreLoad folder will be set up for you automatically. The folder name will be in the format:Assets\Developer name\Product name\PreLoad, e.g. Assets\MikeSimpson\Routes\PreLoad 3. The consist files are named like Black 5 Green.bin and BR Greenx5 Fragment.bin the ones without the word Fragment in the filename are full consists, whereas those with the word Fragment are parts of consists, e.g. in this case 5 Green BR coaches. It is sensible to make up coach sets as Fragments and then make full consists consisting of a loco plus the Fragment, as in this case you don’t have to build the full coach set each time you wish to use it. 4. The consist files include a tag(s) which allow you to show which routes the train can be run on, however at this stage this does not seem to be implemented in TS2014 e.g. The Class 377 is set to run on the LondonBrighton route, however in Quick Drive it is available for every QD route. I expect that this will be implemented eventually, but have allowed this option in any case. 5. Other options which are available are the years when the locos were operational and the type of consist in question. I don’t think these do anything at this time, but they will probably be implemented in TS2014 later. The following instructions should enable you to add any rolling stock to the QD routes:-

Setting up a QD consist 1. You must have set up an Index file of your rolling stock as outlined in the main Help file. 2. You must have set up your own Preload folder as outlined above, and selected it from the Options menu. 3. Go to the Scenarios/Build QD Consists or Fragments menu. The following screen appears:-

The top box starts out empty, the middle box displays Fragments you have already built and the bottom box is the index of all your rolling stock. Any column in the bottom box may be sorted by clicking the column title. There is also a search box for finding rolling stock, e.g. Black5 above. Double clicking on any item in the Index box or the Fragments box will copy the item into the top box where the consist or fragment is built. Single clicking on any item in the Index box will display a picture of the item if you have the thumbnail for it in the RW_Tools\Thumbnails folder. There are menu options in the Add & Edit Consists Menu to Delete, Flip, Insert After and Insert Multiple Copies of selected stock. E.g. the Insert Multiple Copies will allow you to add 20 container wagons etc with just a couple of clicks. 4. Once you have put together your consist in the top box, go to the Build Consist menu where there are options to:Build QD Consist and Build QD Fragment

Selecting the Build QD Consist option brings up the following screen:-

5. Fill in the boxes - The top box need a unique name for your consist. 6. The Locomotive name which appears in the QD screen. Often you will just see a silhouette of the loco type, but sometimes a colour picture appears depending upon whether you are using a name which RSC has already used. 7. This is the display name for the Select Consist screen, e.g. Black 5 + 6 Mk1s 8. Select loco type from this drop down list - if you select Electric, then tick boxes for items such as Needs Pantograph, Needs 3rd rail, etc appear. 9. You can select the route the consist will appear on (must be a QD route, but TS2014 does not appear to use this data at this time, as most consists appear for all routes). You can select multiple routes using Ctrlclick to highlight all the routes you need. 10. For era, you can select for example 1940 - 1964 for a steam loco, I don’t think this does much either? 11. Finally this drop down list gives the Consist types from the Blueprint Editor - it is somewhat incomplete, but as with some other options, does not seem to do anything at this time. As/when RSC improve upon this list I will upgrade RW_Tools. 12. Click OK and you will be told the Consist or Fragment has been added to your PreLoad folder and it should appear in your QD list in TS2014. You do NOT have to add your Provider/Product names to the route for this to work.

Adding Thumbnails to a Route for display in the Main TS2014 menu screen The TS2014 Main Menu displays a list of all your Routes and Scenarios - When you select a Scenario, thumbnail pictures of the driven loco and the route appear at the top of the screen. However this only applies if RSC have provided a thumbnail and metadata file for the route in question. Loco thumbnails also depend upon RSC supplying them. This version of RW_Tools can convert a thumbnail picture you make of your route and add it to the main menu along with the required metadata file. 1. You will need to provide a suitable thumbnail picture from your route, you can do this by taking a screen print of a suitable area in your route, and converting it to a 256*128 pixel picture. You then need to save this picture as a .dds file which can be done by opening it in Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop etc and saving it in the following format DXT1 ARGB with 6 mip maps. Name it after your route, e.g. Borders.dds and save it in the folder RW_Tools\TempDDS. Make sure you have set up a PreLoad folder as on page 1. 2. Go to the Route Building Tools/Check routes and scenarios menu and the normal Check Route screen appears. I have moved the option to ‘Add Route Loading Picture’ from a button to the Miscellaneous menu on this screen, and replaced it with a button ‘Add Route Thumbnail’ - Select a route and click this button. 3. This brings up the following screen:-

Follow the instructions in the top box and click on Process. You will be told that your picture and metadata file have been saved in your PreLoad folder. Run TS2014 and go to the Main menu and select your route, you should then see something like the following:-

Convert your existing Thumbnails for use in TS2014 If you have the RW_Tools\Thumbnails files installed, you will already have thumbnails for a number of locomotives. You can’t use these directly in TS2014 as they need to be converted to .png format and be 256*128 pixels in size. They must also be placed in the LocoInformation folder which should be a subfolder of the folder where your locomotive’s .bin file resides. Normally this will be Engine\LocoInformation I have added an option to RW_Tools Edit Assets form where there is a new button ‘Add LocoInformation’ to use this proceed as follows:1. Go to the Edit Assets screen and select a locomotive which already has a thumbnail in .jpg format (click on the ‘Name’ column and if a thumbnail of the loco appears in the top right corner then all is well. 2. Select the loco and click the ‘Add LocoInformation’ - this will make a LocoInformation folder for you if none exists and then will open the thumbnail in the program ‘Show’ which is included with this version.

Right click on the thumbnail and you get the option to resize the picture in the Image/Resize menu. Resize it to 256*128 and then click on the Save icon 4th from the left, top row. This gives the options Save and Save As - click on ‘Save’ leave the filename as it is and in the bottom box select ‘Portable Network Graphics (png) and .png will be appended to the file name. Click save and the thumbnail will be saved in the Thumbnails folder and then renamed to image.png and transferred to the LocoInformation folder. It should then appear in the TS2014 main menu when you select a scenario with the loco in question.

Fixing the RouteProperties.xml file for 3rd party routes. TS2014 is much less forgiving with 3rd party routes if the Providers/Products entries in the RouteProperties.xml file are incorrect. When a route author builds a route, he selects those Providers and their Products he wishes to add to the route, and when the route is complete TS2014 automatically adds a list of all the Providers/Products he has selected to the RouteProperties.xml file. Unfortunately, this list includes Providers/Products he has NOT actually used in the route. If you then try to open the route in the World Editor, TS2014 will look for all Providers/Products in the list and if any of them are missing, then you get a ‘Something Bad Has Happened’ error and are bounced back to the desktop. Some route builders also select rolling-stock items in this list while building their route, this is incorrect, rolling-stock is listed in the ScenarioProperties.xml file, not the RouteProperties.xml (as they are not part of the route as such). To fix this, I have added an option to RW_Tools which after it checks a route, makes a list of all Providers/Products actually used by the routes, and fixes the RouteProperties.xml to comply with this list. So if you have a route which possibly works OK in TS2014, but crashes when entering the World Editor, this might help you. To use this option:1. Run the Check Route option as usual from the Route Building Tools menu 2. You will be told if any files are missing, you should supply these or select an alternative. 3. Exit this screen and you are asked if you wish to see a list of Shapes used - select Yes 4. When the list of shapes appears, click the option to List Providers/Products used. 5. The button to Fix the RouteProperties.xml file will now appear, click this and it will be fixed for you.

Please advise of any problems, suggestions etc.

Mike 14 Oct 2012

Addendum to RW_Tools Help File for V4 With the release of TS2014 - Very few changes have had to be made to RW_Tools so far (there may be some hidden changes in TS2014 of which I am unaware which could break some options in RW_Tools - if you find any problems, kindly advise me as soon as possible.) One change which has been made in TS2014 is that the Route Loading Picture no longer appears at the beginning of your route, unless you are running the route in ‘off-line’ mode, i.e. you are not connected to Steam.

Adding Consists to the Quick Drive routes The most obvious change in TS2014 is the ability to use the new Quick Drive feature where you can choose from a number of Locomotives/Rolling-stock items and drive them between various locations on suitable routes. This is similar to the free roam type of driving in MSTS where you could select any consist for the route and drive it between stations. Although RSC have included a lot of consists for you to drive, there is no easy way to add your own consists, especially 3rd party rolling stock to the Quick Drive routes (it is possible to add extra items using the Blueprint Editor but this is so complicated as to be beyond the ability of many users). So I have added an option to RW_Tools v4 which allows you to do this reasonably easily. Introduction to QD 1. QD can’t easily be added to your own routes, they rely on special markers which are only available to RSC route builders at this time. However there are some posts on uktrainsim.com which tell you how to get around this. 2. Routes with QD will have a PreLoad folder in the Assets folder, usually something like Assets\RSC\ShermanHill\PreLoad however there are also PreLoad folders in some of the RSC rolling stock packs as well, e.g. Assets\RSC\TornadoPack01\Preload - To add QD Consists using RW_Tools, you will need to set up your own PreLoad folder AND select it from the RW_Tools Options menu. If you set up your Developer folder and sub-Folders from the Route Building Tools menu, a PreLoad folder will be set up for you automatically. The folder name will be in the format:Assets\Developer name\Product name\PreLoad, e.g. Assets\MikeSimpson\Routes\PreLoad 3. The consist files are named like Black 5 Green.bin and BR Greenx5 Fragment.bin the ones without the word Fragment in the filename are full consists, whereas those with the word Fragment are parts of consists, e.g. in this case 5 Green BR coaches. It is sensible to make up coach sets as Fragments and then make full consists consisting of a loco plus the Fragment, as in this case you don’t have to build the full coach set each time you wish to use it. 4. The consist files include a tag(s) which allow you to show which routes the train can be run on, however at this stage this does not seem to be implemented in TS2014 e.g. The Class 377 is set to run on the LondonBrighton route, however in Quick Drive it is available for every QD route. I expect that this will be implemented eventually, but have allowed this option in any case. 5. Other options which are available are the years when the locos were operational and the type of consist in question. I don’t think these do anything at this time, but they will probably be implemented in TS2014 later. The following instructions should enable you to add any rolling stock to the QD routes:-

Setting up a QD consist 1. You must have set up an Index file of your rolling stock as outlined in the main Help file. 2. You must have set up your own Preload folder as outlined above, and selected it from the Options menu. 3. Go to the Scenarios/Build QD Consists or Fragments menu. The following screen appears:-

The top box starts out empty, the middle box displays Fragments you have already built and the bottom box is the index of all your rolling stock. Any column in the bottom box may be sorted by clicking the column title. There is also a search box for finding rolling stock, e.g. Black5 above. Double clicking on any item in the Index box or the Fragments box will copy the item into the top box where the consist or fragment is built. Single clicking on any item in the Index box will display a picture of the item if you have the thumbnail for it in the RW_Tools\Thumbnails folder. There are menu options in the Add & Edit Consists Menu to Delete, Flip, Insert After and Insert Multiple Copies of selected stock. E.g. the Insert Multiple Copies will allow you to add 20 container wagons etc with just a couple of clicks. 4. Once you have put together your consist in the top box, go to the Build Consist menu where there are options to:Build QD Consist and Build QD Fragment

Selecting the Build QD Consist option brings up the following screen:-

5. Fill in the boxes - The top box need a unique name for your consist. 6. The Locomotive name which appears in the QD screen. Often you will just see a silhouette of the loco type, but sometimes a colour picture appears depending upon whether you are using a name which RSC has already used. 7. This is the display name for the Select Consist screen, e.g. Black 5 + 6 Mk1s 8. Select loco type from this drop down list - if you select Electric, then tick boxes for items such as Needs Pantograph, Needs 3rd rail, etc appear. 9. You can select the route the consist will appear on (must be a QD route, but TS2014 does not appear to use this data at this time, as most consists appear for all routes). You can select multiple routes using Ctrlclick to highlight all the routes you need. 10. For era, you can select for example 1940 - 1964 for a steam loco, I don’t think this does much either? 11. Finally this drop down list gives the Consist types from the Blueprint Editor - it is somewhat incomplete, but as with some other options, does not seem to do anything at this time. As/when RSC improve upon this list I will upgrade RW_Tools. 12. Click OK and you will be told the Consist or Fragment has been added to your PreLoad folder and it should appear in your QD list in TS2014. You do NOT have to add your Provider/Product names to the route for this to work.

Adding Thumbnails to a Route for display in the Main TS2014 menu screen The TS2014 Main Menu displays a list of all your Routes and Scenarios - When you select a Scenario, thumbnail pictures of the driven loco and the route appear at the top of the screen. However this only applies if RSC have provided a thumbnail and metadata file for the route in question. Loco thumbnails also depend upon RSC supplying them. This version of RW_Tools can convert a thumbnail picture you make of your route and add it to the main menu along with the required metadata file. 1. You will need to provide a suitable thumbnail picture from your route, you can do this by taking a screen print of a suitable area in your route, and converting it to a 256*128 pixel picture. You then need to save this picture as a .dds file which can be done by opening it in Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop etc and saving it in the following format DXT1 ARGB with 6 mip maps. Name it after your route, e.g. Borders.dds and save it in the folder RW_Tools\TempDDS. Make sure you have set up a PreLoad folder as on page 1. 2. Go to the Route Building Tools/Check routes and scenarios menu and the normal Check Route screen appears. I have moved the option to ‘Add Route Loading Picture’ from a button to the Miscellaneous menu on this screen, and replaced it with a button ‘Add Route Thumbnail’ - Select a route and click this button. 3. This brings up the following screen:-

Follow the instructions in the top box and click on Process. You will be told that your picture and metadata file have been saved in your PreLoad folder. Run TS2014 and go to the Main menu and select your route, you should then see something like the following:-

Convert your existing Thumbnails for use in TS2014 If you have the RW_Tools\Thumbnails files installed, you will already have thumbnails for a number of locomotives. You can’t use these directly in TS2014 as they need to be converted to .png format and be 256*128 pixels in size. They must also be placed in the LocoInformation folder which should be a subfolder of the folder where your locomotive’s .bin file resides. Normally this will be Engine\LocoInformation I have added an option to RW_Tools Edit Assets form where there is a new button ‘Add LocoInformation’ to use this proceed as follows:1. Go to the Edit Assets screen and select a locomotive which already has a thumbnail in .jpg format (click on the ‘Name’ column and if a thumbnail of the loco appears in the top right corner then all is well. 2. Select the loco and click the ‘Add LocoInformation’ - this will make a LocoInformation folder for you if none exists and then will open the thumbnail in the program ‘Show’ which is included with this version.

Right click on the thumbnail and you get the option to resize the picture in the Image/Resize menu. Resize it to 256*128 and then click on the Save icon 4th from the left, top row. This gives the options Save and Save As - click on ‘Save’ leave the filename as it is and in the bottom box select ‘Portable Network Graphics (png) and .png will be appended to the file name. Click save and the thumbnail will be saved in the Thumbnails folder and then renamed to image.png and transferred to the LocoInformation folder. It should then appear in the TS2014 main menu when you select a scenario with the loco in question.

Fixing the RouteProperties.xml file for 3rd party routes. TS2014 is much less forgiving with 3rd party routes if the Providers/Products entries in the RouteProperties.xml file are incorrect. When a route author builds a route, he selects those Providers and their Products he wishes to add to the route, and when the route is complete TS2014 automatically adds a list of all the Providers/Products he has selected to the RouteProperties.xml file. Unfortunately, this list includes Providers/Products he has NOT actually used in the route. If you then try to open the route in the World Editor, TS2014 will look for all Providers/Products in the list and if any of them are missing, then you get a ‘Something Bad Has Happened’ error and are bounced back to the desktop. Some route builders also select rolling-stock items in this list while building their route, this is incorrect, rolling-stock is listed in the ScenarioProperties.xml file, not the RouteProperties.xml (as they are not part of the route as such). To fix this, I have added an option to RW_Tools which after it checks a route, makes a list of all Providers/Products actually used by the routes, and fixes the RouteProperties.xml to comply with this list. So if you have a route which possibly works OK in TS2014, but crashes when entering the World Editor, this might help you. To use this option:1. Run the Check Route option as usual from the Route Building Tools menu 2. You will be told if any files are missing, you should supply these or select an alternative. 3. Exit this screen and you are asked if you wish to see a list of Shapes used - select Yes 4. When the list of shapes appears, click the option to List Providers/Products used. 5. The button to Fix the RouteProperties.xml file will now appear, click this and it will be fixed for you.

Adding whiter snow One of the most disappointing things about TrainSimulator 2012 is the snow textures provided with the simulator, on many routes it looks more like coal dust than snow. For instance this is how Bath looks in the game:-

In my earlier program for MSTS, Route_Riter, I added an option to improve the snow, and have now done the same for RW_Tools v3.0.48 and later. This latest patch inclues a new Snow texture in the Templates folder which you can use to replace all of the winter textures in any of the Environment\Terrain folders in TS 2012 (you should note that although the original Default routes and most of the 3rd party routes used a single set of Environment\Terrain files, the latest RSC routes include separate Environment folders for each route, so each route can be modified individually). To use this option,

1. Make a BACKUP of the Environment\Terrain folder you wish to modify. 2. Go to the Edit Assets screen and select your Environment\Terrain folder, the North East Corridor one is shown above, but they are all the same. 3. The filter box is now a drop down list box and you will need to select the filter option *_W*.TgPcDx to display all the Winter textures. Click ‘Add to List’ and all the winter textures will be listed. 4. From the Edit Assets menu, select the ‘Make Better Snow’ option, click OK on the box which appears and the files will quickly be modified. Results are as follows:-

Building Random Consists of Wagons This is a new feature - To use it, you must first set up ‘Pools’ of wagons from which you wish to build your consists. I.e. you must set up groups of wagons which could conceivably form the basis of a train in any order, they must all have the same coupler types. E.g. you could set up a pool of cement hoppers, grain hoppers, coal hoppers etc or a pool of UK 4 wheeled wagons from various authors. To do this, go to the Asset Editor in RW_Tools and scroll to Kuju\RailSimulator\RailVehicles\Freight and click on 5PlankWagons. Make sure the ‘Rolling Stock Only’ box is ticked and click ‘Add to List’ this will add all your 5Plank Wagons to the pool, you could then, for instance also select 7 Plank wagons and add them as well. Select all and go to Save List and save as 5and7PlankWagons.csv - the pool will be saved in the RW_Tools\Reports folder where it should stay. You can then save other pools in the same manner.

Close the Asset Editor and go to Scenarios\Build or Edit Consists which brings up the Saved Consists screen showing you in the top section which consists you already have and their contents. In this instance you now go to the ‘Build Consists’ menu and select ‘Load Pool of Wagons’ and select the 5 and 7 plankers you saved above. These are now displayed in the bottom section. Go to ‘Generate Consist’ in the menu and you will be asked to enter a name for the new consist, something like ‘5and7PlankMixed’ will do. You can then select how many wagons to add to the consist and the ‘randomness’ of the consist from 0 to 10 - a randomness of 0 will only select 1 wagon type at random, 10 will be completely mixed and anything else will give a mixture but including several of one type. The consist will now be built and will appear in RailWorks as under, but PLEASE NOTE that all wagons in the consist must have the Provider and Product linked to your scenario by using the Object Set Filter in the Railworks Scenario Editor as shown below.

Click this icon and a pop-out menu appears on the right hand side of the screen, scroll down to those items you need to add to your scenario for the consist to appear in your route and tick them.

1. Selects consist (grey boxes appear above each wagon) - you can then rename consist in right hand popout. 2. Displays list of consists you can use 3. Must be ticked before you can use ‘saved consists’ Here are the 5 and 7 plank wagons placed in a scenario, you can place this set as many times as you wish.

New option in the ‘Se arch and Re place’ me nu is ‘Find in multiple files’ You can use this option to change the color of water, select a .bin file you know has water in it and click ‘Display’ this will show the file in the bottom box, then type
2. Highlight the part you wish to change in the bottom box and copy it with CTR L-C and paste into the other 2 boxes with CTRL-V

3. Make the changes you wish in the middle box (it is only necessary to change the decimal values, the hex ones don’t appear to matter") 4. Se lect all of the .bin files in the top files list 5. Click on ‘Replace in all selected files’ and off it goes. Only files which contain the above ‘Find’ entry are altered, and backups are made of all changed files with the file extension .bak as is usual with RW_Tools

This option can be used to swap anything you like in all the Scenery tiles at once, e.g. change House1.bin for House2.bin etc. By selecting multiple lines as in the option above, you can change not only the asset, but also the provider and product lines as we ll, so you can substitute a default Kuju asset with a 3rd party one.

RW_Tools and .ap Files I have had many emails advising that with the advent of TS2014 a number of options in RW_Tools no longer work as they used to. This is because, RSC have started packing many Routes and Asset packs in a type of .zip file with .ap suffix. They have not documented these changes. Each of these packed folders contains all the files a route or locomotive etc needs to run in TS2014. Unfortunately, this has rendered many of the existing options in RW_Tools unusable. To make matters worse, RSC lied to me saying I would get a beta ‘next week’ then dropped me from the core program beta test plan without even the courtesy of telling me that I was not getting an early version of the program to enable me to keep RW_tools up to date, nor to comment on it before it was released. I can only assume it is now their policy to try to make it difficult for users to modify the program at all. Fortunately, these .ap files can be unpacked using the command line version of 7zip (7za.exe) packaged with RW_Tools. Once the .ap files are unpacked, the contents can be used as before. Please note that doing this will DOUBLE the size of folders containing the .ap file as the .ap file must be retained so that Steam can carry out its upgrades, and if there are Steam upgrades, then the new .ap file will have to be unpacked to get hold of any new contents but take care if you have modified your files as any new files will be overwritten during the unpack process, but see below. Find all .ap files As the name suggests, this option searches your Assets folder for any/all .ap files therein. This may take a little time as there are a lot of files to check through. Once the files are found, a list like the following appears, your list will be somewhat different as this list includes some home-made files to test the system.

As can be seen above, the list contains packages of both Assets(rolling stock etc) and Content(routes etc). New files will display as ‘Not unpacked’ then once unpacked they will change to Unpacked. Note that if an .ap file is subsequently updated by RSC, Steam will send you a new version and this will need to be unpacked again if you wish to change some of the files. Under these circumstances it has been noticed that Steam appears to delete ALL of the files you unpacked originally, and maybe even those you have modified, thus rendering any alterations you have made void. So if you do change any files, e.g. By reskinning or editing .bin files - make sure you back them up or you might lose the changes altogether. If you wish to see what is in a particular pack, click on the .ap file to select it and click the ‘Unpack Selected .ap files’ button. This will display ALL of the files contained within any particular .ap file. If you just want to access 1 particular file within the package, you can go to the Extract Files/Extract Selected menu and this will extract the chosen items. Alternatively you may wish to extract all the files, this can be done using the option ‘Extract All’ which will place the extracted files into a folder of your choice, or ‘Extract all to same folder as .ap’ which will establish the complete folder tree as you would have seen under TS2013 and place all of the files so that they are now visible from RW_Tools as in the past. There is also a ‘List files in .ap file’ button which just provides a list of the contents without having to unpack the file at all. Unpack with 7zip As a faster alternative to the above, you may select as many .ap files as you wish in the list of .ap files and click on ‘Unpack with 7zip’ this then gives you a list of alternative unpack methods you can use as can be seen below. 1. Unpack .ap files to a new folder - this places the folder tree in a folder away from your Assets folder and may be useful if you don’t wish to overwrite Modified files, you could unpack to a spare folder and check for changed files. 2. Unpack .ap files to same folder as the .ap (first time unpack) - Use this if your folder only contains the .ap file as it fails if there are existing files in the Folder tree. 3. Unpack .ap overwriting all destination files if they exist (Default setting) - Use this if you have no modified files in the external folder tree - it will unpack all files including updated ones and update your whole folder tree. 4. Unpack .ap skipping any files which already exist - This will only unpack new files in the .ap - but will NOT unpack new versions of files you already have. 5. Unpack .ap appending number to any NEW file which already exists - Probably not much use as it adds a numeric suffix, e.g. Scotsman_1.bin to the new version if Scotsman.bin already exists - OK if it was a small archive, but if you have thousands of files in the tree, a lot of work…

6. Unpack .ap renaming existing files by adding a number - This unpacks all of the new files and keeps the old ones but renames them by adding a numeric suffix as in 5 above. Note that the above options now make all of the files extracted Read/Write so that they may be used in RW_Tools. As the above method of extracting every file from the .ap archives tends to double the size of the Assets or Content folders, I have added some extra buttons which only extract Rolling-stock or Scenarios from the .ap archives. This is because many people only wish to extract Locomotives etc to re-skin them or Scenarios to modify them. Extracting these items only allow re-skinning and swapping of stock in Scenarios using RW_Tools to take place without the necessity of unpacking the whole archive. The possible options are:Extract rolling stock from ALL .ap files Extract scenarios from ALL .ap files Extract rolling stock from selected .ap files Extract scenarios from selected .ap files

Remarks: Please advise me of anything I have missed out or things which might need updating. There are many options which are rarely used, but some users have requested they be included. Remember that every user has different requirements, so what might seem to be a useless option to your way of using TS2014 might well be an essential option to other users. Please note that this manual is not indexed, simply because as it is a .pdf file, you can use the search option in the Adobe pdf reader to find any word/combination of words in the text very quickly. Mike 24th Nov 2013 Email: rwtools at live dot com dot au