1. Open Source Software

Model Trains - the hobby and lifestyle.Please feel free to add any video, or anything you might think is useful info to people building a train set.Track Layout SoftwareA non-comprehensive list in no particular order. (Windows, others with Wine). (Windows). (Windows). (Mac).

Download open rails windows 10 for free. Games downloads - Open Rails by Open Rails and many more programs are available for instant and free download. Route Riter is a set of tools for Microsoft Train Simulator. The Route-Riter Unicode text editor allows for automatic aliasing of Sound (. Gears, an open source browser.

(cross platform)How to get started and other resources. (free online magazine).

(link goes to publisher's store, books/magazines available from your choice of vendors)YouTube Accounts.Other Web Links.Related Subredditsspecial thanks to and for making the logo in. Resident MSTS/Open Rails expert here:It is possible to, if you have the source files.

Currently there is no way to reverse engineer a.s file. There was a proposal to make a utility to allow this, but many content creators (me being one of them) was against it, especially since I produce payware content. Now, I don't actually make the shapes. I am a texture artist, but I know how much time and effort goes into these things, which is why I am against it.Moral of the story is: If you find a way to convert MSTS models into other formats, please for the love of all things good and holy, get permission from the original creator before you do anything.

With most new desktops and laptops now arriving with 64-bit Windows 7 or 8 operating systems, MSTS users will find 'challenges' with installing some of their favourite software as some installers are only 16-bit and 16-bit is not supported on 64-bit systems.One of the perennial favourites thus affected is Train Sim Modeler. Ged Saunders has come up with a simple and elegant method of installing TSM into a 64-bit system that solves the problem. Click on the 'Read More' link below at right or find it by clicking on the Modelling in TSM link at left.Posted on Sunday 19 January 2014. Working on preparing a route for release, I needed to update the route by adding extra cross-over nodes, including one over a three-way junction.

Having done this, I thought I would share this work by writing a tutorial, or more precisely, adding a section to Jeff Kraus-Yao's tutorial on.That then led me to respond to a few emails from people wanting to know if it was possible to fully protect double-slips: I don't think they realised that the problem could be solved by using the tutorial. I decided I better create a tutorial on fixing double slips. Click on the 'Read More' link below at right.Posted on Saturday 28 May 2011.

Matt Austin is one of team-ALCO's skilled model builders and arguably one one of Australia's best modellers. Many Australian MSTS users know of his fine work with the VR D3, the team-ALCO Spirit Spirit Of Progress passenger stock and the extraordinary forthcoming 'Tait' suburban train stock. One of the reasons Matt's been able to produce such detailed models that run reliably in the sim is that he has used the freeware application for TSM, Polymaster.Matt has written a superb tutorial on using Polymaster to improve the quality and reliability of models created with TSM. Browse to his for comprehensive, lucid instructions on using this valuable application.Posted on Tuesday 25 May 2010.

Finally, after many hours' work, all tutorials (over 150 HTML pages' worth) are now available for your education and assistance. They represent a huge store of research and knowledge about the game many of us seem to be addicted to: the authors have shared their knowledge and work generously for the whole MSTS community.So it is with much sadness and a distinct feeling of despondency that I note that the sledging on flamesim.com (aka train-sim.com) has resumed with some offensive comments by one of their members. A Mr Erick Cantu has slammed a sound tutorial on the steam4me site, saying 'it contains some half-truths and a few outright lies'.For the record, Mr Erick Cantu has, to my knowledge, never emailed me to offer corrections or point out errors in any tutorials on this site. It seems he finds it much easier to offer abuse and sledge the work of others than constructive criticism.

To accuse the author(s) on this site (or me) of telling lies is completely offensive, slanderous and totally outrageous.There are days where I wonder why I bother. This is one of them.Posted on Tuesday 18 May 2010. The demise of Railpage and subsequent loss of the steam4me site on their servers has necessitated some 're-organisation'.

As you've no doubt discovered (otherwise you wouldn't be reading this), I've set up my own site. I'm taking advantage of my move to a new server to rewrite many of the tutorials, with more links within pages to enable them to be more easily accessed and linked to.As time permits, I am progressively returning tutorials to the site in what I consider order of importance. Email me (see Contacts page) if there's one you need returned more quickly.This menu contains the titles of all the tutorials that have been written. You will get an error message for the tutes that haven't yet been uploaded. I will post again here when I think I've uploaded all the tutorials.Posted on Friday 12 March 2010. Jeffrey Kraus-Yao's cross-over nodes started me thinking about other vexing track-building / signalling issues within MSTS. After some investigation, I've discovered that Jeffrey's cross over nodes can be used to protect non-intersecting track such as gantlet track or mixed-gauge track.I've documented the process of protecting a stretch of gantlet track in a tutorial -but the process will be useful to route-builders working on routes covering South Australia, Brisbane Metro area, Switzerland and America's Colorado narrow gauge systems where more than one gauge was in use and mixed- or dual-gauge trackage was used at stations and in yards.Posted on Thursday 2 April 2009.

Jeffrey Kraus-Yao has made an astounding discovery that could revolutionise complicated track-work construction in MSTS and still allow correct signalling. Route-builders can now build complicated junctions and know that they can be protected by signals that will work correctly in activities.Up till now, only specialised shapes with a crossing node have ensured correct interlocking. His technique will ensure that two tracks laid one over the other can be made to provide protection by signals for use in activities.Browse to to read the results of Jeff's painstaking investigative work which in my opinion has opened a new horizon for both route-builders and activity creators.Posted on Saturday 21 March 2009. Previous news items in the News Archives.and which does not have, nor need, the Sound and Cabview Folders;. Finally, which rotates backwardly compared to the wheels on the track.by Frank 'Emu Farmer' Carver. Frank walks you through the process of animating your aircraft to have them take off, fly and land in MSTS.by Paul De Verter.

Paul deVerter continues his struggles with TSM and exlpains his victories in this useful tutorial.by Paul deVerter. A commonly needed procedure is de-mystified and simplified by Paul.by Mike Wilson: Mike has written an lucid, illustrated tutorial on how to animate driving rods in TSM.by Alan Heath. This technique enables the progressive appearance of objects in the sim depending on their distance from the camera, thus saving the software unnecessary work in creating models that can't be clearly seen.by Ted Curphey. Ted shows you how to construct and texture vehicle shapes.by Brian Piotrowski.

Great tutorial on a vexing problem.by Matt Austin. Matt has written a superb tutorial on using Polymaster to improve the quality and reliability of models created with TSM. By Trouble Pryor: use this technique to design your model to the correct proportions based on a reference plan and then scale the whole thing to the proper dimensions.by Paul Gausden, better known to many of you as 'Decapod', the author of Shape File Manager. Paul has written a magnificent set of nine tutorials on constructing a steam locomotive using the highly regarded, a popular 3D editing program from, offering excellent support and features. Paul has designed and written a variety of plug-ins to simplify the more vexing problems in model building such as rod animation. This surely will help many MSTS users delve into the wonderful world of 3D modeling and I'm proud to host this benchmark-setting tutorial.by Brentton Smith.

Illustrated and clearly and simply explained, Brentton leads you through the processes of making Paul Gausden's Pipe Builder plug-in work for you. The results are sensational and can be achieved in only minutes. This plug-in will save model builders lots of hours, hair and polys!by Paul Gausden. Paul demonstrates how to build low poly highly effective spring hangers in a concise, illustrated mini-tutorial. Sensational result! Then Paul shows you how to create a ladder with a curved top illustrated mini-tutorial. Another sensational tute!

And Paul's clear instructions make it look so easy.by Nick Fletcher. This series of videos begins with a look at the basic skills you'll need in order to work with 3D Canvas. Nick assumes you've never seen the program before or worked with 3D modeling software. Subsequent video tutorials walk you through the procedures to assemble a model.

View the tutorials online at Youtube, or download ZIP files of each part, or a single ZIP file containing all parts in one.by Scott Brunner; follow this checklist to ensure you animate your steam locos with a minimum of fuss.by Rick aka 'thegrindre'; an illustrated easy-to-follow tutorial on creating realistic 3D chain for your models. By Richard Osborne: a great 'how to' tutorial showing you how to build a coach but there's a wealth of information on learning how to use Gmax's powerful tools. Highly recommended. Twelve seperate chapters.by Richard Osborne: actually Chapter 12 of his coach-building tutorial, this tutorial is a great standalone document which de-mystifies the use of hierarchies in MSTS.by Richard Osborne. Suitable for both GMAX and TSM users, Richard walks you through the isuues you need to consider to successfully animate valve gear.by Richard Osborne. A follow-up to the previous tutorial - Richard's been asked to write something more specific to Walschaerts' gear. Suitable for both GMAX and TSM users.

By Ian Morgan: the Cab Editor remains a 'black hole' for many simmers - Ian Morgan has written this wonderful tutorial which should shed light into the Cab Editor's darker corners and assist many designers to tackle the vexed issue of creating cabs for their models.by Yuri Sos: describes what a passenger view is and how to set it up to work correctly in the sim.by Yuri Sos: this is part of a tutorial on cabviews I've been writing for ages, but the question of setting up or altering the view out this window crops up all the time, so I thought I'd publish this part now. By Chuck Zeiler: this excellent article walks you through the basics of getting a.wav file to work in MSTS.by Ralf Hagen: a great tutorial, originally available in German, now translated into Englishby Stuart Williamson: Stuart sheds some further light on the issue of MSTS sounds, this time with a quick tip on hearing everything that's happening in MSTS.by Stuart Williamson and Jeff Ashton: the two sound gurus from uktrainsim.com introduce this previously undocumented feature of MSTS and give you some tips on how to use it.

Open Source Software

Cutting edge stuff!by Lukas A Lusser. Values for the x- and z- coordinates in the Position line in.WS files that are outside the range -1024 to +1024 will cause the simulation to crash without warning. Lukas discovers the cause of the problem and Mike Simpson fixes it with RouteRiter. Basic tutoerial of full prof softwear. You just want a new starting point in a route - this is the tutorial for you.by Yuri Sos. There's nothing wrong with MSTS' built-in Consist Editor: here's a definitive guide to creating or editing your own consists.by Michael Sinclair: 140 page screenshot tutorial enabling you to 'learn-by-seeing'. This tutorial will walk you through the creation of activities, including player and traffic trains, paths and consists.by Rich Garber: US$10 for a downloadable copy from Abacus.

This is to Activities as Michael Vone's book is to Routes. Highly recommended.by Jim Ward. When you have errors in Activities, it pays to understand the files involved in an activity.

Jim explains the various files and their inter-relationships.by Jim Ward. Start here to learn the basics of activity creation by one of the masters of the sim.by Jim 'Sniper' Ward.by Yuri Sos. It's a simple matter to update the timetable in Activity Editor.by Bob Latimer. Broken paths are usually the result of paths created for one version of a route being used on a different version: Bob walks you through the steps (and tricks) required to correct this problem.by Greg Coote and Gary Gagnon. How to make your player train wait in a siding while an AI train overtakes you.by Jim 'Sniper' Ward. Jim's turned his attention to unravelling some of the mysteries of the Activities Editor. With a little help from his friends, he explains parameters controlling speed in AI trains.by Jim 'Sniper' Ward.

Test (and debug) your activities before they cause grief in the sim.by Mike Simpson. Don't fiddle with the registry yourself - Route Riter does it painlessly and accurately. Whether you're installing MSTS for the first time or, as many of us seem to, for the umpteenth time, this checklist of the basic 'essential' steps will get your MSTS installation 'back on the tracks' in a minimum of time with a minimum of frustration. Windows XP and Windows 7 versions.by Yuri Sos.

Many MSTS users are using widescreen laptop and desktop displays: here's how to set your graphics card to ensure that you don't have 'stretched' distortion.by Yuri Sos. You've set up your monitor, but recent versions of ATI Catalyst Centre don't allow you to enable GPU scaling.

Yes, they do and here's an illustrated tutorial to demonstrate the procedure.by Yuri Sos, based on ground-breaking work by Pete Willard. This freeware Unicode-aware editor is an excellent replacement for Wordpad when it comes to editing MSTS ENG, WAG, SMS, CVF and CON files: line-numbering, coloured keywords and simple bracket-matching make this a perfect all-round editor.by Otto Wipfel: another way of changing MSTS Registry settings - probably useful if only to keep a set of registry entries to avoid having to completely re-install MSTS if you have a computer crash.compiled by Yuri Sos, contributions by Otto Wipfel and Joseph Hoevet. George, of MSTS-Bin fame, discovered this undocumented feature that can be used in both default MSTS and MSTS-Bin installations to increase the amount of memory that can be used by MSTS. A must-read must-do to improve stability and frame rates.