German Railroads V.1 _Biggetal_

Just arrived in the mail today after pre-ordering from :
http://www.german-railroads.de/
The cityscape industrial area scenery is very densely packed into two hilly forest branch lines. There is a constant urge to just save the activity, dismount, and look all around. Cars run parallel and across the tracks, lots of them! Yards and their industries and other buildings everywhere, 47 activities graded for difficulty. The first two are sort of route tutorials. Easy install (half a gig). Rolling stock is all kinds of diesel traction units and their freight and passenger cars (railbus stuff). A well polished product: 7 PDF manuals: activities, signals, speeds, routeplans, station plans (diagrams for the 24 freight yards), trackprofile, and the main manual. There is also a printed main manual. Lots of needed hints are right up front about operations in backwater Germany in the 1970s. For instance there is hell to pay for not sounding the horn at an unguarded crossing, but go overspeed and the penalty is relatively mild, an 'emergency brake and wait'. The diesel activities are probably great and all that, but what caught my eye right off was the plenty of coaling stations along this a diesel line! For I guess if ever you might wish to have the Golsdorfs drop in for a visit. But the track had small radius curves so what's needed for high speed steam are smaller trains. I ran the payware set of British 4 wheel freight vans and small locos in 3D Trainstuff's "LMS Freight". But there is always freeware, maybe the old timer trainsets like the Austrian kkSstB, the Generals, PO&N route moguls and cars (trainsim library). Next I want to try and see how fast around the curves can safely go the even tinier Welsh Talyllyn RR sets at Uktrainsim.But tomorrow over to running the included diesel activities, who could possibly do them all????Cheers!

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RE: German Railroads V.1 _Biggetal_, adamw, Jul-23-02, 01:27 AM, (1) RE: German Railroads V.1 _Biggetal_, UtilityInfielder, Jul-23-02, 11:23 AM, (2) RE: German Railroads V.1 _Biggetal_, railwaysoftware1, Jul-23-02, 03:39 PM, (3) RE: German Railroads V.1 _Biggetal_, DTA, Jul-23-02, 06:01 PM, (4) RE: German Railroads V.1 _Biggetal_, SVTS, Jul-23-02, 06:48 PM, (5) RE: German Railroads V.1 _Biggetal_, BeeKay, Jul-24-02, 11:42 AM, (6)

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I've got this add-on with ProTrain 2, both installed under Windows XP Pro.
The German Railroads is the best add on as yet, it totally enhances the whole scene of MSTS. Of course, it can overcome the buggy,badly programmed graphics engine of MSTS,but the whole project, including scenery, rolling stock and manuals are excellent.
ProTrain 2 is very nice and interesting program,but it doesn't give the gamer the same feeling as German Railroads with the rich gallery of various signals from the seventies.
Finally, I've got yesterday the long awaited Heidi Express by SimTrain. This program probably written on German version of Windows, without taking into consideration the special characters used solely in German language caused to halting MSTS during it loading stage with the sad "Error Reading Train Database" error,so
I'm unable right now to drive on Rhatische Bahn in one of the most interesting parts of Switzerland.
Adam

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LAST EDITED ON Jul-23-02 AT 11:23 AM (EDT)

"The German Railroads is the best add on as yet"Absolutely correct, nothing else comes close!Of course I also expect great things from the Cajon pass payware from 3dTrainstuff when it finally ships.

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Yep!It's a gem..!
And a second route is being developed now by German Railroads....!Ron
www.railwaysoftware.com

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Not very long though. Protrain 1 or 2 are far longer. I am now very wary of routes of 100km or less, and I certainly wont buy that one.Both Protrain and Protrain2 have a massive amount of track, bigger than even Marias Pass, by a long way. Loads of scope for new activities. The Biggetal route is tiny in comparison.David

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Just ordered German Railroads today. Most routes will not come close to being as long as ProTrain. Any new route is great. Of course with all the add-on's I have bought, I have 5 on the way, and 3 that I have downloaded and not run yet. I told my wife, my biggest problem is I am adding so much to the game, that I don't have time to play with it.One day, the trains will roll.Cheers,
Chris

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Hi David et al,quote:
I am now very wary of routes of 100km or less, and I certainly wont buy that one.
unquoteJust a little comment from my side to encourage all (freeware-) Route developers. I love the romantic aspect of RRing, that's why the Biggetal is such a beauty for me. It allows shunting with no end, and although I use this route since it appeared on the market, I did not yet run it completely. I only know some romantic corners on it to test my locos in various environments.I get easily bored with routes of more than 20 km. Although I am developing rolling stock and especially steam locos, I don't want to run them for hours on a long trail to the West. I love small activities, well thought and I love fun without stressing timetables.Don't get me wrong, this post is not to defend this commercial Add-On, it's just highlighting the use of the Sim to personal likings. And as I already mentioned, I want to encourage freeware authors to develop even small routes with a special taste to it. Do you remember the "Timesaver"-Route? I had pleasure without end to run my little shunting Koefs on it and the whole thing was only one tile large. It's the atmosphere which counts, not the milage (at least for me, however I respect your different attitude).
Just my 2 (Euro-)cents worth.Have a good time to you allBernd

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