Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!

I recently downloaded the OR&W 10, and I congratulate Rich for the wonderful work. BUT... Today I downloaded "oractsd3.zip" from the file library and installed it and... PENG!! "Track Database Error: Failed to load bla bla/ bla..."However, the documents say that the actvities only need two additional files, INCLUDED. Also, some of them are updates from an activity pack for the 9.1, but I've checked the files for that add-on and none of the .eng files match the missing ones.Help!! I'm about to spread hot hickory over the makers of the pack!!
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Cctoide (Portuguese Trainfan)
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RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, DTA, Nov-03-02, 11:08 AM, (1) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Cctoide, Nov-03-02, 11:53 AM, (2) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, kmanc21, Nov-03-02, 04:30 PM, (10) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, rgarber, Nov-03-02, 11:59 AM, (3) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Cctoide, Nov-03-02, 01:15 PM, (4) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, DTA, Nov-03-02, 01:24 PM, (5) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, century242, Nov-03-02, 01:52 PM, (6) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Coonskin, Nov-03-02, 02:15 PM, (7) I love the OR&W Activity Pack!!!, downside, Nov-03-02, 03:45 PM, (9) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Brando, Nov-05-02, 09:09 AM, (21) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, bob hahn, Nov-03-02, 03:42 PM, (8) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Cctoide, Nov-03-02, 04:47 PM, (11) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, DTA, Nov-03-02, 05:10 PM, (12) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Cctoide, Nov-03-02, 05:18 PM, (13) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, DTA, Nov-03-02, 05:39 PM, (14) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Baldwinbob, Nov-03-02, 08:46 PM, (15) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, rgarber, Nov-03-02, 09:26 PM, (16) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Cctoide, Nov-04-02, 04:33 PM, (17) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, rgarber, Nov-04-02, 06:15 PM, (18) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, Cctoide, Nov-04-02, 06:50 PM, (19) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, OhioRailFan, Nov-05-02, 01:27 AM, (20) RE: Stupid OR&W Activity Pack!!!, rgarber, Nov-05-02, 09:41 AM, (22)

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Hardly stupid. S Davis' activities are excellent. Without any details of what you are missing, it is difficult to help.However, you need the trains and wagons from 9.1, and if you uninstalled rather than just deleting the Boddidly 9.1 route, you will have lost them. There are also some excellent engine packs at avsim which you should get. Just note down the files you are missing and post them here, an I am sure someone will help.David

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I haven't updated from v9.1, v10 is the first time I download it, and, by saints, it is good!! ()Wait a sec while I post the filenames...OK... It gives the "Failed to load track database: ***"***:"\trains\trainset\bd_OhR&WF7A1\bd_OhR&Wf7A1H.eng"
"\trains\trainset\bd_OhR&WALCORS3\bd_OhR&WALCORS3.eng"
"\trains\trainset\bd_ohrwoiltanker\bd_OhRWtankera.wag"
"-then it reverts back to the first-"
"\trains\trainset\OhR&W 100T Coal Car\orw100coalfl.wag"
"-the first again-"
"-the first-"
"-it repeats a number of times before it finally loads-"Do I really have to download them??? It's because the original req list for the 9.1 activities were:f45tri.zip
tribdier.zip
trcxup11.zip
dsh9csx1.zip
gp38csx.zip
bogp-38.zip
csbo8253.zip
csxcoal.zip
upcoal2.zip
cnwcoal5.zip
hooker10.zip
elflats.zip
spgp382.engEeek... I'll have to download it ALL.... and still have to write it to diskettes, then install them, then find out they're corrupted.... oh my God!...-------------
Cctoide (I Want ORRR to work)
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Cctoide,The errors you are getting are due to the fact that you do not have the Ohio Rail equipment back that is available in the MSTS Adventures section of the download library at www.avsim.com. The problem you are having is that the original activity pack for the prior builds of Ohio Rail included the rolling stock and the author of the activity pack forgot to update his Read Me for the build 10 activities.
I'm on a dial up too and can tell you that all the time required to d/l the activities and the rolling stock is worth the time and effort involved. When you d/l the rolling stock you don't have to write to diskettes, just d/l and unzip to your favorite temporary directory and install the needed files into MSTS from there. If you need any other help on this just post back - many of us are willing to help you through the Train-Sim jungle. LOL
Ken

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If there's a problem it's probably my fault. Steve released his activities pretty quick after the route was released. In the meanwhile I was still contemplating how the OR&W and WV&O rollingstock should be released. Chances are you probably just need the OR&W and/or WV&O rollingstock packages which you can get from AVSIM.com.To get everything currently available for the Ohio Rail route you need about 5 packages.They are:the two route files that make up the route itselfplus...OR&W rollingstock package (optional but useful for 3rd party activities)
WV&O rollingstock package (optional but useful for 3rd party activities)
and...Ohio Rail Steam Era pack (optional but useful for 3rd party activities)
There is also my own OR&W activity pack which is the original 15 activities released with the 9.1 OR&W activity pack. Now this is a separate package.For further detail see: www.edmfamily.com/msts/bo3.htmThe gist of all this is some of these are recent releases which Steve didn't have access to when he wrote his activities.Steve's a great activity writer and I have several emails suggesting his activities are very good. If there's any confusion its because it took a couple of weeks to get all the packages available. Hope this helps. Rich Garber

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OK, that's it. I'm not playing MSTS anymore. What the heck with teh activities, why did I download them, I don't know. I just know they make me download a lot of rollingstock which I don't have and can't have on a dial-up.Finito. Just gotta find a way to clear those records of the train database and that's it, since no one can help me.-------------
ORRR Activity Pack has wrecked my game
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Well, thanks for joining out little community. I am sorry you could not stay, and apologise if mine and Rich's answers, gave you no help at all. Perhaps Rich should have offered you all the trains and trainsets on a gold CD in a nice little inscribed box, with Christmas packing. He is mean at times! RFLMAO!David

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Alot of attitude from a short timer"Keep on Trucking by Train"Erik Pierson
Sacramento, Ca
www.sacramentolocomotiveworks.comBringing 1940s Southern Pacific to the digital age.

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MSTS is not for everyone. Perhaps it's not for you.Have fun with whatever hobby endeavor you indulge in.As for me, I love the sim (have mixed feelings about RE though!) and think the people here are some of the most helpful you'll find anywhere within any hobby. Perhaps if you detuned your attitude three ticks, and objectively defined whether or not you want to download additional stuff BEFORE you try to run an activity... you'll find more satisfaction with the sim. If not... well... ostos newaveos ameobae.Andre Ming

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ostos newaveos ameobae - wow that looks impressive but what does it mean. Looks like it could be a great put down line.As for the activity pack, I love it and have had no problems whatsoever.Bill

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>If there's a problem it's probably my fault. Steve released
>his activities pretty quick after the route was released. In
>the meanwhile I was still contemplating how the OR&W and
>WV&O rollingstock should be released. Chances are you
>probably just need the OR&W and/or WV&O rollingstock
>packages which you can get from AVSIM.com.
>
>Rich Garber
I think this is what happened to me - I grabbed V10 route, some V10 activities, and then was unable to run them.I've just gotten the rollingstock packages from AVsim, I'm sure they'll fix my problem.Thanks for the info.

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C'mon, guys, this is no way to treat somebody new to this. We're all so used to getting hosed by installations -- and we've all had to learn enough The Hard Way to bail ourselves out when it happens -- that we've forgotten what it's like to be new.This exact same thing happened to me. The only difference is that I knew enough to guess what had happened, and to open up ConBuilder to find the culprits. So I knew exactly what engines and wagons I needed to clear this up, but guess what: there is no clue in the readme file as to what files these items or in, or where they might be located. I spent an hour or so trying to be clever with the search engine here, trying to track down these items, and finally gave up. I guessed they might be at avsim, and checked there, too. No luck. At that point I deleted all these activities and the consists they rode in on. I came pretty close to writing a flame myself.Let's all try to remember what it's like to discover this place, to be awed by all the goodies available for download, but to have no clue that innocently downloading some of them will leave your TrainSim installation inoperable. No one expects that anymore with software; that was supposed to have gone away with punched cards and DOS. But here it is again, because MSTS was never really designed to cleanly import new toys from anyone except Microsoft.To Cctoide: Sorry to say, but you are going to have to get smart on the subject of downloading these things and installing them, and recovering from the various errors that are in them. Complaining about these things is no good; it's part of the deal. Most of these items are labors of love given away for free, and the people doing them try their best. But they are not software engineers, and they do not have QA departments with 25 different configurations to test on. You can pretty much bet that if you download ten things, at least one of them will hose you up. Just get used it; it's part of the drill.In this particular case, one way out is to get ConBuilder (if you don't have it already, it's conb_151.zip in the library here) and learn how to use it. Test the Activities for BodiddlyRR, and note which activities and consists are causing the problem. And then go in with Explorer and delete them. If this sounds like a hassle, that's because it is. However, you need to learn how to do this, because this is going to happen again. It's the price you pay for having all these freebies to play with. Expect it. Learn to consider it part of your skill set. When you get good enough, you can start making things to hose up other people

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OK, OK, sorry.But I still am divided a bit on this subject: I can download all that and bla bla so I can play the activity, BUT... the problem is that I'm on a temporary dial-up rig before I get ADSL, and this computer's not the one where I have MSTS installed. This requires me to put all files on disk and transfer them. However, I frequently have to span them on up to 3 disks, and sometimes one broken file means copying it all over again.Meanwhile I'll try to fix things... I just downloaded ConBuilder, maybe it can help me. I have MSTS for a year now, well...I'm pondering about uninstalling the PO&N 5 since it's just taking up space and it's damn hard to make an activity for that jumble of tracks, with clever-chap HAL 9000 taking it all down by the root. -------------
Cctoide "Eek" Cctoide
Trying to get ORRR Activity Pack to work
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Come on get real! Rich told him exactly what was needed, and the guy says he has had no help whatsoever! How are you supposed to answer that? If he is using floppies to store stuff, how on earth did he get Ohio in the first place? Perhaps he should wait until he gets broadband in place.David

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DTA, I got Ohio by getting a friend to download it for me and burn it onto a CD, hothead.
Cctoide<marquee>a little train coming here soon</marquee>

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LOL! Feisty little tinker aint you! I look forward to reading your future posts!David

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"LOL! Feisty little tinker aint you! I look forward to reading your future posts!"As do I !!!Sure hope Rich isn't thinking, "Why oh why did I post anything there?"Uffda, just the good ole guys, and then there's Sniper.............

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Nah, I ain't really thinking that. You can tell the guy means well
and he's a bit antsy to get started. He's getting DSL shortly and so all this grumbling about downloading won't be a problem for him shortly. Once he gets going with his dsl, he'll be fine. The only problem I have with anyone going through this kind of frustration is they take it out on the wrong person or thing. It's not the packaging that's causing him the problem, it's the download time. Once he has his dsl he'll be calling Steve Davis's activities GREAT! And the activities he's upset about isn't the OR&W Activity pack. That was released for Build 9.1.I appreciate Ohio Rail isn't for everybody too. It's a big route, with lots of downloading (only 178 megs ... or the equivalent of 120 puny PO&N's to one massively gorgeous Ohio Rail) with lots of easy to install files (Kinda sounds like the beginning of a commercial doesn't it? Never can resist a chance to advertise). Plus Ohio Rail is hard on computers. It's a major frame rate hit for "cpu challenged computers"(PC speech for your computer isn't fast enough.. neither is mine for that matter...), and there's lots of reading (advertising slang for there's a manual) and not to mention all them foot stomping chair breaking square dance boogying bluegrass tunes (hillbilly slang for music) to whittle the hours away while you 'sweat' (slang for 'get back to work!') at some real railroading (as in like you don't really railroad on that ooTTHHHeerrr route by Jim what's his name) !Ohio Rail.. it's not just another pretty face in the route crowd, ...it's THE ONLY PRETTY FACE IN THE ROUTE CROWD!! LOL!!! Rich Garber

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OK... thanks, I'm thinking about downloading all the cars and bla bla... Ok, now, I have some Q's for you about the OR...1:Have you though about Swik?? E.G. if you pick up a caboose at Aux track, and need to pull some coal cars out of the mine, you'll end up with the loco sandwiched between two cars, which can be a hefty fine when it comes to dropoffs. Also, Swik is a pain in the yoo-de-le-de-ri-do when you have to set up a path for the switchbacks two times...2:I dunno why, but I never seem to be able to get a path working when trying to make an activity... someone interrupts me and then I look like a blasting boiler... 3:Ohio Rail is the best... I have used some in-game screenshots and have turned them into ads... would that interest you??
Cctoideps rich can you help me put my little trains here?? thanks

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Answers:1) Swik. The problem with any route that you didn't create is you have to think like the designer. Mostly because of the automatic/manual switches. Swik is meant to be problematic being its sandwhiched between hills and a river. So you are correct that designing complicated activities with complicated paths is more hardship than usual. Think of Swik as the Smallville (EMRR) switching puzzle of the Ohio Rail.2) Paths. My first suggestion is to check out the tutorial I did for Abacus on activity creation. It's rather old but I believe most of the info is still good. It's a $10 purchase though... I think. I haven't looked or thought of the thing in ages. Other than that, paths are pretty easy to make if you can figure the steps you gotta go through to get to where you can create a path. If not the tutorial then check out the Activity forum here.3) Ads. Always looking for advertising for the route! 4) Scrolling trains. I haven't a clue. Rich Garber

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You rock Rich... you rock so much someone wrecked my game...
IIRG now it's weekdays and I can't find the time to download all those zips... why did I download that in the first place!?!?!?!?Cctoide<marquee>a little train coming here soon</marquee>

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Since I see you are posting in this thread, I just want to hijack it for a moment and tell you that I LOVE your work so far. As you can see from my name, Ohio Rail is my Favorite Route.It did take me 3 days of "all night downloading" with a download manager (I too have dial up) I just got the links on AVsim.com and set up the manager to down load whilst I slept.I do have two questions myself.1) Why is it so "out of the way" to get from the mainline in Caldwell to the branch that heads up to Cambridge? (OR&W)2) May I make a OR&W fansite?

>OFFICAL MEMBER OF THE EXTREME PARALLEL PARKING TEAM<

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Greetings! In answer to your questions:1) Originally the Ohio Rail route was to extend southward from Marietta into WV, and then northeast through Mt. Ephraim to Wheeling. For various reasons this was changed and I opted to extend northwards to Cambridge from Florence and make the run to Wheeling more an east-west expansion. This then allowed me to extend from Zanesville to Wheeling. However, with the route editor, its not that easy to tap into existing track at different elevations. So I planned to expand the route in 3 sections. The first was to find a way to tap into Florence and then northward to Cambridge. Now I have expanded from Cambridge to Zanesville with Build 10. With Build 11, the expansion to Wheeling from Cambridge will take place. Since none of these expansions were originally planned and signals were placed (i.e. dangerous to mess with signals onced placed), I added the Florence to Cambridge extension by creating it off the Caldwell Branchline rather than trying to tap into the OR&W mainline. If it hadn't been so reluctant to mess with the track database nuances, I would've tapped into the mainline.2) Sure, go ahead! Rich Garber

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