MSTS FAQ: Miscellaneous Questions

9. MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS

Must I know a lot about locomotives to use train simulator?

MSTS is designed for all levels of interest in trains, from the child who loves to look at trains, to the casual hobbyist who knows a little about trains, to the professional railroad engineer who knows everything about every system in a real locomotive.

The sim includes tutorials and beginners activities to get you familiar with the basics of train operations.

The manual includes information on how to operate realistically, so even if you are not a die-hard train-buff, you will be able to learn how to run the trains in a realistic manner, if you so choose.

There are also realism options that can be turned off to make train operations easier for beginners.

What is a virtual railroad?

A virtual railroad (VR) is an online group which tries to simulate the operations of a real railroad using MSTS. The exact details of VR operation still need to be ironed out, but similar activities have been popular with flightsims and we expect virtual railroads to be popular too.

How to I submit my files for the download library here?

Train-Sim.Com and FlightSim.Com share an upload site for their file libraries. For complete details on uploading and a whole lot more that you need to know to prepare your file before you upload it, please go here:

www.flightsim.com/dev-tips.htm

Where can I find operating manuals for real locomotives?

There is quite a large collection manuals for real locomotives available on the Web. Go here:

http://www.dnaco.net/~gelwood/manual.html

Why can't I post messages to the MSTS forums here?

The most common cause for this sort of problem is firewall software that you have set up on your computer. The firewall prevents large messages from being sent out by your computer to the server--things like forum posts.

One user fixed this as follows:

"I set a rule for train-sim.com so the referer would not be blocked. This fixed the posting problem."

Another user reported that he had to disable Norton Internet Security 2002 and then everything worked fine.