I recently built a steam locomotive/tender model in 3D Canvas on my machine which runs Windows XP and it runs fine on my PC and my Son's PC, both of which run XP.

I then uploaded the model to uktrainsim.com and got a bunch of emails from users who could not get the model to run at all. As far as I can ascertain all these users were on Windows 98.

I then installed a clean version of MSTS on a Windows 98 PC here and copied my model to this machine. When I ran MSTS with the model selected, the program started up with the model derailed!! Other users have complained that it appeared with no wheels, with no sounds, etc.

This looks like a resource thing? Has anyone else come across such a problem.

Mike.

One thought:

How many different groupings do you use? If you use a lot of groupings MSTS may have trouble. I try to limit mine to one group that defines the basic "shape" of the model. With all large parts in them, then a sub-group with all small non-moving parts, and then a group each for the moving parts.

Richard

Hi Richard,

The loco consists of main, body and cab. Which I could try combining into main.

Then wheels are children of main and rods (it is animated) are children of wheels.

The thing is that I had this loco running fine (it was originally made in Canvas 4.24), but I added a few details (vacuum pipes etc) and re-textured it and that is when the problems occurred.

I thought perhaps it was because the wheels are actually spoked (not pictures of spokes), however that does not hold up, as I have built an articulated Beyer Garratt loco with 2-8-0 + 0-8-2 configuration and about 30 rods and it works fine :-)

Mike.

That seems like it should be OK. I'm not sure what to suggest. Possibly a bug in Train Simulator? I think it has to be since the model loads and looks OK on your system. That, to me, indicates that the S file is valid.

Could it be the update to Train Simulator that was made available recently causing the problem? Do you have that installed on your system?

Richard

Hi Richard,

Yes, the MSTS is on both the XP machines I was using, but not on the Windows 98 machine - will get back to you on that one as I had not thought of that. I will install the update on the old machine and see if it loads then.

Mike.

Hi Richard,

Still dont know what my problem is. I installed the MSTS patch on my Windows 98 machine and the new loco ran the first time I tried it, after which it would still not run.

The loco runs without the tender OK, but attaching the tender kills it most times. Sometimes it will run on the Japanese routes, but not the UK.

I feel it is some sort of resource problem, but do not know what. I will rebuild both engine and tender again using less points/faces and see how I go.

Mike.

Maybe you can just temporarily delete a few parts and see how it works?

Richard

Hi Richard,

Yep, I deleted the tender and the loco works fine, I then connected it to a tender someone else had built and it works fine, so I was looking in the wrong place for my problem, it was the tender not the loco.

I am going to remove the wheels from my tender and build a new simple set and see if that fixes it.

Thanks - Mike.