Help With Trains

[whizkidindia]

I am solely using open rails. But, when I download coaches, I cannot find a way to link them to the locomotive. The coaches are not visible in the menu. I found out that this has to do with a .con file. I read that it can be made with activity editor of msts, and some other softwares, which I wasn't able to run. So basically, how can I link my loco to my downloaded coaches?

[baldwin]

The only things you will see in the menu are items that are in a consist, so you need to make one to get the coaches linked to your locomotive. For this as you already know one option is the the MSTS activity editor. There are also Yardmaster or Convoi, both of these are free. Also free is Route Riter which has a consist editor as well. The other option is Conbuilder which is payware.

You have not indicated which software you have been unable to run, perhaps we can help you to get something running. You have also failed to say what operating system you are using.

[whizkidindia]

Thank you, I managed do do so using yardmaster lite.
I have one more issue related to coaches- They do not have any track sound. How can I make them produce sound as they move over the track?

[conductorchris]

each .wag file (which defines how the rolling stock in question will behave) has a link to a sound file (or at least it should).

For example, here is a line in a randomly chosen .wag file:

Sound ( "GenFreightWag2.sms" )

This indicates that the simulator will look for this file in the SOUND folder at the main level next to TRAINS and ROUTES and so on.

In this example, this file is a default sound that is installed with microsoft train simulator.

The question at hand is, what sound files do the coaches using reference? You can open up the .wag file within the folder for each set of coach(s) with a text editor, find the SOUND reference in the file and have a look. If the file is noted without any more of a path, the simulation will look for that file in the SOUND folder, but one could also include a path with the file name which could (for example) point to a location elsewhere. For example, it's a common practice in the U.S. simulator community to put sound files in a folder within the TRAINSET folder called COMMON.SND and have references to those files point there.

Sometimes all you need to do is look and you will see the error. A missing period or something like that.

It may be that the coaches reference a sound that you don't have, which means now you have to either obtain the soundset (for example, from the file library here) or change the reference to a file that you do have.

In my experience in the U.S. simulator community, most rolling stock points to the default sounds that came with MSTS.

It is possible to find default sounds floating around in some uploaded content in this file library, probably because it was assumed at one time before open rails that nobody would be running this content unless they had bought MSTS.

Christopher