Open Rails and Regional Mini-Routes

[up5799]

I recently returned to Open Rails (MSTS) after many months away, and would like to reorganize my routes so that I have all my North American routes and rolling stock on one version, all my European on another, Japanese on another, Australian another etc. This way when making consists, choosing routes etc, I will only see the routes, consists, and rolling stock of the region I am working on. Is there a way of doing this in Open Rails?

[EricF]

Yes, there is! First, set up your mini-route groups however you like. For instance, a "North America" installation with only North American routes, activities and trains. Then, in the Open Rails menu screen, click on the "Options" button and go to the "Content" tab. You'll have a "Browse" button to use to find the "Train Simulator" folder of each of your mini-route installs. Locate the path so it's correct on the line, give it a descriptive name in the box below, and click "Add". The mini-route will be selectable from the "Installation Profile" drop-down on the main Open Rails menu screen. Do this for each of your mini-routes, one at a time. The selected item in the drop-down will only show the routes and activities in the mini-route it points to.

[geepster775]

Any OR installation only needs

GLOBAL
ROUTES
SOUND
TRAINS

All the other folders and files in a typical MSTS mini-route installation are not needed by OR. And it goes without saying that all the terrain buffers that MSTS also generates are unneeded by Open Rails as well.

I am not really a big international simmer, I prefer to just sim in areas i am familiar with. I do have Australian and Canadian routes in their own installations. As for most US routes, I split them down by railroad. All of my BNSF routes are in the BNSF installation, and thus all these BNSF routes can share the same general AI consists that contain BNSF power. Given OR's ability to allow us to add tons of AI that MSTS never could do, this structure helps hold down the intermingling of foreign road consists for any one OR installation. No need for 80+ consists that use CN power, used on my CN routes, to clutter up the BNSF installation or the CR installation or the DRGW installation.

I also used the restructuring opportunity to thin things out. While I have many more routes zipped up and put on external storage drives (in case I need to raid it for assets), I really only have about 40 routes unzipped in the active installations, payware and freeware side by side in any given installation, and that is as full of a slate as I ever care to have. That count is large enough to keep me busy to the point where I can still appreciate all of them. I will never understand the hoarders who have every route out there in their active installations just for the sake of collecting. If you sit down on any given night and run 2 activities (each at 2-4 hours) at most, it takes me roughly 6 months to 'go around the world' and use them all. If I have less time, per sit down session, or the activity is prototypically long (7 hrs or more) my frequency of using them all in one cycle is even slower.

A word of caution about ScaleRail and ScaleRoad routes - depending upon the age of the Scale packages employed by the route builder, you might find instances when routes cannot be combined in one OR installation, because when you combine the GLOBAL folders, one version of Scale products ends up over-writing the other. I cannot combine the Sherman Hill route and a UP-ized Feather River in the same installation. When you combine GLOBALs, by adding the Sherman GLOBAL on top of the WP3 GLOBAL and overwriting when prompted account similar file names, the roads on Feather River end up off-center and messed up. For now, unless I re-do the roads on Feather River to the newer ScaleRoads package, these have to remain as individual mini-routes still. Also, the Payware SLI Green River route uses an older package of ScaleRoads, and if you later add any newer ScaleRoads routes to the same OR install, by adding those newer ScaleRoads to the same GLOBAL, those Green River roads will be messed up as well.