I'm sure I've read that Steam DLC comes with all required content. I've just subscribed to London Kings Cross to Aberdeen and its arrive in the Drive/Workshop tab of TSC 2024 but the Drive button is grayed out presumably because of the list of required content? Anyway one of the required items is Class 325 EMU, which I assume is a train? So I go the Steam and set the filter for Class 325 Add-On which is the only item that resembles the requirement and I get the message that No Items Matching your Search Criteria were found. I'm sure this is going to be me doing something wrong but would somebody explain why all the content wasn't contained and then why I'm getting that message please. Thanks for any help.
You need to read the info on the Workshop as London - Aberdeen is a Scenario not a Route " Today you will drive this HST from London Kings Cross to Aberdeen (As far as peterborough). Enjoy and try to keep up with your timetable! Good Luck! Difficulty: Medium, Duration: 50 Minutes DLC needed: ECML (thats all) " So you need the London to Peterborough route to run this scenario https://store.steampowered.com/app/...ast_Main_Line_LondonPeterborough_Route_AddOn/ No mention of the 325 being a requirement Class 325 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/208376/Train_Simulator_Class_325_EMU_AddOn/ Peter
Thanks for your reply. I did appreciate it was a scenario, I just quoted its name as per the steam workshop. I've attached a Screenshot of what I see in TSC which shows the required Add On's. Am I miss-understanding something?
Workshop items are what general users have created and uploaded into the Steam platform. It is up to each user to decide what to publish. If they have selected a train (325 is a mail train) then they expect you to own this DLC to be able to run it. I am not a user of the workshop however I suspect it makes sure that the DLC is available to purchase in the store and not some random 3rd party product. If you click on the link it may take you to this item which is currently 50% off in the Steam store. Hope this helps. Regards
Workshop is not DLC. DLC is content that you purchase, such as London-Peterborough or the Class 321. Depending on what it is, DLC apps can contain assets, route tiles and rolling stock. Workshop is user created content, it goes into the Content folder so it can be a route but cannot add assets or trains. Some games are different and their workshop can be fully featured content, you could call them mods. TSC is more restrictive. In the screen you shared, the UI is rather bad, as in not intuitive at all. The items in normal colour are missing from your installation. The items in faded colour are available. Not sure what happens if you click on them. Workshop is recently quite helpful telling "you need DLC to use this item" and it lists required things quite well. A few mistakes exist though.
Do you have all the requirements? If you are certain that you do and the Drive button is still greyed out, you're better off going into the Standard tab and launching it from there. For context, the DLC you need are: Freightliner Class 66 Class 91 Class 321 Class 325 ECML London to Peterborough Liverpool to Manchester North London Line South London Network All of the above can be found on the Steam Store. I don't recommend buying any of them at full price, but there is a sale on now so you should be able to get most or all of it for less. Workshop scenarios can only reference DLC available on the Steam Store as a rule of thumb, and they will never include the rolling stock required to run it. Crucially, the Workshop page for the scenario says that you need to download the East Coast Main Line South route from the Workshop, which uses the standard ECML London to Peterborough as a base. If you do not have this, you will not be able to play the scenario.
Thank you all for your help. The thing is I'm trying to familiarise myself with all this using stuff I can get for free. Some of the stuff I'm reading isn't great about new users like me who don't know what they're doing and aren't familiar with terminology spending money unwisely. Is that realistic?
Most of the free stuff builds on payware. Being an old game (17 years and counting) most people around here are veterans and the majority have 4, maybe even 5 digit spent in euros. It would be silly to undersupply a 1-3000€ gaming rig by denying 100€ on a fancy game. I'm sure you'll get some advice but even freeware creators are expecting the player to have some stuff purchased. If you want to jump into train simulators cheap... Trainz is really discounted these days and looks much nicer than basic TSC. Both games have starter packs but DTG only offers the newest while you can rack up the last 3-4 editions with 4-5 routes at 4-5€ each. A no brainer, even if you play each route for 1 hour to look around, you got your money's worth. Same price as a month of YouTube Premium for cab rides. If you have an old machine or a laptop, you may end up struggling with new content. You can - for now - hoard the oldest content and explore it. Pretty much what I do now, my new laptop performs roughly the same as my 10 years old mid-range gaming rig did. (High end for me but we're in Eastern Europe so we earn 3rd and pay more for imports like electronics.) On the up, old content tends to be simple to grasp and drive. The TSC subscription is designed for people like you. Try it for a couple months. In the end, TSC has a lot of great stuff, some of which is free, plenty of which is off-Steam (3rd party) including enhancements. Also, TSC is a framework and it's revenue from new players that can justify its further development (albeit no news as of late). No need to hoard content but respecting their old work can be a win-win-win: they get money, you get content, everyone gets updates. Either way, browse this guy: https://steamcommunity.com/id/tijdreiziger/
Maybe. There is free stuff and there is free stuff. The old adage - you get what you pay for. I started my collection with just Steam DLC and as I wanted to branch out I found that you had to pay for things. If all you want is to run train DLC then you will find free stuff if you search hard enough. If you want to build your collection with good product you will find that you will be looking for sales from AP (Armstrong Powerhouse) Just Trains, RSSLO and others. Ask here about things you really care about and people will try to help as best they can. Everything you purchase in TSC can be used elsewhere. The platform is very modular and allows you to edit anything you like. The biggest 'free' is you doing it all yourself. The platform is quite tricky in places as you dig deeper. There are a lot of people who have already done this. Most 'free' stuff requires you to acquire rolling stock DLC from somewhere else, however, you can swap stuff out with 'Locoswap' or TSTools. For example you acquire a free route and missing say a Class 68. You could swap this out for say a Class 37 (of which a basic version comes with TSC). What I do is I swap out basic DLC for AP DLC for all UK stuff as I personally like the AP portfolio (I have acquired 100% of it over the past 3 years). Each to their own. You will get many opinions on this forum.
It is a bit of a learning curve for people new to the game and it is worth waiting for a Sale to obtain any items you might want. There is a Sale on at the moment for some items. Don't confuse TSC with TSW trains and routes as they don't work together. https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Dovetail Games - Trains You could start by adding Routes to your collection as they also come with trains you might not have. And with a route it gives you Assets that might be used in other Freeware routes. It will depend on what you are interested in - the main areas are UK, Germany/Austria and North America. If you are not sure then ask on this forum - somebody will already have whet you might think of buying Peter
Thanks again. There was a time when I would have had a go at building stuff but I'm a bit long in the tooth to do that now, so it's free to start with then I'll venture into payware. I do appreciate that it can't all be done for free. FYI I have a pretty new Acer Nitro gaming laptop which runs stuff like MSFS 2020 at a reasonably resolution without problem, it seems ok with TSC 2024 so far. Can I ask a quick additional question please. If I go into the Career tab, I have North Wales Coast Line (TfW) along with various scenarios and they work OK. If I go into the Workshop tab I see Llandudno to Manchester Airport but it states that the North Wales Coast Line: Crew - Holyhead route is a required add on? Can anyone explain what's going on there please. Thanks again. I do appreciate your help with what must be pretty basic stuff to you guys.
It may be required and available to you. It's ideal if you can share screenshots. There are-were 2-3 versions of North Wales Coast Line: These have been removed due to branding, store page not available unfortunately, and replaced by: 2022.01.20. North Wales Coast Line: Crewe - Holyhead This appears to be the TfW version. There is a slim chance that the old one (extension I guess) was also Crewe-Holyhead. I don't have it installed. (These forums could use a table feature)
(p) 1H87 Llandudno to Manchester Airport is a Scenario 1H86 10:44 Llandudno to Manchester Airport is a Scenario - Not sure if either of these is what you were looking for. The may or may not use the Route you own which I suspect is 00000086-a000-0000-0000-000000002022 - North Wales Coast Line: Crewe - Holyhead Route https://steamdb.info/sub/167289/ - North Wales Coastal: Crewe - Llandudno was originally published in TS2018 and came with the pack. It was retired and had some issue going on with 'Virgin' branding. This may be the required route - It is no longer available https://steamdb.info/app/1804511/ - North Wales Coast Line: Crewe - Holyhead Route was published in 2022. Some Workshop content is dated and may point back to previous DLC which is no longer available. It is only useful for those who acquired it back in 2018 or managed to acquire a TS2018 key. (Don't bother looking as they are all sold out) Here is my info on the 2022 variant. I keep a listing of current DLCs available https://sites.google.com/view/trainsimulatorcontent/uk-routes/north-wales-coast-line (My Web Site) You can try this site for some good free UK routes: (https://www.dpsimulation.org.uk/routes.html) This is also another site: (https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/mods/c1-train-sim-classic/c11-routes) I commonly use the ATS site, however, it usually requires a lot of AP rolling stock (https://alanthomsonsim.com/) Keep asking the questions and we will help where we can
Blimey, it is complicated isn't it. So if I've understood this correctly I have a scenario in my 2024 version that won't run unless TSC 2024 was installed on top of an earlier version? Kilt46, I tried that link on your website, it redirected to the Steam Store where it told me that it was already in my Library!
No. Every version of RailWorks and Train Simulator is the same game using the same Steam ID (24010). You can buy any version of TS and it'll update to the current version. Each time they change the content included in the base pack, it's just a different bundle, including Train Simulator itself and a number of DLCs. You can exploit this by buying keys for older versions of TS to claim the included DLCs at a discounted price. Train Simulator 2018 was TS, with three routes, one of which was he original North Wales Coastal which only went to Llandudno. There was an extension released later on that went to Holyhead. These were withdrawn when the Virgin Trains license came to an end. Some time later a new version of the route was released, the North Wales Coast Line. This included the full route to Holyhead with Avanti and Transport for Wales branding rather than Virgin and Arriva. Owners of the original and its extension would get the new one for free, but if you didn't have the original version you won't be able to get it anymore. Today Train Simulator comes with the North Wales Coast Line DLC. Remember that the Workshop tab in TS is pretty terrible and usually incorrect. Always launch scenarios from the regular Career or Standard tabs, and ignore the requirements listed in the Workshop tab. Use the description on the Workshop to see what you need to run the scenarios.
This is the link to my site: https://sites.google.com/view/trainsimulatorcontent/uk-routes/north-wales-coast-line
Thanks again for your help. Kilt46, that link takes me to a page showing the route. When I try and download it diverts me to Steam and tells me I've already got it.
My site provides maps of the routes and details of the route. There is a menu at the top where you can see all of the available TSC routes AND all of the TSC available rolling stock
the good part about buying thru Steam is it won't let you buy something you already own Look on the Workshop page for routes that include Crewe to Holyhead but not Crewe to Llandudno https://steamcommunity.com/workshop...les+Coast+Line:+Crewe+-+Holyhead+Route+Add-On
A grayed out play button can be a problem on the Workshop tab as rogue requirements come up from time to time. For instance, a scenario pack was once a requirement. Later, every scenario from a certain period (and even some routes and route updates) required the Metropolitan Line six weeks before it was even released. Later, the Wessex Main Line became the unreleased requirement. I don't know how this keeps happening in the Workshop, and I've bugged Valve about this, but they don't know how to fix it and, from my asking around including of DTG people, it's something Steam would have to fix. I think there is some rogue tick in the asset selection that accidentally ticks on the new route, like it's been assigned to something that is always on. So just ignore the Workshop tab and open from the regular Career and Standard pages. Or do what I do and install them all manually (also prevents all scenario corruption that can and will happen; I have a thread on this) and then unsubscribe after installing so the game doesn't copy over the manual install.
