Creation Sharing Oberwesterwaldbahn: Route In Progress

Hi Robert,

Your route screenshots are fantastic. It is really good to read about how far you have come and see what you have created. (Especially as I just fell flat on my face with the Editor and just keep getting distracted by other things).

Talking of distractions. Have a look at the screenshots below. Still lots to do, and in no way a 100% correct version, but I'm quite pleased with seeing what I have made in just a couple of hours

 

David, that is unbelievable!!! Can't believe my eyes! And how fast you did this?!? That is absolutely amazing!!! Thank you so much for it!

And the funny thing is that I also can tell you something. I contacted the Hessische Landesbahn (HLB) just a half hour ago whether I can use their name and logo officially and with that now what I can see your livery. Fingers crossed that they give the okay to us that we can use your so well-crafted livery! I think I just will send a second mail with the photos of your livery.

 

Since a relatively long time I didn't posted any pictures but also since a way longer time didn't wrote anything about I'm working on, I want to give now a few insights behind the curtains in written form, because I wasn't able to release new material which is up to my own demand. But just to let you know now, I'm still working on the project almost every day and want to go along although hurdles are challenging.

So if you remember and went this thread through you saw that my last post about what I've actually did is quite a long way back at the moment I've finished track laying of the complete route to Au (from 18th of February - more than a month ago).

In the meantime many things happened on the projects, but I simply either did not want to share new information or couldn't because the respective aspect wasn't enough ready.

But now I came at a point where I want to share all the progress I've made in the last 5 weeks and where I'm currently working at.

So this is what happened:

1. I started to begin creating the scenery and using the foliage tool. As you could see from my pictures I shared throughout the last weeks, the result is really nice and I'm happy with what I could achieve so far. I'm also gained important knowledge with the foliage tool and how crucial some aspects of its use for the finished work are. That took some time.


2. Forest and individual trees between Limburg and Wilsenroth are already placed. Since Foliage isn't attached to the terrain and the application of Lidar to a tile does not transpose to the new terrain, I decided to only build the scenery for the part of the state of Hesse completely first. And once I can obtain the Lidar for Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz) in or up from June 2024, I will enhance the part of the scenery at the section between Wilsenroth up to Pracht Hohegrete.

In the rest time between today and June/July (2 to 3 months) I can however already place the houses (if you remember one of my first posts) - and thereby creating the villages -, dive into custom 3D asset creation in Blender and maybe even build a basic timetable. So, there still is a lot to do even if I can't actually work on the direct scenery and tracks on the RLP part.

3. The scenery between Limburg and Niederhadamar is almost at a roughly acceptable state to call it in a way that it's going to be called as "finished". Still missing some individual garden things here and there but the overall scenery already looks quite nice and realistic.

For this part:
- OHLE have been placed and wires have been connected in Limburg (Oh god, that was a challenging!)
- Streets have been completely placed (even on parts of the scenery which are not be able to seem from the tracks)
- Voltage conections have been placed - (as you could seen them in the last pictures I posted a week ago).
- The remaing parts of houses for Elz have been placed.
- Locos got placed on the Limburg trainyard.
- The stations including station clutter got placed.
- Level crossings (including non barrier ones) got placed.

I always wanted to show you some new pictures from it but refrained, seeing it not as completely done, but also because of regard to point 4.

4. For actually quite a few weeks, I'm planning to release the first train ride video and wanted to do it so many times already, but all the times I said in the end "No, this isn't ready for it yet." and refined the scenery. So I am doing every day. I'm currently about place the signals in Limburg and for it to make it work seamlessly without problems, enhance the west and east entrances with tracks to Diez (West) and Eschhofen.



One thing I forgot to say in the video about how I've created Limburg was that underneath the Lahn valley bridge of the SFS Cologne-/Frankfurt is also running the Main-Lahn-Express from Limburg to Frankfurt (the BR 143 and Dostos you could see in the pictures I posted two weeks ago). - You can see that in the right side of the picture. Funny is that above and below, each is separate connection to Frankfurt (Main), either by ICE or RegionalExpress.


5. I got in contact with the Hessische Landesbahn, the current operator of the route, whether they would be okay to use their livery and logo. But no response yet. I guess that they didn't had such a case before and they probably needed to direct the message to their legal office, which may can took a while to get an response from.

I'll give you updates and new pictures when I think it suits best.

Thanks for keeping your interest in this project.
Robert

 

I got some good news and some bad news.

Bad news first. I placed all signals in Limburg, up to Hadamar. But unfortunately, I have severe problems with my signal system at the moment. It's a complete mess and I'm stuck at always showing red light signals. I've track down all possible problems, elimated possible causes, but still it does not seem to work either. It's horrific.

I guess I need to delete all signals and build the signal network completely new from scratch. That will take me some hours but I hope that at least then I can get the signals to work for the entire section then, not only a few meters. I fear that if I couldn't, the whole project is in danger.

Good news. Despite being not able to give you more information or even a short preview video, simply because the signals don't work, some photos from south of Elz station with some alotments we call in german "Schrebergärten".

Oh and another thing. In a post above, I said the section of the route to Niederhadamar would be almost to be called "finished". After I did some test drives, I can say that's absolutely not true. I will need to do much more refinements. And I guess I don't will work in sections and am going to improve things even before the final release (if it will ever come to this point of course). So, don't expect anything of this to be in finished form. There is so much I want to add still (especially for the gardens of the houses at right side), but also to replace. Might it be for the good or for the bad (eliminating things for better performance).

 

These new screenshots do look really, really amazing! I already get the feeling this might quickly become my favourite route when it's out
Keep up the outstanding work, I hope you get your signal troubles sorted out without too much extra effort!

 

It looks beautiful!

 

Hello, I am confused how I would add the Text to signs in the Platform Splines. I found the text box, but somehow the text does not show up on the sign.
Thanks for your help

 

Something to really look forward to.

Great work, Robert!

 

Hi Trainspotting Norden,

In the photo you attached I can see that you used a "lamp spline blueprint", which you can drag alone to get your lamps in the correct distance on the station. I didn't know that there were spline blueprints like that at first, and I placed every lamp on its own on the stations, resulting in a bit of a weird placement in comparison to all other lamps.

So these lamp spline blueprints which you can drag, are very very helpful. However they have an issue. And this is exactly the one you come back to me here now. Which is that for the station boards, they do not have a Text actor child coming with this blueprint.

So, how did I solved this problem and get the text on the station boards?

Well, since my level of experience is fairly limited yet, I choose the only way which work pretty well, but is kind of rudimentary and maybe foolish, but at least it works and does the job. It's basically the thing I already described in the last paragraph of the post you qouted from me. I recall it:

So what this is that you create a Text Actor from the "Place Actors" menu, provide the name of the station in its respective property in the Details tab and then - and this is the part where you really need to be careful and got chilled nerves - place this small 1D Text actor over the station board in the viewport, so that it is perfectly aligned over the board and there is no gap in between the board and the Text actor.

I know, I know this is a bit of weird technique, but it at least works for the moment fine for me. If anyone knows a better way, please feel free to help us both.

If you didn't understand how I do this I maybe can create a video or help you out with a PM in german further, but I can't get in the Editor at the moment and wasn't in the for last days to be honest. Need to reset up my PC for some installations and look if trainsimcz's fix works. I also patienly hope that DTG is fixing the problem today that the Editor can't be launched after the update last friday.

 

The first station after Limburg is Diez Ost/East. It is located close to the west end of the big trainyard of Limburg (and theoretically already could be seen as part of it).

It has a a few special things.

1. (As you maybe remember from my posts in February) There is the prison Diez very close next to it. You can actually can see the church within the prison when you standing on the platforms. The prison walls are a little covered by houses and trees at the station but you also can notice it once you look between them.

2. There are two different platforms here which are not connected with each other. You only can access each platform differently. Platform 1 (also where the old station building is located) is accesible via the street behind, the Schirlinge Straße, and a stairway at the southside of the platform to a street underneath. Platform is only accessible via an equal stairway to the street below.

3. Dependent upon the direction, you either stop at Platform 1 when driving to Limburg, or Platform 2 when you ride out on the countryside.

4. At the soutside of the station the is a small bridge with a street below (which I said to go the stairway in point 2 to).

5. Platform 2 is actually way longer than Platform 1 (I assume the reason because of that is because you have downhill ramp in this way when approaching the station from Limburg and I guess to have sufficient time and space to get the train stopped, the platform is longer.

6. The complete first 22 km of the route are in the state of Hessen, but the funny thing is that for a few hundreds meters (including the station Diez Ost) is actually territory on the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, altough it's actually even a part of Limburg. Don't know why this is the reason, but it is actually very problematic for me because of the missing Lidar data for Rhineland-Palatinate. More to that matter in point 6.

7. As I said before there is an uphill part between Diez Ost and Limburg. It's really steep, and I don't if I actually made a mistake here with the terrain, but I just followed the SRTM data for Rheinland-Pfalz. However, if I did and it's not exactly like that in real life, I think it's actually a pretty nice challenge to deal with the gradient here from both sides. If you come from Limburg, you have to really deal with the breaks to get the train stopping that it hits platform 2 still. If you come from platform 1 towards Limburg you have like a uphill start and need to really power your engine up.

8. In real life both platfroms are actually a bit smaller and have many grass on it. I don't know how I will deal with that, but I actually quite like the optic for now. I would need to remodel my own platform asset which is smaller and has grass, but I think it's fine for now.

9. The old station building in form of a "Fachwerkhaus" is just a placeholer for now. If I got the time, I want to remodel it better to its real life counterpart.

Subject to further changes.

 

Hello, I have found a way to use the other platforms that are not compatiable with the offset-Loft-Tool. You simply click on a placed platform and change the mesh in right collum. I hope that makes sense

 

Yes, I already found that way out, too. (Maybe I didn't speak about it - I can't recall where this was an issue).

If you look at platform 1 for Diez Ost in the images above, you can see a platform blueprint from Niddertalbahn (with the grass) where I used that technique. It works pretty well.

 

very cool

 

I'm speechless, it would be crazy.

I live about 5 km from Hachenburg

 

Cool!

Would be really nice if you could maybe provide me some photos of the surroundings to recreate the scenery as best as possible, because I don't live there anymore. I only get all my impressions from pictures I can find in the internet or memories stuck in my head.

I went to primary school in Westerburg and lived in Westerburg and Berzhahn, where my grandparents lived at that moment of time. I spent the first 10 years of my life there.

I was in Hachenburg a few times, mainly
because of bad things. My mother and grandmother had a bad time there, got medical operations in the hospital. Other times in Hachenburg were doctors which weren't available around Westerburg.

If am not confusing something there were a big toy store at the other end of Hachenburg direction Altenkirchen. As a kid I was so happy being in it.

 

My mother worked in a store called Richter, they also had toys.
There was also the Gross department store with a toy department in an external building.

I could take you pictures of Hachenburg, but it is being rebuilt there.
But I should also have some on my cell phone.

I even did one in Altenkirchen just last Saturday, so I could offer it straight away.

Where do you live?
Do you also speak German?
That would make things easier for me.

 

Altenkirchen View towards the Au and Hachenburg exits

 

Could be that it was that. I'm not quite sure.

I basically would take everything which I can take. I even used some old or blurry pictures.

Ja, ich spreche deutsch.
Leider wohne Ich gar nicht mehr im Westerwald, deshalb bin auch für jede Hilfe aller Art äußerst dankbar.

Super!!!

 

Das ist super

Hab mal geschaut, von der 9-Euro-Ticket Zeit dürfte ich paar Bilder zusammen bekommen..

Gibt es hier eine Möglichkeit private Nachrichten zu schicken?
Vielleicht wäre es gemütlicher die Bilder via WhatsApp oder E-Mail zu schicken.

Es würde mich riesig freuen wenn ich dir da weiterhelfen könnte

 

Frickhofen Richtung Limburg

 

Ja, es gibt eine PrivatNachricht-Möglichkeit hier im Forum, aber leider lassen sich da keine Fotos anhängen.
Ich schicke dir mal gleich eine PM für meine Email-Adresse.

Aber ansonsten kannst du auch ganz einfach hier posten. Du kannst maximal 5 Fotos pro Post anfügen. Und ich habe nichts gegen mehr. Je mehr desto besser!

Vielen Dank

 

Bahnhof Rotenhain mit Blick Richtung Limburg

 

Saw this feedback and wanted to show you that

 

Wow, Ich werde mich mal direkt hinwenden. Matin, Ich habe dir gestern schon einen ausführlichen Kommentar unter dem Video hinterlassen, über die Sachen, die du angesprochen hast, aber auch wie dankbar ich bin, dass sich - wie Du oben sehen kannst - bereits dank deinem Video der Maik oben aus Hachenburg sich bei mir gemeldet hat und mich mit Referenzmaterial unterstützt.

Das ist schon der Hammer, aber es wäre echt super, wenn noch mehr Leute (von unterschiedlichen Teilen der Strecke) mir Referenzmaterial zukommen lassen würden.

Zur Station von Diez-Ost habe ich hauptsächlich Fotos benutzt, die glücklicherweise von Nutzern auf Google Maps hochgeladen wurden.

P.S. Kann es sein, dass mein Kommentar bei dir in deinem Kanal in die Kommentarüberprüfung gekommen ist? Weil obwohl ich ihn gestern geschrieben hatte, sehe ich ihn nicht. Ich hatte früher als ich auch einen etwas größeren YouTube-Kanal hatte, auch immer Kommentare zur Überprüfung, die dann nicht öffentlich sichtbar waren.

 

Ich habe gerade einen Community-Post dazu gemacht und den Thread verlinkt! Vielleicht mache ich nochmal ein Video dazu und hoffe sehr, dass sich ein paar Leute melden. Und klar, ich helfe gerne, ist doch Ehrensache

 

Das wäre echt super, weil im Gegensatz zu ein paar anderen Projekten hier im Forum, ist das als kleine Nichen-Strecken echt sehr schwierig an Leute in der Gegend zu kommen. Es gab auch zwei die sich bei mir bisher aus Limburg und Bad Marienberg gemeldet hatten, aber leiden eben dann der Kontakt irgendwie abgebrochen ist und keine weiteren Informationen (bis auf eine weitere sehr wichtige für die Strecke) oder Fotos gegeben haben.

Wenn man da die Reichweite nutzen kann, wäre es echt super. Bezüglich des Kommentars, falls YouTube ihn nicht durchgelassen hat oder sonstwie verschwunden ist, mache ich ihn heute abend nochmal. Muss leider jetzt weg. Ich werde es dann nochmal neu schreiben, wenn ich wieder am Schreibtisch bin.

Vielen Dank nochmal!!!

 

Ich habe eine Luftaufnahme von Frickhofen, in Blickrichtung vom Bahnhof gefunden. Vielleicht hilft dir das Bild weiter. Der Betonwerk Turm ist leider abgeschnitten, aber in der Realität so um die 200m hoch. Des weiteren habe ich ein Video auf Youtube gefunden, welches sehr interessant sein könnte.

 

Vielen Dank für deine Hilfe, Benedikt. Ich muss sagen, Ich hatte dir bereits mehrfache Kommentare auf YouTube geschrieben, aber bereits 3 mal hat YouTube die nicht durchgelassen.

Deshalb schreibe ich jetzt mal hier. Also wegen dem Passagiervideo ist es so. Ich kann verstehen, wenn du das nicht machen möchtest weil du denkst, dass du andere dann aufnimmst. Aber was ich meinte, war das hier. Schau dir das Video mal an. Hier wird nur das Fenster zur linken Fahrseite (Fahrtrichtung Westerburg) gezeigt. Vorne ist eine Person ein paar Sitze weiter vorne aber, die kann man nicht identifizieren. Das ist natürlich in der 628 und ich weiß nicht wie oft, die heute noch im Einsatz ist, aber so wie ich mich von der 648 erinnern kann, sollten es möglich sein von einem Platz nur das Fenster aufzunehmen. Also was ich bräuchte wäre eine Aufnahme von der gegensätzlichen Seite - Rechtes Fenster (Fahrtrichtung Westerburg) oder Linkes Fenster (Fahrtrichtung Limburg). Das wäre wirklich wahnsinning hilfreich, da zum Beispiel der Bahnhof Hadamar, Staffel oder Diez Platform 2 auf der rechten Seite ist und ich die bisher nicht durch diese Video nicht sehen konnte.




Vielen Dank fürs Video von Frickhofen. Auch die Luftaufnahme von Frickhofen ist super. Von dem Video würde ich sagen, dass der Turm weniger als 20 Meter hoch ist, aber das Video gibt mir schon einen recht guten Eindruck. Ich muss natürlich sagen, dass ich nicht alles 1 zu 1 umsetzen kann, weil einfach die Modelle, die ich von den anderen DLCs bekommen kann, nicht sehr viel Varietät und ja auch Qualität bieten. Ich habe zum jetztigen Standpunkt vor markante Sehenswürdigkeiten zu modellieren und hoffe dass ich das dann hoffentlich nicht allzu schlecht hinbekomme. Ich muss mich da in den nächsten Wochen reinfitzen bis die Lidar-Daten für Rheinland-Pfalz dann irgendwann diesen Sommer hoffentlich veröffentlicht werden, denn aktuell kann ich nur an dem Hessen-Teil oder NRW-Teil (für welche ich beide bereits die hochaufgelösten Lidar-Daten habe) und im Thema Modellieren vorankommen.

Aktuell ist Frickhofen noch nicht sehr ausgereift und man muss bedenken, dass aus Performance-Gründen nicht die ganze Stadt modelliert. Ein wesentlicher Unterschied aber von mir zu DTG's Herangehensweise ist dass mir es sehr wichtig ist, die Städte wenigstens aus der Distanz seinem realen Vorbild gerecht zu werden und man nicht A. vordefinierte Häuser-Reihen einfach copy und paste reinmacht und B. Städte vollkommen zu bauen, auch wenn es nicht mit akurraten Abbildern der Häuser ist. Das macht DTG in dem Aspekt ganz anders.

Meist werden Häuser nur in der relativen Nähe zur Strecke und nicht sehr vielfältig platziert. Bie einigen DLCs ist es zum Beispiel echt erschreckend, wie wenig unterschiedliche Häuser-Assets es gibt und die dann einfach immer wieder wiederholt. Im Prinzip mache ich das selbe auch, aber ich nutze wenigestens die relativ große Anzahl an individuellen Häuser in der Niddertalbahn DLC und achte meistens auch darauf, dass die Häuser 1. an der exakten Stelle stehen auf der sich auch das Original befindet, 2. ähnlich ihrem realen Vorbild sind und 3. auch noch die selbe Ausrichtung wie im Original haben. Weil man kann ein Hause auch nur einfach so dahinklatschen und fertig ist, aber ich mag das nicht.

All das kostet unglaublich viel Zeit, was ich natürlich auch verstehen kann, dass es andere einsparen wollen. Mir ist es eben halt nur wichtig, die Szenarie hinsichtlich der Performance, die möglich ist und die Assets, die ich aus anderen DLCs verwenden (eventuell sogar kombinieren kann) nachzubilden, weil ich mal die Strecke kenne und wenn ich die Landschaft nicht mal grob wieder erkennen würde, wäre für mich schon das halbe Interesse an dem Projekt weg.

Also ich versuche so gut wie es geht mit dem mir möglichen Mitteln die Landschaft hinzubekommen.

Hier ist die aktuelle Sicht auf Frickhofen. Und speziell für dich, die letzen 2 Bilder sind aus Richtung Dorchheim/Elbtal mit dem Google Maps Overlay. Da wie ich dir bereits geschrieben habe Dorchheim/Elbtal sich in unmittelbarer Nähe und Renderdistanz befindet, würde ich die Häuser auch dort platzieren wollen, damit man es von der Strecke aus sehen kann.

Die Häuser und die Supermärkte nähe der Strecke sowie das Bahnhofsgebäude habe ich erstmal noch weggelassen und werden noch verfeinert werden. Genauso der Solarpark der bis jetzt nur mal angetestet wurde.

Frickhofen



Perspektive Dorchheim/Elbtal auf Frickhofen

 

Ich habe nochmal nachgeschaut, anscheinend sind die Kommentare wirklich nicht durch gekommen. Hast du eventuell Discord. Ich hätte etwas für dich, was dir weiterhelfen könnnte

 

Ich habe dir eine Private Nachricht geschrieben.

 

One of the most interesting spots of the route. The slope pass between Hadamar and Niederzeuzheim. The small river is the Elbbach. Thanks to mkraehe#6051 , TaurusCB and emil#3734 for helping me with getting into photo mode to take these pictures.

 

That looks amazing ! I'm really looking forward to your route .

 

I'm really impressed! Keep going

 

Hi, woher hast du die LIDAR daten?

 

Looks like a bot - why would you repost, word for word, a message that I sent in November of last year? Even down to the smiley, lol

 

Hello from someone who wants to get back into the editor game, are you still working on this?

 

English:

Hello everyone,

It's been a while since the last update.

For some reasons, I decided to share no more progress in here anymore unfortunately.

However, there is a problem I'm currently facing with this route specifically, which is the omission of at least one cab ride video, displaying the nearby scenery and railway infrastructure of the route.

This makes it very hard for me to bring the route to a standard many people in this community, but also myself, would demand of it. Unfortunately, this is something retrospectiveIy perceiving, I did underestimate in the beginning of this project.

It's way more important than I thought.

Google Maps as the main reference source is not enough replicating a route. Often the quality is not good enough, does not replicate a scenery exactly as in real life or even contains errors in the satellite images, which make it hard to replicate the tracks and scenery exactly.

During the last months I found many interesting contacts including people with contact to railway personnel or even a former driver of the RB90, and wrote them, asking for help. However, mostly these people didn't even reply.

I'm very thankful though, that through the help of Matin_TSP (TrainSimPlay YouTube channel), I got the contact to the two residents maikcolonia and benedikt_2102 who both provided me very helpful reference material in the form of photos and videos, but the I'm still missing the important cab ride to replicate the scenery which I think only a driver can and is allowed to do or at least grant access to record it.

If anyone has a contact to a person with a profession on the railways in western Hessen, northern Rheinland-Pfalz or southern Nordrhein-Westphalen, high proabably working for the companies of DB Regio Mitte, DB Regio Südwest, DB Regio NRW, DB Cargo/Railion or the Hessische Landesbahn, but also any other private operator, this would be very, very helpful for me.

And if you do not want to handle any discussions with this person, no problem, I could do so on my own. All I need would be the contact to this person; mail adress, phone number or any user profile in an internet's forum or platform to get in touch with.


Another thing I want to offer is if anybody would be interested to cooperate, you can contact me via a DM here or on Discord. One requirement however is that you need to be at least 18 years old. Bad thing here again, I actually found a user on Rail-Sim.de, who wanted to create the route for Train Sim Classic back in June 2023 (5 months before I started this project), but unfortunately also no reply there.



I'm still very eager to get this route to Train Sim World, but the circumstances do not make it easy for me and I have to do the same "Audio - We need your help" step as DTG did finding people who could provide a contact to record audio for US content in the suggestion forum, which is a bit unusual but specfically for a route like this, which is not that popular known beyond the region, where it runs along, very important and almost without alternatives, since I do not live there anymore.

I'm currently waiting until the right opportunity is there and maybe I can get a cab ride, allowing me to replicate the scenery as close to real life as possible.

I also wish that DTG is spending more effort to fix the Public Editor (especially since the TSW5 version is out) and they come back to provide more masterclasses to help people evolve with their community creations.

We also need a way for DTG to get freeware mods onto consoles. That seems to be one of the fundamental problems with all of our creations. That they can only run on PCs and not on consoles. My suggestion here for expanding the Creator Club in this regard.

Thank you for the continued interest and support of everyone in this project over the last 11 months,

Cheers
Robert

I am just translating this to german because the seek for help is mainly directed towards german people, who not necessarily need to or can speak english, so I think this is okay.

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Hallo zusammen,

Das letzte Update ist schon eine Weile her.

Aus gewissen Gründen habe ich mich leider dazu entschlossen, hier keine weiteren Fortschritte mehr zu teilen.

Allerdings habe ich derzeit ein Problem speziell mit dieser Route, nämlich das Fehlen von mindestens einem Führerstandsmitfahrtvideo, das die nahegelegene Landschaft und die Eisenbahninfrastruktur der Strecke zeigt.

Das macht es mir sehr schwer, die Route auf einen Standard zu bringen, den viele Leute in dieser Community, aber auch ich selbst, von ihr verlangen würden. Leider ist das etwas, was ich im Nachhinein betrachtet zu Beginn dieses Projekts unterschätzt habe.

Es ist viel wichtiger, als ich dachte.

Google Maps als meine bisherige Hauptreferenzquelle reicht nicht aus, um eine Route nachzubilden. Oft ist die Qualität nicht gut genug, bildet eine Landschaft nicht genau wie im echten Leben nach oder enthält sogar Fehler in den Satellitenbildern, die es schwer machen die Gleise und die Szenarie exakt zu platzieren.

Während der letzten Monate habe ich viele interessante Kontakte gefunden, darunter Leute mit Kontakten zu Eisenbahnpersonal oder sogar einem ehemaligen Fahrer des RB90, und habe ihnen geschrieben und um Hilfe gebeten. Meistens haben diese Leute jedoch nicht geantwortet.

Ich bin jedoch sehr dankbar, dass ich durch die Hilfe von Matin_TSP (YouTube-Kanal von TrainSimPlay) den Kontakt zu den beiden Anwohnern maikcolonia und benedikt_2102 bekommen habe, die mir beide sehr hilfreiches Referenzmaterial in Form von Fotos und Videos zur Verfügung gestellt haben, jedoch mir fehlt immer noch die wichtige Führerstandsmitfahrt, die meiner Meinung nach nur ein Fahrer durchführen oder zumindest zugänglich machen kann und darf.

Wenn jemand Kontakt zu einer Person hat, die beruflich bei der Eisenbahn im westlichen Teil von Hessen, südlichen Teil von Nordrhein-Westphalen oder nördlichen Teil von Rheinland-Pfalz arbeitet, höchstwahrscheinlich bei den Unternehmen der DB Regio Mitte, DB Regio Südwest, DB Regio NRW, DB Cargo/Railion oder der Hessischen Landesbahn, aber auch bei einem anderen privaten Betreiber, wäre das für mich sehr, sehr hilfreich.

Und wenn Sie keine Diskussionen mit dieser Person führen möchten, kein Problem, das kann ich alles tun. Alles, was ich nur bräuchte, wäre der Kontakt zu dieser Person selbst; E-Mail-Adresse, Telefonnummer oder ein beliebiges Benutzerprofil in einem Internetforum oder einer Internetplattform, mit dem/der man Kontakt aufnehmen kann.

Außerdem möchte ich anbieten, dass mich jeder, der an einer Zusammenarbeit interessiert ist, über eine DM hier oder auf Discord kontaktieren kann. Voraussetzung ist jedoch, dass ihr mindestens 18 Jahre alt sein musst. Auch hier ist es wieder etwas blöd, dass ich tatsächlich einen Nutzer auf Rail-Sim.de gefunden habe, der die Route bereits im Juni 2023 (5 Monate bevor ich mit diesem Projekt begann) für Train Sim Classic erstellen wollte, aber leider auch dort keine Antwort mehr von ihm erhielt.

Ich bin immer noch sehr interessiert daran, diese Route in Train Sim World zu bringen, aber die Umstände machen es mir nicht leicht und ich muss denselben Schritt „Audio - We need your Help“ durchführen, den DTG im Vorschlagsforum getan hat, um Personen mit Zugang zu Lokomotiven zu finden, um Audioaufnahmen für US Content erstellen zu können, was etwas ungewöhnlich ist, aber insbesondere für eine Route wie dieser, die über die Region, durch die sie verläuft, hinaus nicht so bekannt ist, sehr wichtig und nahezu alternativlos ist, da ich persönlich nicht mehr an der Strecke wohne.

Ich warte derzeit, bis sich die richtige Gelegenheit ergibt und ich vielleicht eine Führerstandsmitfahrt bekommen kann, sodass ich die Szenarie an der Strecke so realitätsnah wie möglich nachbilden kann.

Ich wünsche mir auch, dass DTG mehr Anstrengungen unternimmt, um den Public Editor zu reparieren (speziell nach dem TSW5 Release vom Editor), und dass sie wiederkommen, um mehr Lernvideos anzubieten, damit die Leute sich mit ihren Community-Kreationen weiterentwickeln können.

Zudem brauchen wir eine Möglichkeit von DTG, Freeware-Mods auf die Konsolen zu bekommen. Das scheint eines der fundamentalen Probleme mit all unseren Kreationen zu sein. Das sie nur auf PCs laufen können, und nicht auf Konsolen. Hier ist mein Vorschlag diesbezüglich den Creator Club zu erweitern.

Vielen Dank für das anhaltende Interesse und die Unterstützung aller an diesem Projekt in den letzten 11 Monaten,

Viele Grüße
Robert

 

Sad, but I have seen it coming. Project after project is closed down.

Face it, TSW was never meant to be a community driven project. It is gated. Muff from trainsimcz has given us the possibility to create timetables and scenery enhancements - not DTG. The Unofficial Editor was out before.

DTG have fulfilled their 2017 promise with the editor, seems to only demonstrate to us "you can't handle this, we told you".

As to why people want perfection for their first amateur projects is a mystery to me. Striving for perfection realistically means it will never be done. As Steve Jobs said.

I'd welcome you to join the TSC route building community. On PC, believing the Steam charts, where people have the choice between TSC and TSW, both games are equally popular, TSW only leading by a small margin. TSC is a creators' game unlike TSW. Even Diesel Railcar Simulator comes with a built in easy to use route and timetable builder.

Apart from that, there's also Google RailView if you don't have videos.

 

You're obviously welcome to have you (in my opinion, overly negative) views about the TSW Editor, but perhaps reconsider whether or not it's really the most productive thing to re-state them about every other day in a different forum thread by a person who's actually working with and achieving things in the TSW Editor.

Issues with the Editor aside (I don't believe Matt is just flat-out lying to the community about the desire and plans to fix those, but obviously you're welcome to disagree), you can't tell me there isn't a wealth of TSC projects that got abandoned because someone bit off more than they could chew as well... that's just how humans are, not a problem that's somehow inherent to TSW.

Not that it matters for a hobby project, but since you brought it up: If TSW and TSC have an equal number of players on Steam, TSW will still have more PC players, since it's also available on the Microsoft Store and on the Epic Games Store.

 

Difference is there's not been a single route released for TSW yet. I have respect for people using the worst editor for any game, but the facts are clearly showing that no one is able to release a route, that's why I'm going for "expect nothing". My opinion is negative because I see what's happening, and I've never been proven wrong so far. I wish I would, but if you're still falling for empty promises, I can't help you.

I value your opinion, but the facts just paint a different picture. Also the lack of a large third party scene, for many it's simply not interesting to only release their work through DTG.

 

I'm not taking issue with your opinion itself, just where you choose to post it. In creators' threads, DTG will not see it, but it will discourage people from pursuing projects they might otherwise find enjoyment and success in.

 

Cab rides are way more efficient because it allows to show the railway infrastructure at every location of a railway, not only certain spots captured, which is the problem with the material provided by my lovely helpers, Maik and Benedikt, and the material I found on Google Maps and elsewhere on the internet.

Even DTG creates routes with cab rides (only?). In my opinion, it even should be a requirement for the LAMPOIL process for selecting routes.

I know that it might be a bit hard to understand why it's so necessary (was for me too) but basically if I proceed without it, it means many spots become more or less fictional, if not completely unrealistic, which is not only what I don't want but also not worth to invest more time in, in my opinion.

And this is a thing a lot of people do underestimate (creators but also people hoping for all our projects). The amount of time it needs to invest in such a project and what things in your life to sacrifice for it, is insane. It's not a weekend only project, it's a project you work on for every day at least 2 to 3 hours, for year(s), all of this dependent upon your skillset. If you didn't know Unreal Engine before, imagine how much longer it will need.

DTG and third parties do work with 5 to 50 people for years on it as their regular job, not in their free time (passion projects like Joe's timetable for SKA are exceptions). Therefore, I think the prices of DLCs became a lot more reasonable to me in the last few months.

I personally think its no shame at all if anyone in this PC Editor Forum will give up or at least pause their projects for a time. Because I know now it doesn't dependent on your skill set only, it depends on your life situation and the amount of time you can invest into it.

I would advice to anyone who want to start a new project to know what they're up to before they doing it and if you don't have the time in your life for a project like this, don't start it. It has the potential to drown you out. Focus on your apprenticeship, school or life instead. Do it only if you have the time for it.

But keep in mind, this is not meant to be the shutdown of this project in any way. This is my hometown route and I want to drive on it one day.

The message above was just meant to say I'm looking for a way to get in touch with a driver of the railway to get a cab ride and people interested to participate, nothing else.

 

I accept that, and will refrain from that, as I can see the point. To stay on topic of Robert's project, I think I'd say don't set your own first project goals too high (even Matt said that). I don't think anyone is expecting a freeware route to be fully realistic, most won't know the route anyway. I've seen the diary of a gorgeous swiss route project on rail-sim.de by user GeoCord, a self admitted perfectionist. It got abandoned, which was sad to see for those who followed the promising dev diary.

 

I am kinda surprised YouTube doesnt have a cab ride video, as it is swarmed by cab ride videos even from obscure routes

 

Hey Robert!

Good to see, that my community post back then actually helped. Keep going.

Also I found a few YouTube videos that might help you with the scenery. Did you know about these?:

 

Yes, there are a lot of cab ride videos to watch but unfortunately not every route has a cab ride video available, yet.

Sometimes I've seen mainlines even not having a single one but then there are rural diesel branch lines (actually like this one) which have several ones (in both directions) available on YouTube.

It depends on a lot of factors, I would say, but most of it is luck.

If you have a 4K cab ride video for a route, in both directions, its like hitting the lotto for a route creator and you're really lucky.

Hi Matin!

Thank you very much for your help again.

The 1.) and 3.) I already do know and help to create the vegetation and scenery at specific places but are no cab rides unfortunately.

The 4.) is the cab ride video of the Upper Lahntalbahn from Limburg (Lahn) to Giessen and only shows the eastern outbound towards Eschhofen (Frankfurt/Giessen), which this wouldn't route be affected of. There is also 2 other cab rides from Giessen to Limburg, which do show the station of Limburg better.

By the way, if you open this video on YouTube, you can see my comment asking the creator for help. This is one of the many cases, where nobody replied as I mentioned above.

And then there are also cab rides available for the Lower Lahntalbahn from Limburg (Lahn) towards Koblenz, which use the western outbound and is actually used by this route and I already used for creating Limburg's yard and OHLE, however it depicts the important path for me only up to minute 3:40, where the route branches off north.



The 2.) is actually exactly what I would need, good position, clear vision on the track and the nearby scenery, everything is perfect. That the video shows the rear view is no problem at all.

But it only covers a portion of less than 1 and a half minute, which is far too small. The title is also misleading. While its correct that its the service from Limburg to Westerburg, the video only depicts a portion of the route between Staffel and Elz, and even that not correctly from each station to the other.

Funny though, I can make a 1 to 1 comparison here to the screenshot I posted earlier this year. I already can see a lot of differences, which I would want to change. The ballast is not correct and the track is not covered that much with grass. There are also differences to the type of trees and selection of used buildings. And I might added a little bit too much cars...

Something like that would be perfect for a bigger portion of the route.

 

Ok, time to start digging at least a bit. If you look at the Zusi map, you can see that not only was the Au - Altenkirchen section done but the rest all the way down to Limburg is shown as abandoned or canceled.
https://www.zusi-sk.eu/

After looking a bit, I found a thread that shows it was made and worked on by some guy names Thomas Ritz. He has to be pretty reachable because of Zusi stuff so maybe you could ask him for some reference material?
https://forum.zusi.de/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=15102

Then there's this site supposedly collecting cabviews. Your route is number 460 in the list and has just a questionmark next to it so, there's probably little chance of getting that publicly.
http://www.rad-gleis.de/str/zu/videolinks.htm

Also for filling small gaps in knowledge, I would suggest reading chapter 10 of the German manual for Zusi 3. It deals with estimating specifications of rail infrastructure using real-world norms and could be useful for estimating small things like the allowed speed over a crossover.


As for the difficulty of building a route and environment art in general (making the rail infrastructure is uncomparably quicker), I think I do have an advantage here. That is that I'm more interested in the art process rather than in being able to use the finished result. I just don't care if my thing gets done or if it gets published or not. I mainly want to enjoy making it and if that isn't happening, I can move on.

 

Hi Thomas,

First, sorry that I didn't reply sooner.

This is actually something, which is very interesting indeed and I'm already aware of.

The section between Au (Sieg) and Obererbach is covered in Zusi. I have no clue why the developer exactly decided to do that, doing only a small portion and abandon the rest of the railway.

My assumption is that they discovered this railway while building the Sieg Railway and then expanded until the 1000m long Marienberg tunnel, which acts like kind of a special landmark, so they made it until Obererbach to have it in. But the end at Obererbach does not really make a sense, since no services end there in real life, it's just a small station or stop point by definition.



Actually one of the reasons to start this project here was because the railway didn't proceed further along and also didn't cover the southern part which I was mainly interested in to replicate in the first place.

This is interesting actually.

He says he made a big number of shots during quite some trips to there. However of most interest at the moment to me is the sentence "Fortunately, I have some (non-public) sources available that can make track construction a little easier."

Although some people are not that open for Train Sim World in the german train simulation scene or to share part of their hardly earned research material in general, I will try to get in touch with him I guess. See if he can provide me anything.

Thank you very much for the tip!

In the description at the top of the page, the author says that the question mark means that they couldn't find one for it as well. So about the same state as I'm in, I think.

Going to have a look at this as well.

However, the cab ride allows a vision beyond theory. Sometimes places are replicated in a different way or are there a some specific speed restrictions/signalling due to the local circumstances or laws.

But thanks for the tip here again!

One thing I figured out is that different people have different interests, when creating content for the game. A lot of people have interest in building a timetable, then there are others who have interest in building a loco. As it seems, a few people only really have interest in replicating a route/map, at least on the long term.

And I can understand why. As Matt said once, once you got the knowledge to know how things work, it's a very repititive process but the repitition and time for it is the challenge. Especially the longer the route shall be.

90% of the projects illustrated in this forum since the Public Editor launch a year ago have been abondened, once people got to know how tough it actually is and how many time they need more to get a result of their liking, if at all.

Then there are others who are still on it and don't give up, deepest respect for them but I think its the best for everyone to estimate when things still make sense any longer or not. This is not a threat, its a simple advice to anyone planning a project in the future.

If you have the will and time to do it, no problem, but keep in mind the circumstances around.

I think it would be great to have one freeware route project, which shows that it is possible to actually have a final result for Train Sim World. This would engage the community again and maybe brings DTG to invest more ressources to fix and enhance the public Editor.