New to Railworks, first impressions

[deepsouthrailfan]

Hi guys,
I just picked up Railworks3 today at Wal-Mart for $20. I have been a long time MSTS player and decided I would try a change.

First impressions of train operation and models are very similar to MSTS, also the key functions and cameras are also very similar to MSTS. I like the fact that the default routes and equipment look a million times better than default MSTS. I also like the interactive loading/unloading feature.

I will experiment with downloaded content and route design later this week.

Are there any freeware programs that are a must download; like a shapeviewer or conbuilder type program.

Also, is RailSimulator and/or Railworks 2 content compatable for Railworks 3.

Thanks for any help,
Randy

[LoneWolfDon]

Hi Randy. Welcome aboard to the wonderful word of RailWorks.

There's lots of info and resources available, but I'll quickly mention a couple:

If you're looking to get into using the route-building and/or scenario-building editors, aside from reading the PDF manuals that already come with RW3 (you can easily find form the Launcher's Tools & Docs tab), here's a couple of other links that I might suggest you check out:
http://www.youtube.com/user/RailSimulat ... y=tutorial
http://www.railsimdownloads.com/wiki/tiki-index.php

Mike's RW_Tools I'd recommend, and for me it's a "must have" utility:
http://www.rstools.info/rw_tools.html
It's free-to-try for a limited number of uses, then after that it's Donate-ware. But once you learn how to use some of what it can do, you will probably find it to be a very helpful utility.

If looking for some free addons, you can of course check RailWorksAmerica's own Library section (view any ReadMe documents though for any extras that may be required for some).

And if interested, I also have several addons I've made and offer from my own site: http://www.RRYard.com , that you can find in the "Routes & Scenarios" section there. I also have a couple of little tutorial-videos on my site, and have recently started an e-zine as well.

You will find most content that worked for RailWorks 1 & 2 still works well with RailWorks3. And some RailSimulator content will still work fine with RW3 as well (but not all).

Well, like I mentioned, there's lots more resources out there, and I'm sure others can give some good suggestions to you as well.
You'll find the RailWorksAmerica forums here to generally be a friendly and helpful place to hang-out at too.

Best wishes! ###Don###

[deepsouthrailfan]

Thanks, I look foward to helping the community as much as possible.

I just need to figure out how and where RW stores different files and how they all "talk" to each other. Some repaint downloads do not include much of a read-me on how to install its files. The package intaller/uninstaller is a great idea for RW really helps.

Randy

[Chacal]

Here's a trick: a package is simply a zip file with a .rwp extension. So you can open them with, for example, 7-zip and explore their content if you want to learn about file types and file locations.

[jpetersjr]

Also, if you will be route building, perhaps these would be of some use to you.

Downtown_Buildings_Pack_1.jpg

A little while back I built these and they are now available for download and use here in the library.

I'm currently working on a new set of these as well.

[harryadkins]

Hi Randy,

Where are you from? I grew up in SE Alabama and live in South Carolina. Nice to see more southern modelers joining. Hope you enjoy RW as much as I have.

Harry