Default and Freeware steam trains

[harryadkins]

There are several freeware models of the 4-4-2 at the www.train-sim.com website and a 4-4-0 & 2-8-0 here in the Railworks America file library. There is also a Chinese 2-10-0 out there somewhere.

[thecanadianrail]

the only US payware steam i know of is from GTrax, Britkits that still sell them, there was a third, but i think they stoped making them?

[arizonachris]

IHH made Big Boy and Challenger, but Paul is now concentrating on British electric/ diesel and some steam loco's, all payware. B7 wants free stuff. (can't say as I blame him, LOL)

I think that most default steam locomotives are British, I can't think of any US default steam. Most if not all is payware or third party freeware. But you are not going to find a lot of freeware steam, they are complex models to build, so most modelers at least want $10 or so for their effort.

[robbit]

I believe the consolidation is a free default steam engine included (correct me if I am wrong)

[XDriver]

I believe the consolidation is a free default steam engine included (correct me if I am wrong)

The consolidation comes free with the Challenger. But! You have to buy the Challenger. I know he doesn't want to spend money but the G-TraX and Britkits steamers are well worth the money.

[thecanadianrail]

The consolidation comes free with the Challenger. But! You have to buy the Challenger. I know he doesn't want to spend money but the G-TraX and Britkits steamers are well worth the money.

if you bought RW2 boxed version you got the challenger as a bonus with the consolidation.

[steve_the_slim]

If you can find the Chinese steamers, they're definitely worth getting, and they're free. The best part is that several of these engines were imported to the US in real life, so it's actually sort of prototypical to run them on US routes (although I don't think either of the two railroads that I know own them have been modeled in RW yet).

[johnmckenzie]

No default US steam is included - but the default UK Black 5 is nice and the default UK S&DJR 7F is very nice. The default German/Austrian BR52 2-10-0 freight loco, however, is very nice indeed...

There are lots of freeware UK steam locos downloadable at UKTrainSim too... Some great locos there!

[arizonachris]

RSC now owns the rights to the Big Boy. If you got it thru Steam, I would think that when you reinstalled RW it should be there. But if you got it from IHH direct, then you may want to send Paul a note on his website and see if he has any suggestions.

[robbit]

Thanks for the correction, I did buy the boxed version that came with the challenger but did not realize that the consolidation came with that. And I was going to write a scenario with the consolidations as part of default so no one would have to do a separate download but I guess that is not going to happen now. Going to have to come up with a different idea

[gwgardner]

Check out

http://railworks.banal.net/catalog/catalog.html

Actually the only freeware I see there is Ron Pertuit's Atlantic, which is in the Railsim, not the Railworks, section fo the train-sim file library. But you can install into Railworks.

And Cecil Kerr's 4-4-0 in the file library here.

[Kali]

No default US steam is included - but the default UK Black 5 is nice and the default UK S&DJR 7F is very nice. The default German/Austrian BR52 2-10-0 freight loco, however, is very nice indeed...

There are lots of freeware UK steam locos downloadable at UKTrainSim too... Some great locos there!

As defaults go the Black5 wasn't a bad choice - by being the most common steam type - but the 7F is a bit of an odd duck. While they were a bit iconic for the S&D route, which is the only reason there's any default steam engines in there at all, so would a 9F have been and there's a lot more places you can use those...

I think we've been here before with trying to pick what on earth a decent "default" US steamer would be...

[jpetersjr]

I think any US steamer would make a decent default steamer, as long as it had decent sounds and whistles that could also be used on other steamers. The only problem is it would have to be free and come as a update for the game to be considered default.

Perhaps someone should make the Hudson or a version of a Pacific as a default. I have reference photo's for both the regular Hudson and more reference photo's for a Pacific, including cab photo's of the engine.

If you would agree to make it as a default engine I'll hand over all of my reference photo's to you, I have somewhat more then 100 photo's for the Pacific and about 10 or 15 photo's of the cab. I have one whistle sound that would work with it, but I don't have the rest of the sounds.

Here is a picture of the actual Pacific locomotive.

ATSF 3415 3.jpg

This is ATSF number 3415, a real surviving Pacific steam locomotive.

[steve_the_slim]

I think if RSC were to make a default US steamer, they should probably go with one of the USRA designs, since those were used on many different railroads and could be run on pretty much any route. On the other hand, a UP 4-8-4 would go great with the collection of UP equipment already included, and now that the Horseshoe Curve route is included in new RW installations a K4 or another Pennsy steamer would also be a good choice. This is getting a bit off-topic, though, and I'm pretty sure we've already gone over this same thing several times, so I'll just leave it at that.

[jacko]

If you don't mind UK steam locos I can recomend the ones by Kingtrains Kevin Martin. He is slowly working through them to make them TS2012 ready, the Ivatt tender loco is done as is the 0-6-0 3F Tank "Jinty". Some of these are having new sounds added too. There will be a BR livery King pack released before the end of the year, could be quite soon. This will have custom sounds also and double and single chimney versions.
Available from UKTS file library.