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Trainz Railroad Simulator 2004 Full Version: Tips and Tricks for Beginners and Experts



Trainz 2004, published and distributed in 2003 was, in the eyes of many (after four service packs of growing pains!), perhaps the perfect Windows version of the Trainz Simulator product line. Even at this writing (April 2015) with the 64-bit TANE on the near-horizon as a viable product release, TRS2004 still has its fans, adherents and supporters creating content. It was a revolutionary product with capabilities and abilities never seen before: the ability to control world environmental parameters, introduction of sensible interactive industries and complimentary traincars, along with the capability of making multiple sessions happen on the one and same route without the fuss and bother of external (and blind) scenario generation and its session capabilities, and improvements over the tedious task of scenario writing, truly opened floodgates allowing content creator's to give users a taste of the Trainz experience on truly large routes and with complicated switching scenarios so beloved of the tournaments of physical model railroading clubs with their monthly dues and expensive club houses to maintain.




trainz railroad simulator 2004 full version




When Trainz was released in 2002, it was a hit among railroad enthusiasts. Half simulation and half creativity tool, Trainz let you build the virtual railroads of your dreams with a very user-friendly set of editing tools. Then you could ride the rails across your newly created routes or those created by other fans. For all of Trainz's strengths, the program was limited in many ways. The focus tended to be more on simulating model railroading than simulating real-world railroading, at least until ambitious fans learned how to push the program's boundaries. There was no easy way to simulate real railroad operations; trackside industries didn't actually produce anything; and there were no steam engines, among other flaws. With Trainz Railroad Simulator 2004, fans can start checking items off of their Trainz wish lists. This new version incorporates features from patches to the original Trainz while adding major new features, like steam engines and dynamic railroad industries. Trainz 2004 could have used more polish and improvement in some areas, but overall it's a welcome addition to the growing Trainz franchise.


As far as the basics go, Trainz 2004 is quite like its predecessor, which is definitely a good thing. It's a modular system with a few basic components. The Surveyor module lets you create railroad routes, replete with detailed scenery and operating switches and signals. The Driver module lets you drive across the routes. The Railyard module lets you view all your cars and engines. In Railyard, you see that developer Auran has addressed one of the biggest flaws of the original Trainz. Now you get steam engines--and some glorious ones at that. Along with diesel and electric engines from all over the world (not to mention many kinds of railroad cars), Trainz 2004 includes steam locomotives like the famed Flying Scotsman and the massive Union Pacific Big Boy. Some relative obscurities, like an Italian engine from the 1920s, make appearances too.


Trainz 2004's Driver module offers many of the same basic features as before. Here you drive trains by using a simple model railroad-style controller or more complex controls and physics that are modeled after the real thing. You can view the action from multiple angles: a 360-degree interior cab view, dramatic tracking shots, a dynamic external view linked to specific engines or cars, and now--prayers have been answered--a true free-roaming view that lets you skip all across a route. Along with the trackside views, a map mode lets you watch and control the overall action from on high, though it can sometimes be hard to read the small station and industry labels easily.


Along with Railyard and Driver, the Surveyor layout-creation module boasts some new features. For example, you now place "consists" (engines and groups of cars) on a route directly from this module as part of session creation, and you can set commodity input/output levels for certain industries. Overall, Surveyor remains a wonderfully user-friendly tool that lets you quickly shape terrain, color it, lay track, place buildings and other scenery, and more. You should be able to hammer out a small, nice-looking layout in a few hours. With more time and effort, you can create a huge railroad empire with about as much detail as you want. Trainz 2004 offers dozens of new scenery items to fire your imagination, too.


Trainz 2004 could use improvement and added polish in other areas as well. You only get a brief printed manual and no printed list of keyboard commands, so you'll need to turn to a bunch of PDF manuals for most of your information. The game is also marred by long load times. Along with suffering from a number of bugs and typos, the program crashed our computer during installation. You also have to wonder why no online capability is included. It would have been great fun to run simulated operations with multiple players handling different trains and dispatching to mimic the sorts of sessions you can find at model railroad clubs. Still, the new features in Trainz Railroad Simulator 2004 are most welcome and make it a more realistic sim, in addition to making it more like a game. With the original Trainz, some people said, "Well, that's nice, but what are you supposed to do when you're done riding in circles?" Now these people have an answer: You can create a route, enjoy riding around on it, and with the new interactive industries and AI drivers, you can really make the train do something.


Trainz Railway Simulator 2006 (known as Trainz Railroad Simulator 2006 in the USA), or TRS2006, was a transitional release, incorporating the stable Auran JET based TRS2004 GUI modules with only some graphics improvements, but introducing the data base manager Content Manager Plus (CMP) as a new core technology. ContentManager.exe (now called just CM) combines data base management, and secure FTP upload and download facilities and special user definable filters all in one integrated system. By defining a good filter, the user could 'selectively not see' the clutter of regional items in the Surveyor asset selection menus saving user time when world building. This important filtering feature was further improved in Trainz 2009, becoming far more powerful and easier to use. In addition to these improvements, several new routes were included, such as Hawes Junction (representing a small section of the Settle and Carlisle Railway and serving as a demo for TC3), Toronto Rail Lands 1954 (representing Toronto's sprawling railyard in 1954), and Marias Pass Approach (representing the BNSF Marias Pass line between Shelby, Montana and Cut Bank, Montana and serving as a demo for the full Marias Pass payware route). TRS2006 was published in September 2005, and the base release with its single service pack formed the core of the regional releases (most are joint ventures with 'Trainz Partners' combining payware content provider's products with the base Trainz software) over the next four years until the introduction of new technologies in TC3 and TRS2009. In Germany, it was published by Bluesky-Interactive, as ProTrain Perfect.[citation needed]


This snapshot of the history of Trainz shows how the product has evolved over time and at each stage we have added features and functionality to broaden the railroad experience. Each product has improved upon the previous version and TRS2004 is the fastest selling Trainz product ever thanks to a wider audience awareness, more concentrated launch schedule and greater retail presence.


The aim of EE is to add to the overall realism of the simulation for budding (or retired) engineers. EE will include new prototypical routes, new locos, new cabs and a number of new features focussed on cabs, tracks, and the overall driving experience. The Expansion Pack will require a full version of TRS2004 and will be totally backwards compatible (with TRS). Pricing, full feature sets and release dates will be announced during the year. 2ff7e9595c


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