Hi to all,

I have started this week working on a new route: Italy's Palermo-Agrigento and Porto Empedocle route. The route itself is available at T-S.com. The patch and rolling stock will be available at trenomania.it. In the readme file, each file will have the exact link in order to download the necessary files. Simply click on the link inside the readme file and voila! Simple as it gets! The route is located in the island of Sicily, Italy, covers the area from Palermo, in the Northwest, along the Tyrrhenian Sea, to Agrigento, 140 km further Southeast and towards Porte Empedocle, 10 km further, connecting with the Mediterranean Sea. A remarkable route! The route is a mix of rugged mountains, shorelines, flat and steep grades and has many tunnels. Some grades are estimated between 2 and 3%. It is double track from Palermo to Fiumetorto and turns single track south towards Agrigento and Porto Empedocle. Despite being located in an island, it is a very scenic route and will be a delight for scenic-oriented users.

The Palermo-Agrigento package is expected to include NB and SB templates with multiple paths and has more than 100 sidings available for switching. The timeframe for the template should be in the mid-70’s where diesel and electric locomotives were servicing the area, including passenger and freight traffic. One of the rare features present in any AG templates which have single track main lines, I hope to include in the present package (and it looks good so far) is the presence of AI traffic throughout the entire route, including along the single track main line.

Despite the fact that a good part of the route is on a one track main, which usually make meets often impossible to achieve in any AG template, configuration of the signalling system between the villages will make possible use of AI traffic and the user will be able to meet successfully AI trains. So far tests already done are conclusive in this matter, as mentioned above. The player and traffic paths have been carefully planned to allow such meets. However, to ensure complete success in meeting AI trains, length of all consists (player and AI) must not exceed about 10-12 cars (about 250 meters in length). Some of the villages have short platform sidings which will limit the length of consists in meeting the AI trains. If the player train exceeds the limit, in some areas the meeting AI train may collide with the back of the player train (or vice versa) or have the activity ended because of a ignored red signal.

Unfortunately, the type of rolling stock to be worked with so far is limited only to boxcars, gondolas and autoracks. Trenomania.it, one of the main MSTS sites in Italy has a quality control monitoring and indicates if the rolling stock available is reliable or not. Also, coupling issues ( bounding box?) have reduced evenmore the number of rolling stock available for the template. Testing of some other type of cars ended with coupling problems and forced limitations to those indicated above. I may have to contact its creator Giuseppe Iannuzzi ( in Italian thanks to Google Translation) in helping to find additional stock. Even with that limited number of freight cars when it comes to variety, it will be well worth creating a template with all this Ai traffic in both directions, challenging indeed, not to forget the great scenery to enjoy and, of course, the switching.

In the meantime, I have taken some shots along the double track main line and here are some great shots along the Tyrrhenian Sea, including Termini Imerese, an important port in Sicily.

I hope to provide later with some more pictures along the single track line towards Agrigento and Porto Empedocle

Enjoy

Denis

Denis,

Wow, this route has some of the most photo-realistic scenery I have seen on an MSTS route! Also for those who aren't familiar with european freight operations, 10-12 car trains are actually the norm in much of this area because there are many passenger trains and the freight trains often have to meet at station platforms. Also they want a high HP-weight ratio so that the freights don't hold up the considerable passenger traffic. You won't see the 100 car drag freights in Italy and Switzerland that you do in the US.

If you would like to consider correcting the bounding box problems, you might check a utility available at www.train-sim.com called BBoxEdit, file name bboxv1_2.zip . Norm Beveridge has fixed a lot of bounding box problems and he could be helpful with this.

Thanks for creating this template for our community!

Cheers,

Steve Davis

Hi again,

Thanks for the advice Steve. However, after downloading the software, I have encountered some incompatibily problems, having to to do with measures in feet, not in meters. Have finally gone to TS and read BNSF lady's topic of the bounding boxes and understood enough to work on each downloaded material I had for the template. Also with this new knowledge, was able to have four new pieces of rolling stock and done the same thing. Also modified some coupling settings (mainly r0 and Break settings with EngMod 2.0) and now everythng works fine now. No problem coupling and uncloupling, neither coupler breaks . Just great!

During testing have encountered some red signals that would't go away at Aragona and Agrigento. This was to the way I have set my traffic along the template. The traffic paths were actually set first here and believe this may be the source of the problem. Have decided to scrap all player and traffic paths and will rework all the paths by starting to do all player paths first, then traffic after.

Here are finally some shots from the single track main line and quite a difference the scenery makes.

Enjoy the scenery

Hi to all,

The Palermo-Agrigento template is finished and has been sent to Steve for uploading. The player and AI paths have been completely re-done from scratch and testing of both the NB and SB templates using the longest paths have been successful. Coupling and bounding issues have been fixed.The meets with other trains went flawlessly. AI trains leave their departure point every hour. If you like to have meets on a one-track main, this template is for you. I have worked the best way possible to include with the readme file an italian version of the readme file, with the help of the Google Translation site for our italian users.

To its Creator Giuseppe Iannuzzi: Congratulazioni Giuseppe.Ben fatto (Congratulations Giuseppe, well done).

In regards to coupling and Bounding boxes, just remember that the user will have to check and make himself the necessary adjustments. But for those who are familiar with the procedures, there will no problems. For those who would like some information about learning how to make Bounding box adjustments, a good article by our late beloved BNSF lady is available in TS. This is the document I used and have learned and understood enough to proceed myself with the adjustments

If you can work it out, this is a great route to work with.

Enjoy