How to add crews to all types of loco

Hi Len,

in order to add crews to an existing model of which you do not have the source files, you need to make a freight animation. This consists of a regular MSTS shape file, depicting the crew (with all the accompanying necessary stuff, like textures and SD file) and an entry in the ENG file: FreightAnimation (shapefilehere.s 1 1), though I´m not exactly sure what the two numbers (here both 1) are used for.

Also, if you have an engine that already uses a freight animation, you cannot add the crew this way for MSTS, as that sim only supports one FA per ENG file.

ORTS, however, allows for an unlimited number of FAs, AFAIK, so you can add them to every loco when used with ORTS.

Cheers, Markus

Thanks, Charlie. Going to check out a couple of those.

A couple of notes about the FreightAnim: This was originally envisioned to be used to load and unload open top cars suitable for bulk loading but it didn't really work so it was distilled down to the coal loads in tenders. The numbers in the FA are to tell MSTS to load the shape file 1 meter above the shape's base line and also to allow it to drop 1 meter. If you put coal in your tenders using shape files and FreightAnim the level will keep going down until you refill from a coal fuel source when it will go back up again. But this only works with wagons classed as "Tender" so you can use it for stable loads on other types of cars or, as we have come to use them, to place 1. Crews in cabs or 2. Detail parts on engine shapes to cut the polys for the originating shape file and allow entry of high detail models into MSTS. The FA's polys don't interfere with the loading of the base shape file.

A note on installation: If you try to install FA's of crews or other items you must first match up the placement of the shape file in relation to the place where you want it to go. If you don't your crew may be sitting on the top of the smokebox or on the ties under the firebox!

The easiest way to reposition the FA to go where you want it is to open the base shape in Shape Viewer then open up the FA shape as a second shape. We'll use Bill Pratt's 1944 version of Rio Grande Southern No. 20 as our loco and the crew from his 56 Class 2-8-0's "CrewCar" from "Tom's Crews" - by Tom Werb. Here's what it looks like when you begin - A loco with an empty cab:

FA Install 1.jpg (159.24K)
Number of downloads: 4

Now we click on File and Open second shape, navigate to the 56ClassCrewCar folder and grab up the shape file we want to use and click on open. Here's what we get - a loco with its crew out on the running boards:

FA Install 2.jpg (149.3K)
Number of downloads: 2

Note the open dialog box that is used to move the second shape. Since the crew is already centered up we can ignore the Left/Right bar and concentrate on the Front/Rear and Vertical bars. On the Front/Rear we want to move the crew, and their folding seats, back to the cab so we want to go to the rear, or minus value. I'll take that to -4.43m which looks about right to me. There I'll find out that the engineer and fireman's arms are buried a bit into the armrests so I'll raise the Vertical measurement 0.05m. Here's what I get - a loco with a crew:

FA Install 3.jpg (95.18K)
Number of downloads: 1

Looks pretty good. But this is just a 'snapshot' of where the crew needs to go, a way to figure out how much we need to move to crew to make it work. Now we have to physically change the crewcar shape file to match our movement settings. To do this you will need us use Shape File Manager (SFM) from Paul Gosden at the Steam4me website or Route Riter. I don't use Route Riter, so my comments will be for SFM. You'll need to copy the shape file and the .ace files from their source into the locomotive's folder then open the shape file in Shape File Manager, uncompress the file, go to Shift and enter the Vertical and Front/Rear values and leaving the Left/Right at zero. Then you test the placement by removing the second shape and reloading it from the locomotive's folder in Shape Viewer. I normally leave both Shape Viewer and SFM up during this process so I can tinker. Once you are satisfied with the placement you can re-compress the shape file with its new placement.

Now you need to go open your .eng file with Wordpad or ConText and add the FreightAnim line. In the case of this placement it would read:
FreightAnim ( 56Class-CrewCar.s 1 1 )

I normally place the FA line between the Type and Wagonshape lines just to keep it at the top of the file so I know at a glance that the loco I am working with has a FA. You can place it anywhere. Now all that assumes there isn't already a FA line in the .eng file. In reality the 20 already has one and if you are replacing the crew you would just put the new shape file name, in this case 56Class-CrewCar.s in the FA line.

Now since the 56 Class 2-8-0's are much smaller than the T-19 4-6-0's I will want to fiddle with the scale of this shape using SFM if I decide to use it for this engine since the butts and shoulders of the enginemen are buried a bit into the boiler, but that's another story.

One additional trick and then I'll return you to your usual programming and that is to use the tender's .wag file to carry the FA for your crew if the engine already uses a FA for its details. Of course this won't work if the tender uses FA to make the coal go away! And it doesn't always work that well when your railroad's curves are real sharp - butts poking out through cabwalls can occur!

When you have the FA used up in both .eng and .wag file you are still not dead in the water because you can use the crewcar concept as used on many of Bill Pratt's narrow gauge engines........but that too is another story. :bigboss:

Elvas Tower: How to add crews to all types of loco - Elvas Tower

How to add crews to all types of loco steam & diesel Rate Topic:

#1 crompton6566

#2 markus_GE

#3 charlie

#4 atsf37l

#5 captain_bazza

#6 atsf37l

#7 captain_bazza

#8 R H Steele

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