Sid Meier's Railroads! Simple!

Shanghai

Warll — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:37:30 +0000

Map: Shanghai Mapper: Mike Kennelly

Here’s my China map for “Railroads!”.
Unzip Shanghai.zip into your My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Railroads!\

China (Shanghai)

Wikipedia page on China

Key features:

Large 15×15 size map
Semi-realistic DEM (Digital Elevation Model) based terrain

Map: ACWR SAM
Mappers: STEP inc

SAMed by: STEP Inc
Tested By: STEP Inc

Back in September of 2008 I was looking thru some photos of shortlines and found the Aberdeen, Carolina and Western. After much help from the members of STEP Inc and a lot of sleepless nights we came up with this 18×18 map of south-central North Carolina. This railroad was created to take over a job that a couple of larger railroads didn’t want to do anymore, and has prospered since.

For more information on the ACWR go here: http://www.acwr.com/

If you go into ‘CUSTOMERS’ and scroll down you will find access to a map of the present line. The map you are playing is laid out as close to this as I could get, with the businesses placed where they appear also. The idea of this map is to lay single rail, with the shortest possible branch lines to access Annexes. Passing track should only be laid at depots as needed. Bridges are expensive and there are only two types, Stone for short bridges and Deck Girder, which is very costly, for the one needed crossing of the river. The Stone are expensive, so conform to the landscape as much as possible. Tunnels are allowed, IF you want to lay out $30 Million a section!

Now you can probably run this map, and most likely win, if you just make runs where you chose, but that is not the real challenge of it. One track from Charlotte to Gulf, and one from somewhere between Star and Troy down to Aberdeen, and take it from there. The other thing is to have only one of each Engine on the map at a time. Here is the list of Engines and the year they appear:

1992 — ACWR 3802 GP38-2
1994 — ACWR 3803 GP38-2
2002 — ACWR 703 GP40-2WL
2003 — ACWR 2077 GP38-2
2004 — ACWR 9556 GP40-2WL
2007 — ACWR 4500 F7A
2007 — ACWR 4501 F7A
2008 — ACWR 9529 GP40-2WL

The map also contains a few new cars, a tank container, a flat car hauling steel plates, a rib-sided covered hopper and a high-sided open hopper. I’d also like to thank MrScott1964 for his four coal cars, the C&O, the DLW, the Erie and the LV. They saved me a few days work. Thanks also goes to Choobacca for his BN and BNSF covered hoppers, which I upped the detail on for this map.

One last thing, one of our testers mentioned that the pointer was difficult for him to use. If this is the case for you, just go in and delete the Pointer.ani file and you’ll go back to the original pointer.

To use the attached files, place all three files in the same folder and click on 001. It will create a folder called AC&W.7z which will contain the folder AC&W and the Warehouse.FPK file. Place these into your UserMaps. You can now play the map. You might want to do a zip of the folder first for storage for later playing.

Good luck and watch for head-butting engines.

As always if you find any errors, drop us a line and we’ll pull the maintenance crew out of their card game and get them right on it.

New rating system and comment moderation

Warll — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:41:39 +0000

I have changed the ratings system to stop abuse. No longer is it possible to down-vote everything and then three star your own maps. There is now only one way for a map’s rating to go now, and that is up. This should preserve the usefulness of the ratings and greatly increase the work-load of anyone trying to stuff the ballot.

Unfortunately all the legitimate votes were also lost. In the future if anyone does try and stuff the ballot I can reset the ratings only for that post so hopefully this situation will be not repeated.

I have also turned on comment moderation, this means for normal users is that your post may have to wait a few hours before your comment appears on the site.

Most importantly I want to say sorry to those who originally got behind the ratings, thank you for trying to make this site better and SMR maps more approachable. I hope you will be willing to vote your favorite maps again.

NAFTA Phase II

Warll — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:56:02 +0000

Map: NAFTA Phase II Installer

Mapper: Jancsika

Era #1 is the agricultural phase. There are two 9-step runs.
Era #2 is the industrial phase and there are two 12-step runs.
The resources are very limited, only one starting resource for each run.

3GB Enabler Fix for Windows Vista & 7

Warll — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:19:39 +0000

The 3GB enabler is an awesome utility that has a magic tendency to fix one of the last remaining outstanding of Sid Meiers Railroads instability. While the process could hardly be much simpler with the script there is one rather nasty reliance; for 32bit versions of windows you need to manually tell windows to allow 3GB enabler to work. Traditionally this was done by use the 3GB switch in boot.ini. Unfortunately Windows Vista and 7 no longer use the boot.ini, but don’t worry users of Vista & 7 32bit, Microsoft didn’t leave you high and dry.

I came across the solution after Sam brought the quandary to my attention. The solution is actually quite simple, go to the start menu and in the search box type ‘cmd’, don’t hit enter. Wait until ‘cmd.exe.’ appears on the menu and then right click and select “run as administrator”. Then run this command:

BCDEDIT.EXE /Set IncreaseUserVa 2900

You can copy and paste that into the command prompt by using the right click menu, keyboard shortcuts CTRL+C and CTRL+V don’t work in the command line. Then restart for the changes to take effect.

Once you have done this and used the 3GB Enabler you should be able to play Sid Meiers Railroads crash free, so have fun and watch what time it is.

Note: Users of 64bit OSes don’t need to do this step and can use the 3GB enabler directly.

Ukraine

Warll — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:29:02 +0000

Map: Ukraine Mapper: Mike Kennelly

Here’s my Eastern Europe map for “Railroads!”. Centred on Ukraine, it stretches from Poland to Iraq, and from Russia to the Balkans. Unzip Iceland.zip into your My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Railroads!\

Eastern Europe (Ukraine)

Includes Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Austria, Turkey, Greece and several other Eastern European countries.

Key features:

Large 15×15 size map
Semi-realistic DEM (Digital Elevation Model) based terrain

Map: San Francisco CIC

Mapper: Calm Dragon

Make the rails sing around the Bay Area.
A trip around San Francisco Bay sounds like a plan. Simple economy starting with mail from villages.
Twelve industries available to cities. Seventeen products to move between cities.
There are several starting villages and several other villages all with one industry each.
No custom content. Original Map designed by Calm Dragon using USGS DEM data.

This map is for intermediate players.
There are challenging goals that you may work toward.
Have Fun and Happy Railroading!

Fancy late game bridges may crash the game back to your desktop,
though I have worked very hard not to allow that to happen.

Iceland

Warll — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:05:21 +0000

Map: Iceland

Mapper: Mike Kennelly

Here’s my Iceland map for “Railroads!”. Obviously Iceland isn’t known for its extensive rail network,
(Iceland has no rail network) but I think it makes quite a playable game map.

Unzip Iceland.zip into your My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Railroads!\

Iceland

Craggy, Volcanic Isle in the North Atlantic

This scenario covers Iceland

Key features:

Large 15×15 size map
Semi-realistic DEM (Digital Elevation Model) based terrain