Mumbai Pune Route for MSTS

Thank you for installing this route from India.

This is a route from Mumbai (Bombay) to Pune including the heritage narrow gauge section of Neral-Matheran Railway. The sections now extend till Virar on Western Railway and Igatpuri on the Nasik section.

The route starts from the Megacity 'Mumbai'. There are two main lines: Western and Central. Harbour line is a branch of Central. At present, Western Rly runs subarban services from Churchgate to Virar; Central Rly subarban services run from CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) to Kasara on Northern line and Karjat/ Khopoli on the South-Eastern main line. Harbour line has services from CST to Andheri and Panvel. Additional subarban services are from Thane to Vashi. Shuttle services are run on Vasai- Diva- Panvel sections, as also on Virar- Dahanu section. Of course there are mainline services connecting Mumbai to the rest of India. The goods train do not have any dedicated corridor but are run on the same lines.

Heavy reconstruction is proceeding at a fast pace, as everywhere in India, with much changes occuring, both on the tracks and around them. Already saturated with a train frequency of a train per 90 seconds during peak hours, new branches are being commissioned and new services are being added, like the recent opening of Karjat- Panvel section for passenger traffic. Any route model created becomes outdated quite fast. The period of this route is around 2008, all the present functional lines and services being represented with a few proposed services which would start in near future.

Most of the route was created manually, although Google Earth helped a lot in later sections; especially with the Ghats (the mountain regions) between Mumbai and Pune. Usable digital elevation data for India was not found, so approximate values of elevations had to be used.

As for use in MSTS, very few Indian structures and shapes were available and I had to do with whatever I had. I have tried to create new shapes and textures pertinent to India but a lot more needs to be done regarding this.

I have tried to reduce the size of this download but with so many tiles and huge congregation of acquired shapes and their textures, it was a difficult task. Still this is the minimum it gets and please excuse me for the huge downloads. I am splitting the files for download into multiple sections, so that everything will not have to be downloaded all over again.

Pre-Installation Requirements

The list below looks big but if you have already done some MSTS downloading from the web, you will have most of the files !!

For the downlaod to work properly, you must have these files installed beforehand:

Default updates of the Train Simulator from Microsoft namely (1) trainupdate.exe and (2) sd40-2_content_update.exe.
The route uses X-tracks without which it was almost impossible to create all those tracks. So Xtracks is a must. The version here is tsection 32, anything later will of course work. Xtracks is freely available on all MSTS sites notably train-sim and steam4me. Installing it does not cause any harm to your MSTS, it just opens up new possibilities for route developers.
Newroads is similar, please install the newroads from the same sites.
As to running stock, I have been predominantly dominated by IRFCA. Roni's trains are a must for any fan of Indian Railways. So download as much as you can, although for this route Loco1, Loco3, Coach 1 & 2, WDP2 Tryout and Passenger View files are a must.
I have created some files for Indian trains, of which the locals of Mumbai series-2005 and 2007 are used by the services in this route. So you must have them. Also WCM, M_DIESELS, M_ELEC and M_NG are some more files required.

Download	Filename	Available at
MSTS XTracks v3.20 Standard Edition (use the latest available)	xtracksf.zip(17.66MB) or Xtracks3_20_EndUser_MSTS1_Setup.exe or similar	Best site Steam4me, no membership, go to Permamant Content > Routes
New Roads	Newroads_v32_EndUser_MSTS1_Setup.exe	Best site- Steam4me
MSTS EMU Trainsets For Indian Trains	m_emus.zip (6.16 MB)	Best site- Train-Sim, go to File library (membership reqd)
MSTS Shatabdi And Other Coaches	shatabdi.zip (8.9 MB)	Best site- Train-Sim
MSTS India WCM Electric Engines	wcm_inde.zip(4.6 MB)	Best site- Train-Sim
MSTS Indian Coaches	indian.zip (25.3 MB)	Best site- Train-Sim
A Small World - Indian Railways Loco Pack 1	aswirloc.zip (10.2 MB)	Best site- IRFCA, no membership
A Small World - Indian Railways Loco Pack 2	aswirlo3.zip (10.5 MB)	Best site- IRFCA
A Small World - Indian Railways Coach Pack 1	aswircoa.zip(4.59 MB)	Best site- IRFCA
A Small World - Indian Railways Car & Coach Pack 2	aswirco2.zip(5.72 MB)	Best site- IRFCA
A Small World - Indian Railways WDP2 15505 Tryout	wdp2tryout.zip(2.8 MB)	Best site- IRFCA
Indian Railways Sleeper Coach Passenger View	aswirspv.zip(488 KB)	Best site- IRFCA

Installation

The self-installing files have been divided in parts- "Mumbai_Pune_A", "Mumbai_Pune_B" and a third "Mumbai_Pune_Stock". I think it should be easier to have 3 downloads of 50 MB or smaller rather than one of 100 MB (of course, easier also for me to upload).

AFTER installing all the above files, click on "Mumbai_Pune_A.exe". It will search for your MSTS installation and start copying files there.
Now click on "Mumbai_Pune_B.exe". It will copy the textures to the route.
The next task is to click on "Install.bat" found in "Mumbai" folder of MSTS > ROUTES. This will copy files from the default MSTS routes. So all the six routes must be present with default rolling stock and updates!
Done, yes but for more improvements try these, maybe letting the route editor to generate terrian files in the meantime..

"Mumbai_Pune_Stock" contains two installations.

The first is a download for users of MSTS BIN (only)-"Mumbai_Pune_BIN.exe". MSTS BIN is an optional but unofficial update of MSTS. Using it can add a lot of features to MSTS. Here some Night textures and a rear cabview for local trains is supplied. However it adds some Night textures to SD402 and SERIES7000 folders. If you already have the Night textures in these folders, it may overwrite them. If so, and you wish to keep the ones already present, I advise installing 'Mumbai_Pune_BIN.exe' in a non-MSTS location and copying them into respective MSTS folders while not replacing the files present. MSTS BIN is freely available on all major train-simmimng sites.
The second installation is "TRAINS.zip". This will have to be unzipped to some non-MSTS folder, wherein two folders will result.
- The "ASM - IR Freight" folder has "ReadmeNewFiles.txt". Please read it thoroughly before copying these files.
- The other folder which will be unzipped is "Indian". The original uploaded by me had .s (shape) files in an uncompressed format. The compressed versions are supplied here. Since the route uses a lot of computer resources, decreasing the size of files to be loaded helps in gameplay. The contents of this folder must be copied to the TRAIN SIMULATOR > TRAINS > TRAINSET > INDIAN folder replacing the originals.
The purpose of all this complicated procedure was to give a total control in YOUR HANDS for altering the files on your MSTS installations. All copying is optional but advisable.

Activities

The activities had to cover all the route. Also with 'KOSMOS' each region looks different in different seasons. Since Mumbai does not get snowfall, I have taken an opportunity to include some more KOSMOS environments in the 'SNOW' seasons (of course, snow will not be visible). To give justice to these excellent environments, they had to be represented at least in a token form, This led to 18 'must have' activities. Many more are possible but they will have to come as later add-ons.
DRP (Double Reverse Points) is a way to allow trains to overtake each other. On the track monitor a reversing sign is seen and the signal ahead is red. When the train stops at the red, the one following will get the go-ahead. When you come across such DRPs (as mentioned in the briefs before the activity), DO NOT REVERSE. Just stop at the red, as close as possible to the signal and when the other train has passed, the go signal will be given.
There are no speed restrictions at signals, the engineer is supposed to maintain the desired speed so that he can stop at reds. However other speed restrictions are present in the route. The maximum speed allowed is 150 km/h which is slightly more than actual 100-120 km/h in India but then, this speed makes driving fun!

Hidewire

As this route has some non-electric sections, I have used HIDEWIRE to 'hide wire' over such sections.The route comes with hidden wires and cannot be edited as such. 'Hidewire' program is available at train-sim.
Hidewire is a bit complicated program and requires dotnet framework. Please do not try to edit this route or hide/unhide wire unless you are familiar with that process. Activities can be created in the routine way.

Credits and Thanks

Though with an error of repeating myself, I cannot help to thank a lot of people. These ones have helped me fulfill my earnest desire of building the route. I thank :

Roni or Ronald Kappel of IRFCA for almost everything.
Okrasa Ghia for X-tracks
Mike Simpson for Route Riter
Bruce Bridges, Martyn T. Griffin, Steven Masters, Jeff Rice for Newroads
W. A. Campbell for Hidewire
Jeff Bush for KOSMOS
SREEJITH THADATHIL & Tony Formoso for signals.
a lot others, hopefully I try not to forget anyone in my credits file.

Summary of files used with original creators.

The Future

This is the plan of Mumbai Rail network in near future, some work has already been started. This map is not complete, monorail is not represented and New Mumbai sections are not completely accurate.
To create this route in MSTS is the next challenge. Even yet without usable digital elevation data, the work should be more accurate with Google and Wikimapia maps. So hard work ahead for me !!
Nitin Bhandare
nitin_bhandare@yahoo.com