These tutorials are written by members of the community, users of the product just like yourself. Many of them may well already be available either here or elsewhere and UKTrainSim certainly takes no credit for their creation - proper credit will be identified with each tutorial.

There are NO download restrictions on the files presented on this page.

Using and Building Rail Simulator

If you`re even considering building a route or tinkering with another then this is a must-have guide that will walk you through the processes of laying track. It`s not as easy as it first looks once you start trying to achieve passing loops and complex yards. This tutorial gathers together a lot of information covering most track formations and the various tools within the world editor that are at your disposal.

Extra Required File: Evercreech Marshalling Yard-1.rpk

This guide is written so that a player with no knowledge of simulators can get to the stage there they can drive one of the supplied locomotives (or one which they have downloaded and installed) with a selection of supplied (or downloaded) coaches / wagons from any starting location on the selected route.

Extra Required File: Evercreech Junction to Shepton Mallet-1.rpk

Note: This tutorial is an OpenDocument file for OpenOffice (which is a free download), however if you don`t want to do that then Zoho Viewer is an online service which can convert it on the fly - go to http://viewer.zoho.com and paste the URL above to view the tutorial.

In "A Beginners Guide" it finished with a simple Free Play scenario using the inbuilt editor of the main program. In this guide we will use the development editor with its more powerful features to create scenarios containing passenger trains which load and unload passengers, while AI trains are running.

Extra Required File: Freight train scenario-1.rpk

Note: This tutorial is an OpenDocument file for OpenOffice (which is a free download), however if you don`t want to do that then Zoho Viewer is an online service which can convert it on the fly - go to http://viewer.zoho.com and paste the URL above to view the tutorial.

Continuing the series, this tutorial introduces freight operations and fuel commands.

Signalling

This first tutorial is by two big names in the community, between them they`ve learned a lot of the tricks and techniques needed and in this tutorial they share them in good detail. This tutorial will be best suited to those who are already modellers in 3D Canvas for another simulator and want to see what is involved in getting their work moved in to Rail Simulator - though it will also be extremely useful to new modellers using 3D Canvas of course.

Blender is a new 3D creation tool for the train sim community (though it has actually been around for a long time), it`s free and open source and extremely powerful. You can get it from Blender.org however I would advise that it is far from simple to use! This tutorial briefly runs through a process of building a simple two-axle wagon in Blender and then getting it in to Rail Simulator. Those familiar with other 3D tools will probably find this tutorial exceptionally good at giving them a fast rundown on the basic processes - definitely for experts, there`s little or no description and it concentrates on what buttons to push etc. Still, an excellent tutorial and worth looking through if you want to give Blender a shot.

GMAX was a tool that came out many moons ago as a free version of 3D Studio Max - the tool that all the professionals used. Built specifically to work with "Game Packs" so it would only export to those specific games, this enabled anyone with the patience to learn it the ability to learn and use one of the best 3D tools on the market. Unfortunately it was discontinued by Autodesk (the developers) and we are unlikely to see a Rail Simulator gamepack for it - there are gamepacks for both Trainz and Microsoft Train Simulator though, and lots of people have used it to build 3D models. This tutorial serves to help show you how to use the game pack from a game called Quake 3: Tempest along with the Biturn model converter and get those 3D models out of GMAX and in to 3D Canvas.