Obo's MSTS Locomotive Catalog FAQ

Ok, nobody has ever asked me any questions about the catalog, but if they did I bet these would be among the most common.


What is the point of this?
Good question. I thought it would be nice to have a resource that provided an overview of many of the locomotives now available for Train Simlulator. Each entry is intended to be terse enough to make browsing easy and keep the overall size small while at the same time providing enough information to allow somebody to decide whether a particular model would be of interest to them and if so how to go about finding it.

I also thought all the little pictures would look kinda neat together.

How are the entries organized?
The top levels are obvious: first by country, then by engine type: steam, diesel, and electric. "Diesel" in this case should be taken to mean "anything not steam or electric".

The ordering within each category varies according to whatever seems appropriate for local conditions. Sorting criteria used include railroad name, class name, and road number. An attempt has been made to keep sections small so that even when the ordering is completely mystifying specific entries can be found without much fuss.

Why do only some of the pictures have larger versions?
The site originally wasn't going to include the 500x800 pictures but after about 400 entries had been added I changed my mind. Because of this, older entries don't have the larger pictures available and all newer ones do.

Why isn't my favourite locomotive here?
The catalogs are a work in progress. Because of the vast number of locomotives already available and the frequency of new releases the project will never be comprehensive, nor will it attempt to be. That said, if there is something you really like that is missing, please let me know.

The usual explanation is that either I don't have the locomotive or simply haven't gotten around to creating an entry for it. No criticism of omitted locomotives is implied or intended.

I think some of the locomotive listed are not very good. Why are they included?
I'd rather put everything up and let the user decide for themselves whether something looks like it might be worth downloading.

Why are some of the links not kept up to date?
Because I only have a limited amount of time to work on the site and I'd rather spend it adding content than maintain over 2000 links. Also, the main function of the "source" field is to record where I obtained the train pictured, and when sites or the location of files move around it becomes difficult to track whether the new location contains the same content or not, so I avoid the whole issue and leave the links as is.

Have the pictures been processed in any way?
No. I could use a sharpening tool and make them more impressive-looking, but I wanted to show what the models actually look like on the screen. The pictures were taken using the Print Screen key, then cropped, shrunk to size, and converted to JPEGs. That's it.

You do realize that a gas turbine and a diesel are two different things?
Yes.

How can I contact you?
Comments, corrections, and suggestions for additions can be sent to mstscatalog@banal.net.