The review? It runs like a dog due to it only having a single motorised end carriage (fortunately with all-wheel pickup) and the lighting shines brightly though the shell.

As you can see, the train I bought included an add-on carriage and all packaging. The price tag was on-par with what I'm seeing on eBay nowadays. The train was in a glass cabinet on display when I bought it and I didn't realise that the base package only contained one coach. I have since found and purchased another coach from eBay and will attempt to extend this set. You can also see in the comparison shot of the two passenger cars that they are slightly differing in colour. Unfortunately, this is just a side-effect from purchasing second-hand; I have no idea what their story is and if the main set was left in the sun too long...

Either way, it's a great looking train set.

Of course, there's always concerns that driving 400kms might be a complete waste of time and this TAA on occupations near Great Western should have probably received more of my attention. Just in case you're wondering... an 'occupation' is where the Australian Rail Track Corporation has requested complete manual control of a section of track. In this case it was the area between Pyrenees Loop – Great Western Loop and Great Western Loop – Deep Lead Loop... they were to do ballast cleaning!? ... this might actually be worth the trek for!

Planning

As per usual, I perused through ARTC's Train Alteration Advice and determined items which might have applied to the 5th of November; fortunately there was nothing apart from the above ballast cleaning. I therefore recorded the times on ARTC's timetables for the area into a diamond diagram and, from this, worked out where I should have been when. I, this time, wanted to check out places I hadn't been to yet and therefore started working out what train I could see where.

How to read the above? The vertical axis shows the time-of-day and the horizontal the location. Each location has an arrival and departure time... so if you see a flat horizontal line for any service then it means that train has not stopped. Therefore, the train with the flat line will be moving whilst the diagonal will be waiting in a loop when you see two lines intersecting.

From the above you can see where all the regularly scheduled trains cross. I had errands to run on Saturday morning and, based on google maps estimates, could only just get to Tatyoon Loop by 11:00am. This would just be enough to see 6AM3 pass The Overland. The goal was then to wait for the Mineral Sands from Portland and follow it through to Murtoa. I would then wait for the Horsham container train, arriving in time to see the Southern Spirit arrive. 4PM6 would then be following and I'd choose a point along the way back to see this again.

Tatyoon

No, not Tatooine... there's no pod racing here. This was meant to be a loop for a pass, but it didn't seem anywhere near long enough. There was a seemingly-abandoned grain silo with a definitely unused siding for it. The poor old station platform didn't even have a station sign on it anymore... I imagine the last passenger service here would've been steam-hauled?

I waited up until the time 6AM3 was meant to arrive but realised that I was lying to myself and it wasn't coming. The lighting at Tatyoon wasn't the best for The Overland, so I bolted to Maroona and waited for it there. At the western-end of the loop was a great view with the railway sweeping to the left... it would've been perfect in the morning sun for a Melbourne-bound freighter!

Maroona

Yes, Ma-roo-na. Not to be confused with: Mooroopna, Moorooduc, Maroondah, Maroota, Mooralla, etc...
This township is located due-south of Ararat (not do be confused with Ballarat) and ... there isn't much to it. Fortunately, there's a junction here to Portland which means the railway infrastructure was slightly interesting. The roads in the yard had been used recently and it seems that the trains to Portland must arrive into the yard and then depart, crossing the main.

The Overland, running 25 minutes late, arrived from the East and proceeded at a slower-than-usual pace through the station. This was the first and last time I was to see it.

I then waited for the Mineral Sands train... but realised it was never going to turn up. I therefore decided the better option was to bypass Ararat and head to Murtoa.

Murtoa

I'd never been here either... It's a large detour from the highway and it's the reason why I previously beat The Overland to Horsham as, although it can do 115km/h, the path via Murtoa adds quite a few more kilometres. Of course, it also meant I wouldn't see The Overland at Murtoa as I was never going to catch up to it on the country roads. Murtoa is the junction for the branch North to Hopetoun... the rails were quite shiny, so something must've run that way recently, but the Mineral Sands train wasn't to run this day.

I decided that I'd wait here for the Horsham freight. There was no reason it wasn't running, but as The Overland was 25mins late, this train would probably also be late.

After dealing with wildlife (brown snakes, etc..) the train came through fast.

I then jumped in the car to Horsham... expecting to see the tail of this train, but it had a headstart on me and there was no chance.

Horsham

Last time we saw C501 and T386 doing the Horsham freight, this time it was 8030 and GML10. Other than that, not much as changed... same colourful characters on the platform watching the trains go by. Actually, there is now a rail tractor LOK001 doing the shunting/splitting of the container train instead of the actual locos that brought it in.

NR85 brought the Southern Spirit in around 20mins late. The consist was as long as usual.

And then 4PM6 came through on time based on its amended running.

And that was it... the day had turned dim and the freighter was running with the light for the rest of the trip... I chose to return home.

Ararat

So, the initial TAA I mentioned had something about ballast cleaning in it? I forgot to tell you that I actually saw the track gang in the first loop directly after Ararat. It had to be a loop (was a fair distance from the highway) as The Overland had already bolted through. I was hoping they'd be in a location closer to a road on the way back, but they'd already packed up and were in Ararat yard.

The next day...

The Southern Spirit spend the night in Maroona. It proceeded east via Melbourne but was to only stop at Broadmeadows briefly. Fortunately it was to pass the large standard gauge viaducts as per usual and I decided to catch it at the one closest to Jacana. The up V/Line SG Albury service was running around 30 minutes late, but the Southern Spirit then got the green and bolted past.

And that was it... this train returns via Melbourne on the 14th of November. It will actually pass via Southern Cross Station, after a pause up in Somerton. We'll see what happens...

West Footscray

Melbourne struggles when it comes to good trainspotting locations making use of the morning sun. The main issue is that most of the good locations (viaducts, etc...) are good in the morning for out-bound traffic and the afternoon for in-bound traffic. As the train was in-bound in the AM it was time to think of a new strategy. I'd previously checked out Middle Footscray, but the options were limited and so I instead headed up to West Footscray.

It turns out 3 other onlookers had thought up the same concept and we all sat and waited. Fortunately we didn't have to wait long as the usual suspects soon came through... The XPT, The Overland, NRs on containers, Gs on containers... etc... etc...

And then ... the one we'd all been waiting for...

Pretty ugly eh? a 44-Class arse-end-leading isn't the prettiest site at 9am in the morning. Either way, it was worth the wait as the damn thing hauled ass through Footscray. That was it for the mornings movements; the train wasn't due out again until 1830.

Departures

ARTC posted that the departure time was 1830 and the train was right on time... fortunately there was more than enough entertainment at Sims St right up until the train left.

...and that was a wrap... Supposedly the Southern Spirit is back in town again this weekend... might go out West and see what is happening.

Complete album here.

Infrastructure

Yass Junction Signal Box seems to have had a repainting. I imagine ARHS ACT are to be commended as they probably still have the lease on it. Meanwhile the mudholes around the place are still just as bad as ever.

...and then something different

It's always nice when the signals switch red... It means someone is in control and something different is happening. Seeing the points then shift is better, as it usually means something is about to wrong-road into the loop and allow a pass. This time around it was BL30 (I hadn't seen a BL in Yass before) leading 3x 48s on what must have been a pretty heavy load of grain.

The end of the loop is a fair way north of the station. The better viewpoint is a road bridge up along Cooks Hill Road. I could've just stayed and seen what was passing from the platforms... but I hadn't been up that way in a while.

It turns out that light-engine consists can fly! FL220 lead 48s35, LVR's 4702 and 48s33 on the up, flying past me near the road bridge. The poor old BL and 48s then struggled up the incline and continued north.

And that was a wrap... the day had actually warmed up and there was family to visit.

Time in Spain was to be shared between Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid. Valencia was visited briefly; the goal there was to head out of town to 'La Tomatina'... I can only recommend that NOBODY bother doing this... ever. Barcelona then received the most time and Madrid got one night.

We landed in Barcelona from Athens and headed straight for Barcelona Sants. We had a connecting train from there to Valencia in 'Preferente Class'. This happened to be first class and was purchased very cheaply!

Before we knew it we were speeding south to Valencia.

Valencia

The rail system around Valencia was quite nice, it seems they had recently extended the high-speed there and built a new station (or were in the progress of converting an old one.) The old Valencia Nord station was also very impressive.

As the main goal was a daytrip to La Tomatina in Bunol, there wasn't much time to check out the freight yards in the south.

Barcelona

I'd seen a lot of freight action near Tarragona from the train to Valencia and wanted to check it out. A day was spent on the rail around Barcelona and, due to a late start, I decided that Tarragona was a little too far. Instead I made it half way south through to Sitges and Cunit.

There wasn't a freight train to be seen and hardly any high-speed stock, mainly just standard EMUs floating around. I therefore decided to go to Martorell in the north of Barcelona where, via google maps, I'd seen that freight, passenger and high-speed converged.

Fortunately I chose to stop through Garraf on the way through. This town is on the coast just above Sitges and has a beautiful old station building. There is a tunnel to the south and it all provides a great backdrop for shots.

Especially when a high-speed consist comes through...

At Martorell I was instantly greeted by a freighter heading west.

I then wandered from the station to the high-speed line around one kilometre north. I only had to wait 5 minutes to see a train bolt past.

I then returned to Martorell station and was greeted by a SEAT Car Carrier.

I'd also seen via google maps that there was a nice tunnel/castle/vineyard area one stop east of Martorell. The station was known as Castellbisbal and was easy to get to. I caught the next service east and wandered up to the road overpass of the high-speed.

I then wandered back to the station.

When I last expected it a freight came through heading west.

And that was it for the daytrip...

Madrid

The final trip was 'Touriste Class' to Madrid. This was on the ICE-3'looking rolling stock from Barcelona Sants to Madrid Atocha. The service was non-existent compared to First Class, but the train was great. Unfortunately the track condition along the way lead to a few rollercoaster-like experiences. At one point we even had to hold on to our drinks! I couldn't believe they were running the train at 300km/h over the rough patches.

The final stop was Madrid Atocha. This was a newly rebuilt station, full of concrete. At least it was quite clean.

We stayed near a station called 'Principe Pio'. It seems to have two sides, one which they have rebuilt with the other falling into disrepair.

And that was it... the next day saw a flight to Hong Kong. They've since stopped freight to Hung Hom and so there was no real advantage to chasing trains. I vowed to do more upon returning to Oz.

Larissis Station (aka 'Athens Central', 'Larissa Station')

This is where everything starts to get very confusing; there is no direct Wikipedia reference to this station and, depending on which site you're browsing through, everyone has a different name for it. I've come across two reasons for this: firstly most people translate the Greek language into English differently and secondly it seems that the area used to have two stations for two different destinations. Peloponnisou, the second station, was closed in 2005, but I can't determine when the new Larissis station development started. Either way, as you can see below, it hasn't finished.

As I arrived a DMU was departing the original Larissis Station. The station was quite busy as the train was approaching.

The yard was looking pretty dismal... the track had been skewed to allow more point installations and there was a lot of material lying around in stockpiles.

I then did a lap of the area to see what had become of the new development. A track machine and a rail train were stabled in the empty platforms. I don't know how long 55-213 had been parked there, but there was absolutely no evidence of work being carried out at the time.

At the other end of the station you could see the tunnelling that was partially in use. It was also made obvious that there was a lot more work to do on the station.

Finally, the underpass to the shopping area and Metro station had some nice artwork of days gone by.

That was it for Athens... the rest of the time in Greece was spent driving a Nissan Micra in Santorini on the wrong side of the road.
The next stop was to be spain; it was finally time to use the Renfe tickets I'd previously purchased.

The city of Istanbul of two sides, separated by the Bosphorus River. It turns out that the western half is known as the 'European Side', as it's phyiscally a part of the continent of Europe, and the eastern half is therefore the 'Asian Side'. Locals don't actually use the terms as above; they simply say 'opposite side' depending on the context of the conversation.

Sirkeci, the European side

Right next to the Blue Mosque is the Sirkeci Railway Station, the end of the line for the railway coming from Europe. It used to be the initial station/final destination for the Orient Express when it was still in operation. Turkey does not yet have a rail tunnel from the European to the Asian side and so travellers must transfer to a different mode of transport here to continue their journey east.

Turkey operates a varied amount of electric rolling stock, most of which can be seen at this station. At ~8:00am each morning the international train will also arrive bringing in tourists from far afield. In the end, I failed to take a shot of the actual station itself... I seemed to have been too keen on the trains this trip rather than the infrastructure.

Speaking of infrastructure... freight trains do actually have a method of getting across the Bosphorus. Turkish Railways still operate a train ferry from Sirkeci to Haydarpaşa Station. The boats seem to be able to carry around 6 wagons; unfortunately I never got to see one in transit. Note that the last shot below is from the platforms of Sirkeci station. You can see the pipe train in the background which had been taken off the ferry in the few hours that I'd been on the other side of the river.

Haydarpaşa, the Asian side

It was nice to finally see some infrastructure and rolling stock after a pretty quiet western side. Haydarpaşa Station is the final station on the eastern side and all services heading into Turkey and further initiate there. There are a lot of loco-hauled passenger services and that means there is a lot of consist rearranging in the yard. There is also quite a bit of freight action visible as the ferry terminates just north of the station.

And then you have the other end of the train ferry... The final shot below was taken as our ferry was back to Sirkeci; there is now a different load on the boat.

Halkali, back on the European side

I had google maps'd this location and saw a freight yard. It was the last freight yard before the line narrowed into Sirkeci station and seemed to have a lot of rolling stock. I jumped on an EMU from Sirkeci which took 40mins to get around to the yard. Once there, there was not a sound to be heard... no one was working in the area and then the call-to-prayer came over the PA system. This was the final stop for the service I was on, so I held on to my train 'token' (they used coins as tickets in Turkey) and waited to return on the same consist.

Fortunately, while I was there a rail tractor shunted a ballast rake. There was also a rail consist stabled without locomotives.

And that was it for Turkey... the next stop was Greece.

Split

I'd seen from Google Maps that Split had a main railway station on the water and the line seemed to be the southern-most point of the entire Croatian system. There was quite a bit of freight infrastructure around the base of the harbour, but it was hard to tell from Google if it was still in use.

We landed by plane from Berlin and caught the bus into town. The single line could be seen paralleling the highway, but there was zero traffic. Closer in to town there was a selection of freight stock around an industrial plant, but the larger freight yards further into the city weren't visible from the road.

Split wasn't high on my railway-viewing list; the main reason was to check out the beaches and the town. Therefore the shots taken below were all done within a 20minute segment at Split Station at around 7am on a Wednesday.

First up was 2062 110 shunting the autorail into the station platform.

Next 2062 038 departed with a passenger service, presumably North.

2062 110 then ran back around to it's consist.

DMU 7122 001 arrived with a whole bunch of backpackers... this service gets close to the airport... they may well have been smart enough to only take a taxi a short distance and a train the rest of the way.

2062 110 then shot off north.

Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik used to have a connected railway line... but... politics prevailed and it was cut off in 1975. It was narrow gauge too! They also used to have a tram in the city, but this was cancelled around the same time.

The beaches though... the beaches are fantastic! Take an island tour... amazing. Unfortunately, the 'old town' is a bit of a disappointment. The shops are all nastily commercial and you have to pay to even get on the city wall.

Zagreb

This place was great... I hadn't expected much from Zagreb; all the reviews were that it was a drab city from the dark ages, but this turned out to be its charm. The city has a railway line through the south and also a large tram network.

There's a funicular tram and also a cable car up in the north which wasn't running the day we were in town.

The main station is known as Zagrebački Glavni kolodvor (Zagreb Main Station). All local and regional railway services start from this location meaning it is quite busy at all times of the day. International services also arrive/depart here and there were often a lot of annoyed backpackers hanging around for late trains.

I then headed west via Tram to the next station along the line. I can't remember the exact name, but it's definitely not in use anymore. The most action seen was the red diesel shunter heading further west.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the abandonded? freight yards to the east of Zagreb Station. There are some interesting 'garden' communities here where it seems everyone gets a plot of land and a shed to grow small crops. The line to the west is also quite busy!

I also took a trip out to Dugo Selo (further east) to see what would pass through. It was a pretty desolate station, but there were people waiting for the train. A loco-hauled service paused briefly in the yard, but it seemed to just collect papers from the station master. Passengers did try to get on it though, obviously faster than the EMU.

The final afternoon was spent at the main station... there's always something going on.

They also even pay respects to bygone eras via a plynth out the front.

The entire album from Croatia is available here.

Bochum

Being located in the North-Rhine area, Bochum is right in the mix of the Ruhr area known for it's large industrial complexes. From the train, this was immediately obvious; we passed freight train after freight train heading in and we also saw a lot of freight yard infrastructure. I was more than impressed with what I saw and was even happier to find a large freight yard in the middle of Bochum.

Checking in to the Ibis Bochum City was painless and the view was straight onto the train tracks... Unfortunately, due to 'non-smoking rooms' the window was sealed to prevent air-con wastage. I therefore headed straight out for a lap of the station to see what was going down. It turns out there is a good view of the platforms in the afternoon light from the south-west of the station... there also happens to be a carpark with minimal fencing that you can take some good shots from.

Proceeding onto the station platforms produced some better results. Due to the multitude of private operators involved, it seems that tickets are all checked on-board trains rather than having gated platforms. This meant that there was easy access to all platforms.

It turns out that the DB loves the loco-hauled end-cab-control system as well. The whole concept is that the motive power is all in the locomotive at one end, but the train can be controlled from the far-end passenger car as well. This would never happen in Australia as we have very strict operating rules; I also wouldn't want to be in an accident where you have an extremely heavy (not to mention powerful) locomotive pushing tin-foil cars in to eachother. Then again, having the loco hit something first means the passenger cars have free will to fly around... I suppose the point is not to be in an accident at all!?

From the station I continued on-foot around the yard to the north-east. There is a branch from this yard further north-east, but it looked pretty abandoned. Google maps shows that there are cars and relatively new-looking infrastructure... I didn't follow the line to confirm this.

Instead I continued around to a road-bridge over the east-end of the yard. Here came fun! After a few passengers services at the south end of the bridge..

I then heard a diesel pulling in to the yard. Here I saw a V90? diesel shunter pulling a small consist into a loop. It then proceeded to run around, getting ready to pull the consist back in the direction it came. In the meantime though, 3 other trains came through; two continued on, but the third dropped more load for the shunter to pick up and continue on with.

I'd spent a good few hours on the bridge and decided to return to the hotel... Fortunately there's good visibility of the rail all the way back.

The rest of the time in Bochum was spent checking out the city. It's quite old and, I suppose cold? It's hard to explain, but it was the underlying theme to the rest Germany as I was to find out. There wasn't much graffiti around and the buildings were quite clean, but the architecture was all very similar and there was a lot of concrete. Fortunately the people were very friendly and accepted our very limited knowledge of the German language. There also happened to be a festival on in the middle of town which went on well in to the night.

A 24-hour trip to Berlin [aka 'The Comedy of Errors']

This was always going to be one of the highlights of the time spent in Germany. The goal was simple; start from Bochum, get as far down the Rhine as possible and then intercept the overnight train and travel to Berlin. What happened in the end was nothing short of disastrous but, in the end, was a great trip and a good story to tell. We boarded a train south from Bochum and started our journey. There was meant to be an initial stop in Cologne, but a late start saw us skip this and head straight for the Rhine.

Wuppertal

As the train was snaking through Wuppertal I noticed a large amount of infrastructure looking something like a monorail track. It wasn't until I saw the vehicle hanging from it that I wished I'd stopped. Unfortunately, Wuppertal hadn't been on my radar for a visit, but if I'd known that monorail existed, then I'd have definitely checked it out!

It turns out it's called the 'Wuppertal Schwebebahn' or 'Wuppertal Floating Tram'. It was built over a century ago and, although it's had a lot of 'modernisation' work, still carries 25 million passengers a year! Wuppertal was built through the valleys alongside the Wupper river of which actual monorail was built suspended above.

St Goarshausen

After switching to VIAS GmbH at Koblenz, we proceeded across the Rhine in the direction of Frankfurt. The goal was to stop at a river-side station somewhere down the line to eat and check out the scenery. This railway has an interesting mid-way 'terminal' style station at Wiesbaden. The trains then reverse and head on to Frankfurt where they then turn around and bounce back to Koblenz.

I still don't remember why I chose St Goarshausen as a location for lunch and freighters, but it did pay off in the end... unfortunately it was also the place of initiation for the proceeding comedy-of-errors. We got off the train in a hurry, which vaguely reminds me that the location was chosen quite randomly, and made it down to the Rhine. Here we ate lunch and saw the tour buses and boats proceeding up and down the roads and river. All was swell until I got up to walk back to the station. It was time to see what ran on the line and it wasn't until I went to pick up my two bags that I realised I only had one! At that point I remembered that I'd thrown my 'carry on' bag on the rack above us in the train and had not remembered to take it back down as we were getting off.

It occurred to me that there was not much I could do after a few deep breaths... We paid for lunch and headed back to the station. Unfortunately it was well-abandoned and all the numbers to call weren't working from my Dutch Lebara sim card. The next VIAS train wasn't for an hour... so... I took photos of freighters as I had the camera around my neck.

The next service came and we boarded, waiting for the conductor. After checking our Eurail pass, we asked her what we should do. It was Saturday and her answer was to call Lost&Found on Monday. She was also finishing shift at the next stop and a new conductor coming on might be able to help. Unfortunately he spoke less english, asking if we spoke french.

We ended up at the terminal in Wiesbaden where we were meant to switch to DB and head on through to Freiburg. Unfortunately, without my bag (containing train tickets for the overnight train), we weren't going anywhere fast. The goal at Wiesbaden was then to find a station office and determine what the best plan of attack was. 5 minutes before arriving we decided that we might also continue on VIAS to Frankfurt, as the train we were originally on should have been cleaned prior to turning around?

We chose to alight at Wiesbaden and headed to the ticket counter to find an office. We expected that they could call Frankfurt to check the train we'd been on... I'd taken a photo of the train and knew the actual loco number. As we approached the end of the platform I noticed another VIAS train (amongst all the DB stock) was hanging in platform one. It had already bounced back from Frankfurt and was about to head off for Koblenz! I passed my luggage to my friend and bolted for it... I still feel sorry for the passengers waiting to depart as I stormed through the carriage looking for the shelf that I'd left my bag on. Unfortunately, it wasn't there.

Meanwhile, my friend had intercepted the conductor who was just finishing his shift and wandering down the platform. The language barrier had prevented him from getting the message through, but I rocked up and just used sign language to describe my bag. He all of a sudden realised what we meant and took me back to the drivers compartment. It turns out he'd seen it on the shelf at Frankfurt and put it in with the driver, expecting to return it to Koblenz and store it there. I could not believe my luck when he returned my bag back to me with my laptop, camera lenses, phone charger, train tickets, travel documents, etc... etc... in it.

We then jumped on the next train south towards Freiburg; the goal was to have Dinner in Worms.

Stuttgart

Not Freiburg you say? Not Worms either? I still can't give you the correct answer as to how we got here. We printed the 'travel advice' from the DB machine showing the connections... we went to the right platform... we got on the train that we thought was to take us in the correct direction and we ended up in Stuttgart. Now that I look at the map I realise that we headed south-east instead of due south.

It was getting to late afternoon and this foul-up meant that we wouldn't make the night-train intercept at Freiburg! I went to the station office and told the attendant my dilemma. I suggested Karlsruhe as an alternate intercept point and she indicated this would be fine... I also then assumed the train conductor would be informed. We then caught the next train to Karlsruhe after a snack.

Karlsruhe

We got here in good time for the intercept... I decided to practise night-time photography and tinkered with my camera.

We had a full meal at the station and, before we knew it, the night train was approaching.

We boarded the train and attempted to enter our cabin... it was locked. I let out a yelp, but then tracked down the conductor. He looked at my ticket and grunted... disappearing somewhere in the wrong direction. Before long he returned and proceeded to give me an ear-full about being late and informed me of their policy on re-selling rooms if the original passenger no-shows more than 2 stations beyond there original joining point. It turns out that, now when I look at a map, we should've continued further south to Offenburg... although I can't remember if that would've been possible. I think the lady at Stuttgart would've recommended that if it had been the case?

Either way, he pulled out his keys stating that he thought our cabin was no longer available... whilst still walking us towards it. He unlocked the room and we all saw that it wasn't occupied. He then continued the rant that we should have gotten on earlier and that we were making his job difficult. I explained the story and he stated that the DB station staff had no ability to contact train conductors if/when there are issues. We thanked him for his help and he went on his 'merry' way.

After 3 fails, we finally had somewhere to sleep and were on the way to Berlin.

Berlin

So... 0700 hours... off the train to Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Amazing station! How the hell do we get to Rosa-Luxemborg-Platz? It's amazing how dependent you get on technology... specifically data connections on mobile phones and google maps. We navigated the maps and jumped on a train to Alexanderplatz. This turned out to be another great station. We then transferred to the U-Bahn and ended up at the correct station. It was now 0800 and we dropped our bags... it's Sunday... turns out nothing is open!? So...

This city needs to be re-visited... there's a lot more to check out!

This city surprised me... I was expecting somewhat of a metropolis, Amsterdam being the capital and all. Instead it's a beautiful canal city with fantastic architecture, despite some of the houses leaning towards canals or other buildings.

Nederlandse Spoorwegen [aka 'Dutch Railways'] (Official site) is the national railway operator and provided us with all the transport requirements we needed. Multiple trips were taken out to random locations and the trains were always fast and on time.

Amersfoort

Just south-west of Amsterdam, Amersfoort is an interchange station for anyone wanting to head north/north-west. We used this interchange on the way through to Groningen. A modern EMU was caught from Amsterdam Centraal but then the connecting train was a Koploper to Groningen! Checking out this model of EMU was high on my priority list!

The Koploper looks very similar to the JR West Thunderbird (683 Series) and the standard 183/485 EMUs as well, but I'm not too sure who copied who. I also bought a model of this in HO by Lima; I'll post on that at a later date.

Groningen

My grandparents are from this area and it had to be visited... getting here by Koploper was an added bonus. Groningen is known for its high student population and universities. We had lunch in the town square and checked out the shops; there was a better selection there than the capital of Australia

Veendam

The Museum Railway S·T·A·R runs from Staadskanaal to Veendam and this wasn't far away from Groningen. We took the DMU from Groningen to Veendam and intercepted the first run of the SL for the morning from Staadskanaal. Note that this service has only just been re-connected to Veendam. The train used to stop one station short until June this year (2011) when they re-extended the service.

The STAR Museum Train had to cross a canal when coming from the south (Stadskanaal); a manually-operated bridge is turned into place when required.

We then took the next DMU back to Groningen and then connected to a return service to Amsterdam.

Venlo

The final day was spent taking the train from Amsterdam Centraal to Bochum, Germany. This was extremely easy and fast. There were three connections in total, all with no issues or delays. Venlo was the last stop before switching to the German railways and was a hub for freight train drivers to change shifts. There happened to be a constant procession of freighters pausing for 5 minutes in the yard, coming in from both directions.

You can find the whole album here.

I wont go in to deployment steps here... it's all covered on the web. The basic concepts were to point an apache virtual host at a new directory in /var/www and then browse to the application. To my delight it started, throwing an error. I hadn't even configured a thing yet, so how could I expect it to run?

After configuring the Facebook connector and the database connection the site came up and I could log in and muck around. It wasn't long until I hit the following error. It was only on a specific data class that extended the ActiveRecord interface and only when checking if the data was valid or trying to save it. I could happily create the class and change attributes...

Wrong number of arguments (1 of 0)

What the hell... I hadn't seen ruby exceptions before, so I started to dig. The RAILS_ENV environment variable was set to 'development' and so there was a 'development.log' file sitting in the 'log' directory inside the application. This provided a stack trace and a few other bits and pieces.

After a lot of code commenting and uncommenting I narrowed it down to the 'save' method of the specific data item class. This was inherited from the ActiveRecord::base class and I had no say in what it did or how it did it. I did know that it was expecting no arguments, so that's where the '0' came from in the error, but I was also not passing it any arguments, so where the hell did the '1' come from!?!?!

I then tried the 'valid?' call as well... same result.

I chose to override the 'save' function in the model file by using a pass through... all of a sudden the code continued (after hours of exceptions) and the next related table row creation had a null foreign key for the item that should have been saved. It turns out that by creating a pass through I bypassed the entire 'save' method and therefore didn't attempt to write anything to the db. As soon as I tried to use the base 'save'I got the same error but now in the model file.

I was stuck... so I tried to bring up the debugger via the mini WEBrick server. It, unfortunately, didn't give me any more information than what the development.log file had provided.

Next I tried downgrading and upgrading ruby and rails. I was impressed with the 'gem' system... but nothing helped.

The final step was to google more and more... I had already tried gutting my model implementation (there was extra code in the for other tasks) but none of this changed the inability to call 'save'. All of a sudden one google search came across someone mentioning something about a 'reserved word'.... I google'd further.

Reserved Words

It seems that Ruby has a few words that you MUST NOT GO NEAR if you want your code to work. The main issue is that, when you do, you'll have no idea what you have done as the error message that results has NOTHING TO DO WITH the actual problem. It turns out that after browsing to a post by someone with a similar problem I saw the comment stating that they had used the word 'notify' for a column name.

... so had the original developer of the code I had worked on ...

There was no response to the post that pointed this out in the previous link, so that either means the original author was too ashamed and it was the correct fix, or they found the real fix and never got back to this.

Either way, I corrected my database by changing 'notify' to 'notify_opp' and ... fkn presto ... 10 hours of debugging resulted in a SUCCESS!

Further information on these magical reserved creatures

Ok, the fun part... in hind-sight I've done a little research and there are sites indicating what 'words' are 'reserved' for ruby. Unfortunately, not all of them say that 'notify' is!

• Ruby QuickRef [does not]
• Ruby's reserved words [does not]
• Ruby on Rails - ReservedWords [does]

References:

• [Problem] wrong number of arguments (1 for 0)
• Wrong number of arguments (0 for 1) on notifiy method in Ruby on Rails
  I imagine the title should have been '(1 of 0)' ... but it is still the same issue
• Problem saving model in Rails
• rails forum: wrong number of arguments error ... same error, different reserved word.

Conclusion

Be bloody careful with errors from ruby that don't make sense and don't spend too long digging in to a dead end.
Be diligent with your google searches too.

I spent a lot of time debugging this and I hope this post helps out others in the same scenario.

As per usual, I'd google-mapped NY prior to coming and new that there wasn't much freight action on the island. I had seen a few yards on the the east coast of Long Island near Brooklyn and had decided that would be a first stop once I had time.

Car floats and empty lots on Long Island

I thought we all called them train ferries or rail ferries, but it turns out they're known as car floats in America. The New York New Jersey Rail, LLC run one from Bay Ridge to New Jersey on-demand. Turns out that when I visited there was no demand whatsoever, to the point where I was actually sure that the whole site had been abandoned. It wasn't until I google'd today that I realised it is the end of the Bay Ridge Branch owned by the Long Island Railroad....
Actually, as I'm writing this I'm seeing conflicting information on Wikipedia as to what carfloat service is actually still in operation...

I then walked north to the other visible yard on google maps but it turns out the photos are old and the yard no longer existed. I turned east to see the subway depot near 9th Ave Station. It was pretty cool, nice diesel maintenance equipment, but I'd failed to take any good photos.

CSX: The Bronx

This was a fun trip... on my last day in NY I decided to venture north to see a yard just across Harlem River. At the time of research I'd neglected to check suburb names and so just went for it, on foot. I found the CSX depot with quite a lot of rolling stock, random Amtrak services shooting through and a track gang working.

I walked the length of the yard south after coming from the intersection at Baretto Street. In the distance there were two CSX locomotives doing some minor shunting. Fortunately I waited around long enough for an Amtrak service to bolt through.

The next part was meant to be a leisurely stroll across to the large junction of the Metro North and Amtrak railway near 149th Street 'Grand Concourse'. As I crossed the streets I started feeling slightly conscious... it wasn't until I saw a portable police turret keeping an eye out on an intersection that I realised a tourist should probably not be walking through the district with a large camera hanging around their neck.

Metro North and Amtrak near 149th Street

This area provided a nice amount of action. Around 1 train every 5-10 minutes in both directions and from both Metro North and Amtrak. Although the sun wasn't in the best position, and there were a lot of fences preventing clear shots, it was a good location to just relax in the high 20-degree temperatures + humidity.

Harlem River

I then walked south and crossed Harlem River. There seems to be a lot of freight infrastructure on the northern side, including a low-lying viaduct allowing the trains to traverse the border of the northern shore. The main Metro North rail bridge is also a great backdrop.

Harlem-125th Street Station

This is one of the first stations on the south-side of the line on the bridge shown previously. Therefore it carried the expresses and locals stopping at this station. Fortunately the sun was in the right position for anything heading south. It was a pretty busy location and the foyer of the building was amazing.

And that was it for New York... the next day was Amsterdam...

California

The goal was simple... fly the red-eye A380 from Melbourne to LAX, jump in a hire-car and make it to San Francisco the 'scenic way'. A few days would then be spent in San Francisco before returning to LA via the inland route. This would include Yosemite and a few of the larger railroad junctions as seen from Google Maps.

San Luis Obispo

The Pacific Surfliner (I think?) happened to arrive just as we did. There were a few UP Locos stored as well... maybe for banking? The town was great, unfortunately we didn't check out the coffee; there were quite a few lively places around the station to do so though.

The pedestrian bridge at San Luis Obispo was well designed. It provided a great view of the station and yard too.

I had always thought that the Bachmann models of the Amtrak cars were just cheap and didn't include side-frames on the bogies... turns out they're actually like this in reality... not the prettiest view.

Paso Robles

The next stop via Highway 101 was Paso Robles. Not much happening here at all... I nearly expected to see the same Amtrak train coming through, but it seems that we beat it way too easily. The station has a Sushi shop built in, but the prices weren't what we were willing to dish out despite paying the US$.

Quarry Lake (east of Watsonville)

An accidental detour saw us visit a quarry near Quarry Lake. The initial plan was to divert from 101 to check out the seemingly large junction at Watsonville, but the weather and time wasn't on our side.

Caltrain Station, San Francisco

Caltrain is a loco-hauled/control-cab operating passenger service from San Francisco (right next to the baseball stadium) down to San Jose. Turns out there's a few great restaurants next to the station in San Fran and whilst waiting for dinner I had a few minutes with a friends camera to check out the yard. Fortunately the sun was also in my favour.

As you can see, it's a terminus; they'll end up in the water unless the dig or build over to Oakland. Unfortunately I didn't get to see any of the trains in action, nor ride one, but it's something I'll go back again for.

Trams/Trolley buses in San Fran

I was quite impressed to see the trolley bus routes in San Francisco. I had never actually seen any running and the biggest shock was the lack of noise. I'm used to diesel buses here in Australia and the electric versions are bloody quiet. I imagine it could even be a safety issue if no one can hear them coming?
Another impressive feature was that the trams used one of the trolley bus wires where they shared paths. Of course, the bus would not pick up the other polarity from the ground, so they needed two wires in the air. Trams, on the other hand, only used one and so you'd see, at intersections, trolley buses and trams banked up behind each other.

San Francisco Cable Car Museum

This is a must-see for any rail enthusiast. Sure, the they're not exactly 'trams', but the techonology behind the system is awesome. This Museum actually still acts as the motive power source for the cars. The cables are turned here to pull the cars up the gradients. The cars are controlled by levers where the driver can choose to detach from the cable and apply brakes... i.e. allowing them to stop at 'stops'. Hence the cables are perpetually spinning, or during hours of operation anyway.

And then... the Cable Cars...

The world-famous cars that run on the cables are a tourist trap. The ticket price is 4x a standard fare and the queues to ride them are usually large. The cars to move quickly, but I imagine there's a limit to the amount of cars on the cable at once as you'll often see the drivers at the end stops waiting for the other cars to climb the hill. Pretty frustrating as someone in the line waiting.

As for the ride, the gradients are awesome and the passing is pretty dangerous... hang of the side if you dare, but keep your head in!

Oakdale

A random stop through Oakdale on the way to the Yosemite National Park found a random caboose and the Sierra Railroad's Dinner Train. Not much was happening around the yards, so I didn't hang around long.

Fresno

The initial perception of Fresno indicated little railway infrastructure and life... fortunately I was wrong. After a little false navigation following disused lines I came across 'South Railroad Avenue' which followed the main line. It turns out that there's a junction and then the BNSF depot. Finally some real american horsepower. Santa Fe had always been my favourite railroad (first model train, etc...) and it was nice to see them, although in the amalgamated BNSF livery.

The last miles on Interstate 5

After Fresno the countdown was on to get back to LA before midnight. The plane to NY was leaving early the next morning and we needed some time to check out Hollywood. Along the way back there were a few freighters hanging around loading sites, one was from Golden State Feed and Grain and another from Rail America.

And that was it... New York was next.

Canal Sidings

These sidings form a repair bay for rolling stock in Melbourne. Often on a Saturday morning one will be able to see damaged rolling stock being brought to these sidings or repaired rolling stock being taken away. I've usually only seen grain wagons and flats being repaired.

The main SG line to Southern Cross Station passes directly beside Canal Sidings and the XPT travels along this times a day on it's two trips to Melbourne.

Dynon Fuel Point

The petrol station at Dynon serves all sorts of customers: V/Line, PacNat, El Zorro, etc... today we see a nice line up of PacNat BG freight locomotives with a single V/Line N Class.

V/Line Standard Gauge Passenger Trains

V/Line has only just re-started it's services to and from Albury/Wodonga after converting 3 N Class, 1 P class and two passenger consists to Standard Gauge. Here we see (what happened to be) an empty passenger consist from the yard heading to Southern Cross to do the midday run to Albury. It ended up returning very quickly as it turns out the service was to be bus-tituted. Something to do with a massive ARTC signal fault on the 'NE SG'.

I happened to randomly catch it heading north whilst waiting for the AK cars... The livery really does liven up the photos.

AK Cars in Melbourne

The AK Cars are run by ARTC to inspect the railways under their control across Australia. This week they ventured in and out of Melbourne testing the continuously-changing NE SG.

El Zorro Locomotive Testing

This was a random sighting... supposedly 442s6 was about to see the scrappers torch but instead was rescued by El Zorro. This loco will add a little more colour to their already assorted mish mash of locomotives.

A few friends and I are heading to Spain over September and we wanted to include a trip or two on their highspeed rail network. After a little google'ing, I had determined the Spanish Rail Company was RENFE and their web site was mildly difficult to navigate and use. The following article lists the notes/issues/warnings that I had gathered from other sites and heeded whilst purchasing online.

Step 1: Create an account

You can do this milliseconds prior to the purchase, but I recommend doing this at the start to raise your chances of a successful purchase. To register your account:

1. Browse to the RENFE Website and click the Welcome link.
2. Click the Purchase link, top right.
3. On the new page, select the Register Me link in the user login window, mid-top right.

You can now start to enter your details. Note that you have to enter a 5-digit postcode (for Australia I just added a zero to the front) and you also have to have at least one symbol and one number in your password. You'll also have to select a fake Spanish Province as it doesn't hide that selection when you choose another country. This doesn't affect your ability to purchase tickets as you do not receive anything in the mail.

Meanwhile, don't be alarmed if the 'Check User' link doesn't work... it didn't work for me, but I continued through and my account was created.

Step 2: Find the timetable

Firstly, visit RENFE's Website and choose the "Welcome" link just below the title image. This link will take you to the 'English' version of the passenger timetables page. From here you can now input your departure/destination stations and a date to travel on. Note that this is for inter-city travel across Spain; you can find suburban stations on the Renfe Cercanías - Communter trains page.

Note: You can only purchase tickets 62 days in advance... be warned though, the site doesn't always have the tickets available. You may have to be 50 days or less in advance before they will appear.

Once you've worked out a good departure time, select the Query and Buy link. This will show an extra table stating the 'off the shelf' prices for each class of travel. Don't be scared by these though, you're about to head into the purchasing system where you'll be presented with the 'web fares'. Click the shopping trolley icon and a new window/tab will open with the purchasing website.

Step 3: Starting the purchase

You'll now be in the purchasing area of the RENFE site. Wait for the initial purchasing page to load; a script will change the departure/destination stations and travel date to what you had previously selected. You can then update this if you want a return journey and can also choose the quantity if you want multiple tickets.

Confirm at this point that you are still actually logged in. The panel in the top-left of the screen should show your full name, as you registered it.

After selecting the relevant details, hit the Search button.

Step 3: Choosing a service

Right, there's quite a few different services offered by RENFE available online. These range from Overnight sleeper "Train Hotels" to the latest and greatest highspeed AVE Trains.

Note that "Estrella" is both a name for the Overnight Trains (if it's in the left-most column) and a 'Travel Class' (if it's in the right-most column) literally translated to "Star Class".

If you see the service you want, but it's marked as "Train Blocked", then don't despair! Chances are RENFE are taking their time with the timetable updates and you are too 'early' (although you may be within the 62 days prior to travel.) I had this for my tickets in September and persistence paid off. The tickets became available around 58 days prior to my travels.

You can find the full list here, but below are the services you'll probably want to purchase:

• AVE (300km/h)
  'State of the art' highspeed network in Spain. Currently servicing: Madrid–Barcelona, Madrid–Valladolid, Madrid–Levante, Córdoba–Málaga.
• Euromed (220km/h)
  The Euromed is a slower train with Turista and Preferente classes. You'll find these services between most major cities and they usually come with very good discounts.
• Alaris (200km/h)
  Again, a service between most major cities which usually stops at a lot more stations than the Euromed.
• Talgo (160-200km/h)
  Looking quite like a duck/platypus, these relics have been refurbed for smoother rides. They also travel between most major cities, filling in the stations that the faster trains don't stop at.
• Estrella
  These trains are the overnighters. NOTE that you cannot purchase a bed online! Of three levels offered, Turista and Preferente are seats and Litera is a cabin with 6 reclining seats (potentially into 'beds', but I wouldn't count on comfort.) Other sites have indicated very little sleep had on these tickets. I imagine you can purchase the sleeper cabins over the phone?
• TRENHOTEL
  These are the real overnight trains... all classes starting with "cama" indicate that you are purchasing a bed. It's been mentioned that RENFE will not mix strangers in a cabin, so purchasing two tickets for a 4-berth cabin will give you space and privacy.

Step 4: Choosing a class

One note here... I tried to purchase "Preferente" class on a Barcelona to Madrid service and I got the error to the right. I was interested in what I expected to be first class but wanted to get the tickets purchased; instead I opted for "Turista".

• Turista
  This seems to be equivalent to 'economy class' or 'coach'. All trains have this and it's the lowest (and cheapest) option available. All trains I checked out still had 2+2 seating though... so it can't be too uncomfortable?
• Preferente
  Don't quote me on this, but I think these are 1st Class seats with a discount... I wasn't able to purchase any though.
• Club
  Bloody expensive... seems to be first class with no discount and all the options (drinks, food, etc..)
• Butaca Super.
  No idea... if anyone can provide information on this then please do!
• Cama Turista
  No idea... if anyone can provide information on this then please do!
• Cama Preferen
  No idea... if anyone can provide information on this then please do!
• Cama G. Clase
  No idea... if anyone can provide information on this then please do!

Step 5: Confirming ticket details

The next screen is one of the most confusing. At the top of the screen you will see the trips you wish to take with the classes you have selected. At this point you can choose to switch to another class type if required. Switching between the types and pressing "Recalculate purchase price" will show you what each of the tickets are worth. Chances are you already chose the ticket type in the previous screen and you don't need to adjust this.

There is also a family discount option ("Descuento F.Numerosa") which allows discounts to parties travelling as a family. I don't know exactly how this applies and don't recommend touching it.

Select your final options (seat selection, meals, etc...) and then choose Continue.

I usually don't bother with seat selection for any tickets that I purchase (on any mode of transport...) ...but... for the purposes of this post I'll show you what happens when you tick that checkbox.

Step 7: Credit Card Details

Ok, the first thing that scared me on this page is the lack of a credit card 'type' selection. You cannot select 'Visa', 'Mastercard, etc... I assume RENFE just knows how to decipher this from the card number you've entered.

You'll notice at the top of the screen that there is a 'Select a card' button... this brings up a blank list (I first expected to select my card type via this.) I freaked out during my first purchase but then realised that it's for storing your credit card details so you don't have to type them in each time. I chose not to do this.

Go through and fill out your details... Skip the 'TEMPO Card' area as that seems to be their loyalty program. You'll need to make sure the number has no spaces, your name is correct and you have the CVV number from the back of your card (it's the last three digits on whatever number exists.) If you don't know any of these details then contact your bank or ask someone who's paid online with a credit card before to help you.

Finally check the 'I agree...' checkbox and hit continue.

Step 8: Seat selection (optional)

If you didn't choose seat selection then you can skip this step; otherwise, choose your seats...

At the top of the page you'll see the entire consist of the train you'll be travelling on. The buffet car is noted and so are the classes of travel. RENFE will select a car for you to travel in by default, but you can choose another as long as it's marked as the class of travel you have chosen.

Once you've chosen a car you can then select a seat on the bottom half of the screen. Note that anything marked 'X' has already been booked by someone else. Work out where the amenities are and choose the required amount of seats simply by clicking on them.

After selecting all required seats, press continue to start the card verification process.

Step 9: Credit Card Verification

Now comes the tricky part... you'll have a few hoops to jump through here depending on your card issuer/bank. If you've ever bought anything online (not via Paypal) and have seen your bank's "verification screen" then you can expect to see it here too. RENFE, at this point, will attempt to contact your bank and will then hand control over to the bank's verification system. My bank here in Australia presented it's verification screen where I was to click a button, receive an SMS and then type in the code given.

NOTE: The first time I did this my bank's verification screen did not appear! Something timed out somewhere and I got a "This website is not responding..." error. I ended up just hitting refresh (as I knew I hadn't verified the initial payment) and everything then just worked. It's always daunting when dealing with your own hard-earned dollars... but be persistent and it should work.

Step 10: Review and print your confirmation

If you've made it this far then you're in! Congratulations, on this screen you'll have a booking number and trip details. You will also receive an email (if you typed the correct one in whilst registering) with all the details too. There's no need to print this screen; print the email instead.

I never tried the SMS option... there's a radio button that you can select... I imagine you then press the "Print Tickets" down below. I didn't even click that button; I was happy with the email as proof of purchase.

There is a link at the top left to view your 'Journeys'. Click this and it'll show you a short list of your confirmed tickets.

Step 11: Travel.

I'll get back to you on this in August/September 2011.

I'd known about this line from the forums at Railpage and wanted to see some of the privately operated locomotives.

NOHABs at Canterbury

NOHAB (Nydqvist & Holm AB) was a manufacturing company in Sweden that has since gone bust. Independent Rail of Australia (Originally known as Lachlan Valley Rail Freight) based in Minto, Sydney, imported 16 of their MZ locomotives and continues to refurbish them.

It turns out that they decided to pass me at Canterbury Station not long after I'd gotten there.

They also own 4717, looking quite dirty. I jumped on the next spark back to Marrickville; 4717 paused long enough at the signal for me.

RLs at Marrickville

It turns out there was to be enough action here to keep me entertained. Port botany is a dead-end with no facilities to turn an engine, so all locomotives have to reverse else where. It seems that, for the movements I saw, containers are taken down and then the engines return to their bases.

First up, after 4717 cleared, a set of RLs came through. RL302 was leading and paused just on the other side of the junction to Sydenham. The pair then trotted off downhill.

After the port line was clear, the NOHABs returned. It would've been a good shot if another locomotive was attempting to head east... I've seen it before where someone has caught another train waiting on the line up from Sydenham.

The RLs, with RL301 now closest to me, returned to Marrickville and then bounced back to the port.

81s at Marrickville

A lonesome 81 Class then climbed the grade from Sydenham and wound past Marrickville. I hadn't seen these under steam for quite a long time (Melbourne only really sees them shunting.)
Note that the final container on the train had a piece of cardboard wedged in the handle saying "Don't seal this container."

Central and Surrounds

I then ventured into the city via Central and caught the locals.

That night I also tried a few shots of the trams near Paddy's Markets.

Taking the XPT home

The final part of my journey included a trip home on the XPT; although everyone seemed to think I was crazy for doing it. It was actually a really nice ride and there were little slowdowns. The train arrived 2 minutes early to Southern Cross; but the timetable definitely incorporates the trackwork being undertaken.

Quite a few freight trains were passed, for a Sunday, including a random lash-up on a ballast train south of Cootamundra.

In the end, I'd do the trip again... the trackwork will be completed one day? I think they can knock an hour or two off the running-time when it's done.

The photo album for this trip is here.

Skip straight to the bottom of this post if you just want the application!

An Introduction to the game

A friend and I recently stumbled across the Commandos Ammo Pack ('Behind Enemy Lines' and it's expansion pack 'Beyond The Call Of Duty') at Good Old Games.com and we just couldn't resist downloading it. It did cost US$5.99, but that's absolutely chicken feed when compared to the awesomness of this game.

It's an old game, created in 1999, and could handle resolutions up to 1024x768 for single player; but for multiplayer the resolution was fixed at 640x480. I google'd around a little and saw that one person on a forum had created the Mysoft - Commandos Loader v0.8 which seemed to hoist the application in to memory and then hacked around with variables. I wasn't sure this was the best method and had the main Commandos EXE in IDA Free before too long.

I'd read that it used DirectDraw/3D and started searching for the appropriate functions. Before long I had the AdjustWindowRectEx, DirectDrawCreate and other functions under the microscope. I then opened the EXE up in OllyDbg and started slapping breakpoints everywhere. Before long I'd noticed the pattern:

push    10h
push    1E0h
push    280h

This seemed to be popping up everywhere and co-incidently 280h x 1E0h = 640x480 pixels... the default for the game. I then found code that set the resolution based on those shown in the video settings menu and then the game was doing what I told it.

After a little more google'ing I found that someone else had already gotten to this point. Ferdinand had the hacks there to change the resolutions, but did not have the final piece to ensure that re-loading the game brought the resolution back.

After a little more disassembling I found that the resolution was being loaded at startup from a file on disk... this turned out to be "COMANDOS.CFG" in My Documents. The exact line from the config was:

.SIZE [ .INITSIZE 2 ]

From the config it was obvious that the game was using 'index 2' from the resolution list. Of course, it also meant that it knew how to decipher that '2' to a real resolution from the list in the code. After a little forward and reverse searching from the file loading to the resolution setting I came to the switch statement in the code which had the values hard-coded. I now had 3 points per resolution setting in the code that needed to be changed if I was to write my own utility.

Commandos Resolution Hack Alpha 1

I hadn't liked anything that was already available to do this and so I chose to wrote my own. The application loaded the EXE into memory, read out the resolutions stored, audited that they were all in sync and then allowed the user to select a new resolution per slot. If the resolutions weren't the same then you would get a warning, but this would have been corrected on the next resolution hack.

This worked fine, but I found it pointless to specify four separate resolutions when you only really needed to specify one. I was more in for the challenge of allowing all four to change, rather than the practicality.

Testing and more bugs

So, it all worked... I then closed the game, re-opened it and found that it loaded up at 1024x768 instead of the 1680x1050 resolution I had set. I closed it again and looked at the configuration file; the setting had indeed changed back to '2' instead of '4'... but I hadn't touched it! I then loaded the game again and it was back to 1680x1050... closing and opening brought it back to 1024x768... the flip-flop continued.

So... what did this seem to mean? I had overlooked the storage of the resolution configuration. If the indexed resolution was read from the file, then it would have to be written back as an index. I went back in to the disassembler and searched for anything relating to writing 'SIZE' into the configuration file. The logic in the game was then obvious: it carried out an "if less than X but greater than Y" across the 'stock' resolutions and then stored the relevant index. This complicated my approach and confirmed that I really should only bother adjusting the 'fourth' resolution in the list. There was no point allowing the user to re-order the resolutions as this code then wouldn't work. The fourth resolution would need to be the only one customisable and the value must be greater than the third resolution at 800x600.

Commandos Resolution Hack Alpha 2

So, with this in mind, I wound the application down to just editing one resolution that had to be higher than 800x600. This meant that the internal configuration saving would work and the user would just have to select the final resolution in the list. Note that this only affected single player... the multi player resolution would still be a separate setting.

Everything was now working great... except the drawing issues above 1024 resolutions...

Drawing bugs

So, the game obviously wasn't meant to be played with a horizontal resolution greater than 1024 pixels; rendering artifacts started appearing when higher resolutions were used. Fortunately, the game is quite dynamic when it comes to rendering the screen and menus. Trawling through the code I could see that it was trying to find a BMP that matched the resolution, even using the resolution as the file name. Ferdinand had also worked this out and even has a list of assets downloadable for higher resolutions.

Commandos stores all of its graphical assets in a file named 'WARGAME.DIR' and references this when the game loads. I started looking into modifying this file via my program but realised it would be wuite a task to decipher and re-pack. Fortunately, some clever fellows across the world have created the necessary tools to extract these files. DirExtractor allows us to expand the DIR files and, once in the Commandos directory, the game itself will actually use the extracted versions if you remove the WARGAME.DIR file. This then meant that I could use my app to call DirExtractor, extract the files and then modify them where required to ease the majority of graphical glitches.

Required Graphical Modifications

• A single change to the fourth resolution string in DATOS\MISIONES\GLOBAL.STR to whatever the custom resolution has been set to. This can be found by searching for the token OVI4 and then replacing the string following.
• The creation of the menu background. This has to be a Bitmap file named MENU####.BMP where the #### is the horizontal resolution of the screen.
• Build a WAD file for the game-play interface. This WAD is named via the resolution (i.e. 1024X768.WAD) and contains values that tell the game how to render the interface. I created a one-size-fits-all file that ensures that the graphics are wide/long enough for the screen resolutions (max 1920x1920) and the application simply renames the file and ensures that it is available to the game.

A final glitch

There was only one drawing issue remaining after this... any resolution over 1400 meant that maps thinner than the overall monitor width would not re-draw the areas that they could not cover. You can see this in the following screen shots.

Fortunately you can press '+' and '-' in-game to zoom in and out. What this meant was that the user could stop the map from clipping by adjusting the zoom. I took this as a suitable workaround at the time.

And you thought it was going to be this easy?

So, I had the app working great for the modification of the GOG version of the EXE. It turns out that there are many more versions in the wild. It also gets worse as there is another patch here that fixes up a whole lot of other issues in the game. Fortunately it seems that the EXE from the above link is the exact same as the EXE from GOG? Either way, I've tested it and my hack works on it perfectly.

Due to the above, I started a list of EXEs for the game and then began deciphering them (as I knew the basic items to change) to allow my application to work with them.

Items in bold are those that come from GOG.com.

My application was then built to determine the EXE via file size (of course, this isn't fool-proof) and then hack appropriately.

Commandos - Beyond The Call Of Duty

So, this was just an update to the main game... turns out the code was slightly different, but still workable with my current program structure. After about 6 hours debugging all was working! Enjoy!

Commandos Hack Final v1.0

The final release contains the following features:

• Support for all versions known above. (Note that the Demo and German versions don't actually save their configs to disk; we therefore hack the initial startup resolution.)
• Resolution list options based on monitor capabilities.
• Both EXE and WARGAME.DIR are backed up.
• A one-size-fits-all menu background has been included.
• German file encoding is preserved when the text is changed.
• Resolution menu text shows the selected resolution.
• The Locale hack from here has also been added.

Note: You need .NET Framework 4.0 to run this, download it here.

Download the application here.
And you can also download the .NET source code here.

And that's a wrap... go use every pixel your monitor can produce and play the game!

Sunset Riders

It turns out F12 saves snapshots of MAME games... so I couldn't resist...

Key Mapping

Below lists the mapping for the two new controllers to be created. I went ahead and used the default keys from MAME plus whatever else was free...

NOTE: Out-of-the-box MAME does not specify buttons 4,5,6 for Players 3 and 4! You can set these very easily in the 'default' config by using the basic MAME GUI (run mame.exe without any command line options)...

Building the other two controllers

I bought cheaper controls for these two... but to no real benefit. I did save AUD$10, but I don't really like the button microswitches. The buttons aren't as tall and they do look cheaper. They're also a lot less 'clickier'. On the positive side: the short-stick joysticks feel nicer during game-play and are a lot more sensitive.

The build of these two followed the exact same path as the previous two (see the previous post) using cheap Microsoft Keyboards. It turns out that they were now a different colour (White vs. Black) and I decided to replace my current keyboards on other computers with the new ones. I therefore used a standard black MS Keyboard for Player 3 and a 'Microsoft Comfort Curve' for Player 4.

The MS Comfort Curve had a completely different matrix and the circuit board inside was much easier to solder to. Either way, the process was still the same in determining the pins and then wiring everything up. Testing was made a lot easier as well as I found the below testing applications to work out exactly what I'd messed up

After running out of solder and then later butane I got them together and we gave them a go. All went well until Players 1 and 4 hit magical key combinations... It seems that, although the keyboards are separate devices, you can still produce an ALT-ENTER or CTRL-ALT-DEL by having each player pressing each of the keys separately. This has since been remedied in the final section of this post!

Testing your new creation

I found out that Windows 7 (and possibly Windows Vista?) but not Windows XP has the mskey.exe keyboard test application (I have since found out that you can Download the Intellisense Software here which contains this application.) It came in very handy until I plugged 12v into a USB hub and cooked the HDD in my TV-pc (luckily only the HD, the PSU managed to protect everything else!) and lost my Windows 7 install. For Windows XP systems (of which all my computers are now back to) I downloaded and used the PassMark KeyboardTest application. At first, the Google search result made the application look like a typing tutor, but after downloading I realised it was exactly what I needed.

MAME Configuration

So, as previously mentioned, MAME doesn't specify Buttons 4,5,6 for Players 3 and 4 by default. I suppose there aren't many games that have more than 3 buttons for all four players? I can't think of any... but my memory is quite hazy as to what 4-player games Combat Zone had back at Tuggeranong Hyperdome.

Either way, we've specified them above and we also need to make sure they map to the correct player/keys in MAME. Here's a snippet for Player 4 in my default.cfg:

<input>
 <port type="P4_JOYSTICKRIGHT_UP">
  <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_6PAD KEYCODE_8PAD</newseq>
 </port>
 <port type="P4_JOYSTICKRIGHT_DOWN">
  <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_2PAD KEYCODE_6PAD</newseq>
 </port>
 <port type="P4_JOYSTICKLEFT_UP">
  <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_4PAD KEYCODE_8PAD</newseq>
 </port>
 <port type="P4_JOYSTICKLEFT_DOWN">
  <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_2PAD KEYCODE_4PAD</newseq>
 </port>
 <port type="P4_BUTTON4">
  <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_PLUSPAD</newseq>
 </port>
 <port type="P4_BUTTON5">
  <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_MINUSPAD</newseq>
 </port>
 <port type="P4_BUTTON6">
  <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_ASTERISK</newseq>
 </port>
</input>

As you can see, the default.cfg only adds in controls we have overridden... the others must be hard-coded into mame.exe. Drop the configuration file in to your mame/cfg directory (note that you may want to check your file first as you could have other customisations!) and then you'll have the appropriate settings ready to go!

Diagonals and 4-Way Joysticks

Right, I couldn't work out why I couldn't get 'Steve' in 'Sunset Riders' to shoot on the diagonal... usually this was carried out by holding down the Up and Left (or Right) keys on the Keyboard, but it wasn't working. I scoured the internet and initially thought it was an issue with the way I'd wired up the joysticks.

It turns out that MAME has added in the ability to assign a separate key for the diagonal movements. This is great if you have an 8-way Joystick with actual individual microswitches on the diagonals, but I have a 4-way and I cannot, without logic circuits, wire up another key to activate when two of the direction microswitches are closed. I did actually start thinking of logical OR/AND gates to fire the specific keys when the direction goes diagonal, but this would require re-work on the sealed controllers.

So, I went in to MAME and then mashed the keyboard on the configuration screen. It turns out that you can assign multiple keys to a direction. This then made life easy... I would make Player 1's "Up/Left" key 'Up' + 'Left' instead of the 'I' key on the keyboard.

After testing this new configuration I realised it wasn't actually MAME that was the problem! It turns out that there was an actual physical issue with the initial two joysticks I bought when compared to the second two...

Arcade Joystick differences

So, the diagonals worked on the new joysticks I bought... they seemed to be a lot happier at pressing two directions at once. Unfortunately, the original joysticks only really wanted to go one way at once... After a little investigation it turns out that the plastic spacer/washer that slides onto the joystick stem was not wide enough (circumference-wise) to actually activate two microswitches at once. I'd also misplaced the original 'extra' components from the intial build and therefore didn't know if wider spacers existed? Either way, I had to make the spacers fatter to ensure that diagonal movements could be easily made.

In the end I cheated and used duct tape around the spacer at the bottom of the stick to make it's circumference wider. This meant it was more keen to press two microswitches at once and the world was a happier place!

The sticky-tape-fix was then tested for Player 1 and worked. I then did the same for Player 2 but had the controller back open in seconds after playing Bomberman as it turns out it was now too happy to go diagonal instead of 4-Way. Removing just over one layer of tape from the spacer on the joystick balanced out the circumference vs. microswitch equation and made the joystick much more responsive. Your mileage will vary with how much tape is required based on the sensitivity of the microswitches and how much travel/space you have between them and the center stick.

The verdict: Windows short-cut keys kill gameplay

The next step was to reconfigure any keys on the controllers to not use any modifier key (CTRL,ALT,SHIFT,ENTER) so as to not activate shortcuts during gameplay. When Player 1 and Player 4 pressed certain buttons (specifically ALT-ENTER) the MAME window would restore and, of course, it was possible that all four players could do a perfectly orchestrated CTRL-ALT-DEL and throw Windows XP to the Task Manager.

To do this I had to re-solder buttons on Controllers 1, 2, 3 and 4 to the nearest free keyboard button. Fortunately the Numpad had more than enough nearby keys free and there are still letters of the alphabet unused near Player 1's keys. The layout of buttons on the keyboard did not have to make sense to a human user and so any free buttons were used if the wiring was easier.

The Final Re-Mapping

So, in the end I re-mapped the modifier keys and also removed the duplicates between Players 2 and 3. Edits are in bold...

NOTE: You must UNMAP 'T' from the 'Other Controls' area otherwise when Player 1 hits Button 2 you may receive a 'Tilt' message and game restart.

Download the configuration file here.
This configuration overwrites the diagonals for Player 1 and adds/corrects all of the other mappings listed above.

And this is now to be tested in gameplay... I've done the re-wiring and have tested individually but have done no actual thrashing with MAME.

The End

And that's that... it was enough fun playing with Player 1 and 4 making sure not to mash the same buttons at the same time... but it should be a lot better now once I organise the beer and the people to play... will see how we go!

The weather, as per Melbourne, was playing hard-to-get and it was bloody freezing before the run came up. There was a lovely pink sunrise which I tried to capture before realising I'd remembered the XPT arrival times wrong... I heard it coming and just managed to get a dodgy shot.

The next train wasn't for an hour... so I entertained myself by finding a good location where I could use the tele-lens and the available sunlight. It turns out that on the high-way side there is a nice incline where you can get above track-level with a great view of the viaduct. You can also see the signals in both directions to know when something is approaching.

After being entertained by quite a few noisy birds...

...I was greeted by howling NRs on a superfreighter heading north...

The XPT was to return next... it did and it wasn't hanging around. Fortunately the sun came out to ensure I could match a shutter speed with the train's speed.

It was then about a 40minute wait for the DERM to arrive... during this time there were multiple acts of stupidity by various forms of wildlife.

And then the DERM arrived...

The next train was to be a southbound superfreighter in an hour. I decided that the weather wasn't getting any better and so started making my way back to the car. Of course, if anyone had looked in the long shots of the DERM58, you'd have seen that the southbound signal was at clear... these things are completely hard to trust, but it turns out that if you see a green in this area then you should hang around.

I'd made it half-way back to the car when I heard a very nice howl from the north... as I turned around QR came hurtling across the bridge with an awesome lashup of LDP-009 + 6005 + 6002 + LDP-008.

Supposedly it held pace all the way into Sunshine and scared a track gang working around the corner... I'm not surprised.

I headed to Kensington in the afternoon to see the DERM return via the passenger lines. There's a nice spot near the Allied Mills where you can see the lines off to the West as well.

And that was that... it was cold and wet and any further chasing would have been futile. I'm still learning the correct approach with photographing under low light conditions, but am pretty happy with how the above shots came out.

I gave it a quick run on some flex-track with a 12v supply I had lying around. It was noisy, but for something of its age, moved quite well.

Both end cars pick up power through their front bogie and both have internal lighting. It seems to be a standard incandescent light bulb and it actually lights up the entire nose of the train... makes it look very toy-ish... I would actually stop this from happening if I was to run these full-time, but I have no HO layout.

Either way, this is a cool set... and I was very impressed to find out that some company (I believe they are French?) made this back in the 70s/80s. As written underneath, they were made in Hong Kong.

It turns out that the company also made a Series 485 EMU which reminds me of the Kita Kinki in Kansai.

There was also an Endou Vista 3-Car EMU in N Scale which I couldn't recognise (looked like something Kintetsu or Meitetsu...) which I'll try and pick up next time... information on it is here, here, here and here. And yes, it's Kintetsu.