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3 December 2001. Beginning today, all news will be on my new home page, Complete WORKS IN PROGRESS.
1 December 2001.
28 November 2001.
23 November 2001.
22 November 2001.
Each succeeding route adds some aspect of route development. The code is heavily annotated to keep you informed. I strongly recommend going to Mackoy's site (in translation mode) and printing out his developer reference materials. I can't possibly include all the statements available and their meanings. Today is Thanksgiving Day in America. Besides the feasting, we take time to count our blessings. One of my blessings is having discovered the BVE community earlier this year. Thanks to all of you for so gratiously sharing your time and your works and your advice. You're the greatest! November 22 is also the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assasination. It was truly a sad day in our history. But it's also part of what goes into the collective experience of a nation and, along with the triumphs, becomes part of our coming of age. We are indeed still young as nations go. But nevertheless blessed. Happy T-Day! 17 November 2001.
The Kiha 40 car normally runs on the JR East Gonou Line, which Kamo has also made available on the Kawasaki Residents page. I had difficulty installing the route, but the diesel car came through just fine. I intend to keep trying with the route, and when I succeed I'll see what I can do about providing English names and text. You can download the Kiha 40 here. It's 7.8 MB. You can download the car and the route separately here. The route is about 400KB. Many thanks to Luigi Cartello for spotting this new release. Train Finder update. I've added the Kiha 40 diesel car to the Train Finder. I've also added instructions to the Train Finder for running a train on a route other than the route the train is associated with. The update is on my downloads page. 13 November 2001.
7 November 2001.
"Why'dja do it, Al," ye might be tempted to ask.
"Why not?" I'd reply. "Life's too short not to have some fun."
If you think it's only good for Scottish routes, consider that I took the original photo last May in Gatlinburg, Tennessee (US).
A word of caution, though. If your system doesn't like bitmaps larger than 256 pixels, you'll have to figure out a way to shrink this one. It's 512 x 256. I do my "pruning" of the unwanted background using MS Paint because it lets me save in 256-color format. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide a way to reduce the image. Working with anything smaller for this image was impossible.
5 November 2001.
I've posted my BVE Train Finder document on the Downloads page. This is a compilation in table form of 79 BVE trains. Categories include Folder, Country, Type, Power, Route, and Comment (which includes source URL). There are some gaps, and of course new trains appear regulary, so I expect to update it from time to time. Since the file is a Word file, you can do with it what you like. I hope people will feel free to send me corrections and omissions.
I'm also posting here a couple of screen shots from Ed Yee's Franklin Shuttle route mentioned in the 3 November news item.
3 November 2001.
I've added 3 new sites to the BVE Links page and supplied 3 missing definitions to the Components>Files section of the BVE Developer Guide.
Finally, I have Luigi Cartello to thank for providing the missing information about EB.wav, Stop.bmp, and Unlimit.bmp files. Thanks, Luigi.
31 October 2001.
29 October 2001.
I've finally added a BVE Links page. It's not complete, but it is well populated.
24 October 2001.
17 October 2001. Thanks largely to the efforts of Luigi Cartello, I am able to post the Anglicizing Iida tidbit. I have a few other things up my sleeve that you may be interested in.
First, I have been developing a page I expect to call BVE Train Finder. It will be a listing of all the available BVE trains that I'm familiar with. The listing will be by country, and will include such information as Type (e.g., loco, tram, mu, etc.), Power (e.g., steam, diesel, catenary, 3rd rail), accompanying Route, and Comment (which will include a link to the download source). This page was well along towards completion with over 75 entries. Then I spoke to Luigi Cartello, who intends add quite a few more. The effort could eventually lead to a Route Finder page.
Second, I have been shooting up a storm now that the famous New England fall foliage is at its peak here in Western Massachusetts. I plan to make bitmaps available for those route developers wishing to portray an autumn scene. Also, I managed to take some pictures of everyday people at our local fair a few weeks back. I hope eventually to turn these into people objects for adding to routes.
I also have some tips in the works, but we'll leave those for another time.
Finally, I'm putting together an extensive BVE links page. This should be ready in about a week.
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The fourth installment of the BVE Barebones route series is available. This one covers scenery elements. All instructions and explanations are in the form of annotations within the RW file. You can download it at my 
The third installment of the BVE Barebones route series is available. This one covers track elements. You can download it at my 
Nothing but track! This is the barest of minimum routes, intended as a test base or a beginning route for those wanting to learn route development. Barebones MINIMUM is the first of a series. You can download it and Barebones STATIONS, the second in the series, at my 
What's wrong with this picture? Not as much as you might think. It's a view of Steve Green's US Desert Freight route from the cab of Kamo's Kiha 40 series diesel car. With a little work, the car can be easily converted to a plausible version of an American Doodlebug, a 1920s-1940s style gasoline-electric/diesel-electric car used by a number of American railroads on lightly travelled routes. (See 
I've also added Luigi Cartello's new page for Italian BVE fans. Luigi started this about a week ago and has put together quite a lot of useful information in a short period. Congratulations, Luigi.
Last week I discovered another page devoted to New York City subways. This site is loaded with interesting information, photos, news, and resources.
Aye lads and lassies, it's time to get doon fer some music to soothe the soul. You can get this B3D object at the 
First the new sites. Thanks to Tony Chung, we now have a much needed discussion group centered around route development. Some of our experts have joined and are willing to help the novices. This is well worth joining if you have a desire to develop or just gain an understanding of routes. Thanks, Tony!
There's a quiet, but growing interest in New York City BVE subway lines. The NYCTA discussion group can use some support. It will also keep you posted on NYCTA add-on developments.
One of the best kept BVE secrets is Edward Yee's NYCTA add-on site. Ed just upgraded his R142, R142A, and R143A subway cars. The prototypes are NYCTA's newest. Ed's cars run beautifully. The 
Ruede Hulsman's smooth switches. On 21 October 2001 Ruede Hulsmann announced the availability of downloadable smooth switches via his 
Transparency Issues. BVE's ability to render portions of an object's bitmap as transparent enables easy creation of irregular objects such as people and trees, and complex structures such as fences and trestle work. If the developer follows certain basic rules when creating the objects and accompanying bitmaps, the final results are usually trouble-free. There are exceptions, however. The following presentation describes the method of creating transparent objects and offers some measures that can be taken when objects do not display as intended.