Welcome to ChrisTrainsTM - the home of my European trains for Microsoft Train Simulator. Predominantly, they are trains from the Dutch national rail system, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS). The official distribution site for my NS trains is at my forum : http://christrains.nl/forum.
Check the menu at the top of each page for links to all the pages in my site as well as links to the discussion forum at christrains.nl.
If you download and use any of my trains, please read the release notes! They answer pretty much all the questions you're likely to have about these trains.
All of my trains are built from scratch. They don't borrow, beg or steal anything from any of Microsoft or Kuju's trains. They are not “reskins”.
It goes without saying that all these models are © Chris Longhurst. Don't steal. The government hates competition.
All projects currently on hold
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I have taken the difficult decision to stop working on the free trains for Microsoft Train Simulator. At the moment it is unclear whether I will be supporting Kuju Rail Simulator or Microsoft Train Simulator 2.
The to-do list is currently suspended.
Please don't ask me for the skins for my trains. I will not be releasing any. And I'll tell you why.
I gave out the skins to one of my flight sim creations back in '99. The chap I gave it to gave me every assurance that the skins would be used legitimately. What actually happened was that he stole all my geometry, reskinned it and then distributed it with his name and copyright, and no mention of my name anywhere. Worse - he was actually selling the model and making money off my work. That is, until there was a problem. I deliberately made a change to the geometry and redistributed it, and suddenly, this chaps skins didn't work. At that point, he then directed all complaints to me, rather than accepting that his rampant plagiarism had caused all the trouble in the first place.
Having had this happen once, I'm not about to let it happen again. So I'm sorry, but despite any assurances you might want to give me, the skins and geometry remain my property for the trains. It's a classic case of one person ruining everyone else's fun. I dealt with the other chap through the courts and got an out-of-court settlement for the money I was owed from his sales, then withdrew all the models.
Having said that, if you want something re-skinning, for heavens sake ask me. I'm not trying to be awkward - I'll add it to my to-do list and distribute new versions of the models with the new skins. In that way, I do at least have some control over what is released and when.
It was inevitable that someone would write tools to extract BMP and TGA files from the Train Simulator .ACE files. You might find various versions of my trains being distributed now with skins that are not shown on these pages. If you do, I am not responsible for them. If you have problems with unauthorised repaints, contact the person who reverse-engineered my skins - it's their problem. Be aware - the textures and texture mapping changes slightly between each of my train releases, so if you have downloaded a skin for the NS1200 v0.1beta, I can absolutely guarantee you that it will not work with any other version of the loco.
| I am a 3D computer graphics modeller by trade. My primary work is for Evans & Sutherland building models for commercial flight simulators. Some examples can be found here. I was raised in the Netherlands which is how come I still know some Dutch, and why I've targetted the NS for my train models. I moved to England when I was 18 to go to University, then ended up in my current job. In March 2001, I moved to Utah in the USA, which is where I am today. The train models for MSTS keep me occupied during some evenings and weekends, and it gives me a chance to keep up on my Dutch when corresponding with people about them. |  |