Station announcements

This mod, developed by Liam-S-494 adds extra realism to your Train Sim games. You can now have station by station announcements, just like you hear on real trains, with the ability to create custom routes between stations to fit whatever route you choose to play in the game.

It is a text-based script that may need you to ALT-TAB from the game in order to access it. Consider running TSW in a (borderless) window. In the future, I'm planning to enhance it with macro keys so you do not have to switch away from TSW.

The following routes are currently supported:

• Birmingham Cross City
  
• Great Western Railway
  
• London Commuter
  
• North Trans-Pennine
  
• South Eastern
  
• The Bakerloo Line
  
• The Isle of Wight
  
• West Cornwall Local

Setup time: approx. 15 minutes. Difficulty - medium.

Download

Download the announcements improvement from here - Python Announcements Program[www.trainsimcommunity.com]

You can extract the zip file anywhere, ideally somewhere that you'll be able to access it easily, for example Desktop. Remember the location. In my case it's C:\Users\Mac\Downloads\TSWAnnouncer

The folder should contain these files:

• Train Sim Announcer.py
  
• TouchPortal Template.tpz

And some additional files. It'll also contain three folders.

Open the manual_audio_files, select all files and press CRTL+C to copy them to clipboard. Go back and open texttospeech_audio_files and press CTRL+V to paste the files. Skip overwriting existing files.

The above copy step is necessary because some files are broken.

Install prerequisites

You will need to install the Python interpreter from the Microsoft Store. Python is a programming language the announcements script is written in.

Direct download link - Python 3.11[apps.microsoft.com] (version 3.11 or newer)

Once you have installed Python, open the command prompt. Press the Windows key, type in cmd and press ENTER.

Once the command prompt appears, type in the following commands to install required libraries, pressing enter after typing each.

python -m pip install mutagen



You should see 'Successfully installed mutagen-1.47.0'

python -m pip install pygame



You should see 'Successfully installed mutagen-1.47.0'

If you encounter errors related to permissions, you may need to run cmd as Administrator. After typing cmd, right click on it and click 'Run as Administrator'

First run

For the first test run, I'd recommend the Bakerloo line.

Open the folder that contains Train Sim Announcer and in the address bar type cmd and press ENTER.

Alternatively, open cmd from the Start menu and then type this to change the current folder:

cd C:\Users\Mac\Downloads\TSW Announcer

Make sure to change Mac to your username.

Type python "Train Sim Announcer.py"



Since this is your first time, answer 0 to loading a saved file.

Enter 3 to select Bakerloo line.

You will be presented with 27 stops. Consult your timetable to check how many stops you'll make, where your route starts and ends and the stations.

You will be asked to enter the IDs of the stops.

Once you've setup the announcements, you will be presented with the following options:

• Enter 1 to play 'Welcome'.
  
• Enter 2 to play 'Next Stop'.
  
• Enter 3 to play 'Approaching'.
  
• Enter 4 to play 'This is...'.
  
• Enter 5 to play 'BTP'.

Try entering 5 first for the police announcement.

As you are at the first stop, press 1 for the welcome message.

Just before or after closing the doors for departure, press 2 for next stop announcement.

Once you're underway, press 3 to play the 'approaching' announcement.

When you stop at the station, press 4.

At this time, the script will pick the next station you have setup, so pressing 2 should announce the next stop.

Your configuration is being saved to autosave.txt - you will be able to load it on next program startup.

Create a shortcut

To save some time, you can create a batch script that will automatically run the Train Sim Announcer.py.

Open Notepad and paste the following:

@echo off
cd "C:\Users\Mac\Downloads\TSW Announcer"
python "Train Sim Announcer.py"

Make sure to replace Mac with your username.

Save the file on your desktop as "Run TSW Announcer.cmd"

Problems?

Please make sure to post your questions directly to the author at https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/mods/c3-train-sim-world/c75-utilities/i2903-tsw3-python-announcements-program