How to manually install custom maps

Written by Warll on June 7th, 2009 at 20:57 in Tips&Tricks , 23 Comments

To install custom maps from smrsimple you must:

Download the map
Delete the contents of your “My Games\Sid Meier’s Railroads!\UserMaps” folder
Extract the zip’d map into the “My Games\Sid Meier’s Railroads!\UserMaps” folder
Launch Sid Meier’s Railroads! and select the new map.

You can only have one custom map installed at a time. NOTE: The “My Games\Sid Meier’s Railroads!\Custom Assets” folder must also be empty. Some exe installer based maps use this folder and can interfere with new maps.

Written by Warll

23 Comments

Jancsika says:

2009/12/24 at 07:44

This is fine.
Hooked does not accept 7Z file extensions.

Jancsika says:

2009/12/27 at 21:31

Unless you repackaged them all compressed maps from the Hooked forum are in RAR or Zip format.
Bobby’s are 7Z.
This is confusing, if I want to put it in the FAQ, I can not refer to 7Z.
Why not just say compressed or even ZIP-d. Zip is becoming a generic expression for all compressed file forms.

The proper way to do the installing is to download the map directly in a clean UserMaps folder and decompress it right there. (That’s how the SAM instuctions are worded) No copy-ing and pasting needed.

Warll says:

2009/12/28 at 00:21

All the maps on this site are in compressed using 7zip, it says a tone of bandwidth. Plus 7-Zip is an awesome program everyone should use, yup I’m an open source fanboy.

For the FAQ you cna simply change the wording, and if you want to you can change the instructions to have the user decompress right into the proper folder. Both ways would of course work but when I had wrote the article I did so expecting (As I was dong at the time) at the user would be keeping a separate folder full of maps and only playing one at a time.

Jancsika says:

2010/01/06 at 18:03

I have Nafta Phase II revised with installer by Rodea. It is in two RAR files 7500 Kb each. Now you can post it, then I can refer to you.
How can I get it to you??
Need an E-mail address

Warll says:

2010/01/06 at 18:16

I’ve emailed you, just reply with the attachment.

Paktas says:

2010/02/23 at 12:47

What about Windows7? It doesn’t have “My Games” folder. Where do I put the maps?

Warll says:

2010/02/23 at 13:07

It will if you have ran SMR before. Try looking in “documents” which can be found in your home folder.

Chris says:

2010/04/20 at 06:52

I have followed all the instructions here – cleary the folder, donwloading maps etc (extracting with 7-Zip)
But when I start railroads there is nothing in the usermaps directory. I have chosen ‘devon’ as my map. There is a ‘devon’ folder – nothing else.
Do I click on Load Map or single player?

Also tried the auto map moving .exe but when I extracted the maps to a folder, then selected this in the moving maps program browser section, nothing comes up. No one siple map!

no sure what’s going at all. any help appreciated.

Warll says:

2010/04/20 at 13:26

When you start up Railroads! and select Single player have you looked through ALL the maps?

Chris says:

2010/04/21 at 16:49

yes, all the way through, no new maps there, even the old multiplayer one’s are there, all the original maps, no more, no less

Warll says:

2010/04/21 at 17:44

Try installing SMRI (Sid meier’s railroads! intercontinental)

Patrick says:

2010/07/24 at 16:09

first custom map that worked for my 2GB ram computer. Wohoo!

jancsika says:

2010/07/24 at 19:50

Try some of my alternate Universe maps. (Alternate France, Alternate UK, Alternate Germany, Alternate Balkans).
They were made for people with computers like yours.

New to using custom SMR maps? | Sid Meier's Railroads! Simple! says:

2010/08/28 at 15:59

[...] suggest reading about the 3GB Enabler and how to install maps manually or use the SMR Map Shifter. &laquo Previous Entry 3GB Enabler Fix for Windows Vista & 7Next [...]

David says:

2011/01/12 at 02:31

I have done this and it works fine. The only problem is I can only put in 1 map at a time. Is their a way I can insert many maps into the “user maps” folder rather than doing this process each time I wish to play a different map?

Thank You.

Karsten says:

2011/01/13 at 13:50

No, it is not possible to insert many maps into the “user maps” folder, because they interfere with each other’s stability and crash.

chad williams says:

2011/02/04 at 03:31

Please help. I understand that only 1 user map can be installed at any given time. However, when I run SMR Map Shifter, I find that I have 2 folders: one called “sid meier’s railroads” and the other called “Sid Meier’s Railroads!”. The Shifter app places into the “Sid Meier’s Railroads!” folder and nothing shows up in game. However, if I copy the map, say “Middle Earth” over to the “sid meier’s railroads” folder, the map shows up in game but then I get a run time error every time. I’ve cleaned out the folder by deleting it entirely so the game will build a new folder structure from scratch but I just don’t get it. What am I doing wrong?

So, in case I’m unclear, the folder >>> C:\Documents and Settings\Chad\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Railroads!\UserMaps has a folder called “MiddleEarth” and a bunch of .FPK files.

I am using the Steam variety of the game, should be the updated version I would assume. The folders I am referring to are here: C:\Documents and Settings\Chad\My Documents\My Games. I am running XP.

Thanks in advance,
Chad

Daniel says:

2011/02/04 at 09:43

Chad, that problem has come up once before. In that case it was a retail version from a east European country.

My only suggestion is to manually install the maps, the process isn’t difficult.

For the crashing, have you tried the trouble shooting tips in the tips and tricks section?

chad williams says:

2011/02/04 at 21:28

Hi Daniel,

Well I tried it again with a different map. This time I deleted everything under the C:\Documents and Settings\Chad\My Documents\My Games\sid meier’s railroads folder, restarted the game and exited then installed a different map (Mysterious Island_SAM) which does work. A couple other maps do as well (SAM and non-SAM).

I tried two maps the other night that didn’t work so I guess both of those do not agree with my system or require special attention in the installation process.

Thanks,
Chad