Enormous thanks and some questions

[sjekazoo]

I was last into SMR heavily a couple years ago. Things changed and I'm back at it and what changes while I was away: 3G enabled, Map Shifter are the 2 biggies. The original game purchase was disappointing, then discovering this site made it enjoyable, and now it is totally awesome thanks to a lot of hard work by you guys.
I work hard for little money in foreign lands trying to help children and it gets tough. Sometimes this game is the only escape I have to save my sanity, in short I could not do what I do (outside of this game) as well as I do it, without all of your tireless efforts. Thanks a lot for your time and energy being spent on this.
A few things I have been unable to find via searching the forum (hundreds of hits on some of my queries).
1) Is there a place to get the Firaxis Holiday Scenario as a SAM or in other form that does not interfere with the SAMs? Several threads had a link to the oringally modified one that no longer exists and it is not on the SMRsimple site either, has it been abandoned by you guys?
2) Why are recently created train engines no longer put into self installing packages? And is it safe to reload all the self installing packages I had for engines before that I can no longer seem to find listed (thinking maybe there is a reason I cannot find them)?
2a) I have a separate folder of SMR downloaded items. The trains get unpacked there and there is nothing in the read-me that says where I should drop these files.
2c) Does having all these trains in the custom assets (assuming that is where they go) have any impact on performance as did all the map info, thus forcing the swapping regime (i.e. should we only keep engines in there that are used in or that we would like to use in the scenario currently being played).
2d) It would be nice to have a list like the one for the maps on SMRsimple for the engines as well. It is a pain digging through all those threads to find which ones have the completed files.

[sjekazoo]

And
3) many maps used to say that they needed basin and range to run correctly, when converted to SAM maps was this need eliminated?

[karsten]

Quick answer to Q3: That is exactly the point of SAM maps, they work without depending on other maps, giving a great boost to their stability. The same principle guides CIC maps.

Early SAM maps still had a stability problem due to missing or wrong event file, but Jancsika is fixing those on a case by case basis.