By now you have probably seen all of the fantastic add-ons that you can download right here, right now, for Microsoft Train Simulator - excited you plunge right in head first and download the loco that's calling out your name. You wait with anticipation as it downloads and then finally it finishes and to your horror you have no idea what to do with it next...

That's where this tutorial comes in. I'm going to try and provide a rough grounding in what you need to know, what you can expect and what you can do to get the files on this site (and indeed any other site) working for you.

It's not a simple case of providing a bullet-point list of instructions unfortunately because everyone packages their work up differently, so we'll be going through how things are structured in Microsoft Train Simulator so that you know what you should end up with and then we'll take a few example files from the site and get them working.

The very first instruction I'm going to give however is the one that we all ignore - most, if not all, downloads on this site come with a README file that should contain all the instructions you need. These files are generally viewable in Notepad though some people provide them in 'RTF' (Word/Wordpad) or 'HTML' (Internet Explorer/Netscape etc) format. Read it if it's there, it should tell you all you need to know...

Many thanks to Pete Peddlesden, Martin Soilleux-Cardwell and Mike Simpson for their invaluable help and suggestions in writing this tutorial.

I've divided the tutorial in to five parts covering the basics of downloading and the four major things you are likely to want to download and install.

Section 1: Introduction to Downloading
Section 2: Locomotives and Wagons
Section 3: Activities
Section 4: Cab Views and Sound Packs
Section 5: Routes