Purely, there are many videos and other 'Steam community' guides to this, but I am trying to make this as simple as possible.

Anyway, from third-party creators like DPSimulation and UKTrainSim, you will usually find that there are different file types. The standard will be labelled as a '.rar', which is compatible with WinRAR, now, WinRAR is a program that you can create 'rar' files and you can extract them, but you dont want to be creating them.

To extract a file, just purely select the main folder, press 'Extract to', and the way I do it, I extract the files to my desktop (there is a selection of locations throughout your computer).

Backtracking, you will also find '.zip' files, which are still compatible with WinRAR, but are made for 7zip. I have never used 7zip, so I am not sure exactly what the features are, but that is as far as I know.

All you do with these is exactly the same as '.rar' files.

(these files will come with a text document of instructions telling you exactly where to go)

Now, you will also find '.exe' files. These are very often installers, so you don't have to worry about putting something in the wrong place as these will do it for you. You will, however, get an option of where you should want it installed, but that really is about it with them.

Finally, you should sometimes find '.bat' files (usually from MEGA. These files are the same as '.exe' files, except you can edit them. Sometimes, you may get a set of instructions with these to where you have to copy and paste something into the 'bat' file, but really, that is it for file types.

Next up, we have packages.
Packages are fairly hard to install as you have to use a specific installer built-in to Train Simulator. You will often be instructed to change or move files to certain areas on your computer, but these instructions do not tell you where to find these locations very well. Usually, you will be told to install them into your 'Steam' folder, then into Train Simulator, blah blah blah...

But where is the 'Steam' folder?

If you go into your 'Start menu', select 'Computer', select your 'C' drive, then 'Program Files (x86)' and look for a bit, you will find the 'Steam' folder.

(Another) but, you will need to install most packages through the 'Package Installer' in the 'Train Simulator' folder:
if you follow 'steamapps' from the 'Steam' folder, then into 'common', you will find your games. 'RailWorks' shouldn't be an issue to find, so once you've found it, select it and scroll down to 'Utilities' and open it. Go over to 'Package Installer' and select Install, then find your file.

It should then do that for you.

If you have to find any locations and copy and paste files, just follow the same method, but instead open the 'Assets' folder in your 'RailWorks' folder and follow the instructions from there.

Unless you have installed everything properly, you should not get any issues or errors. However, it has happened to me many times before, and I'm sure a lot of other people. For instance, one time, the whole train except the bogies did not show.

If you do encounter an issue like this, I suggest you re-read the instructions and find the files that you installed incorrectly or that you did not install, then retry. If that does not work, or if you have a '.exe' or a '.bat' that did not install the assets correctly, I suggest you contact the publisher and flag up your issues.

Other than that, I hope you found this helpful and that you learned something. Please feel free to contact me if you need any extra help or if you did not understand this very well, I will always try to amend.

Thank you for reading this article, and keep on 'simming!