Thank you oberhuemer and wallyweb for your comments.

So if I understand well, there are actually 2 Canadian Rail Sets : One developed by OzTrans, and one developed by DanMack. The one I found is the one developed by DanMack (so says the readme, and it's quite recent - nov. 2012).

So I guess this is me posting in the wrong place, right?

Wrong one, the correct here address is http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/canrail And it seems I was wrong too, according to http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6730 OzTrans dropped out.

Apparently.
Wrong ... Both are drawn by DanMack ... One is coded by OzTrans, the other is coded by Planetmaker,
The readme also says that it was coded by Planetmaker.
Right.
Wrong ... OzTrans and DanMack may have parted ways, but as can be seen by this forum OzTrans continues to pursue his excellent work on this set.

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Just to clarify ...

Canadian Trains Set v0.3d is very old and should no longer be used; in fact it should be removed from openttdcoop.

Canadian Trains (CanRail v1.1a, dated 6 Aug 2012) is the most up-to-date version. It is only available on Simuscape.

It is about time that DanMacK is working on his version; I have been waiting for that release, so that I can release my Canadian Trains v2.0, as they have been sitting on my harddrive for quite some time now and are gathering dust ...

Now it gets more confusing. Please can you explain what you mean with the latter? Why do you have to wait for DMK to release his version?

I don't get it. If you wait, it'll be for some months, plus everyone will just use the other version because it will be more easilz available...

I won't go into any details, but I do have very good reasons not to release CanRail v2.0 yet ...

We can wait.

Could something be done to remedy this? Or is it too much work so it doesn't worth the effort?

Nonsense! The copyright violation lies in you including parts or derivatives of the original base graphics in the set, then distributing it and the user accepting it. Why should it be relevant whether the user owns a copy of the work of which the copyright is being violated?

I think I can answer this one.

From it's inception, the use of TTDPatch has been predicated upon the user's possession of a legally acquired copy of the CD. As far as I know, this has never been questioned thus it could be argued that accessing and using components from the CD could be considered as "fair use". If OzTrans is in possession of a legally acquired copy of the CD and he directs that users of his work must be similarly in possession of a legally acquired copy of the CD, then all should be fine.

Indeed, the producers of the CD have profited from this arrangement in at least one instance ... I legally bought the CD just to see what all these Patch players were raving about.

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As long as you use it with TTD it is technically illegal, but in practice not*. It is under "far use" as much as thousands of mods and addons for various commercial games many of which are even hosted officially from the copyright owners/producers of the respective games. Usage in OTTD is another story*. (But OTTD has its own base graphics and an effort to provide a fitting version of Canadian Pack would be welcome. )

* Keep in mind that in courts precedent counts. There are hundreds of commercial game remakes by the community most of which borrow the original graphics and enhance them. Has any legal action been taken against them?

I did think about it for quite some time. I dismissed this idea, because it would have meant a lot of work; also it would have just covered OpenGfx, what about if one day we have another set of base graphics to cover. I'm not very fond of that OpenGfx anyway, as I don't like the dirty snow in particular and many of the icons. OpenGfx lacks the original TTDLX feel and touch.

Anyway, a better idea would be the development of a Canadian Landscape and simply override both TTDX and OpenGfx with them. But again, that would involve a lot of work, not to forget the conversion of all already existing Canadian graphics containing terrain.

So for the time being, players will simply have to live with what they will get. There will be no problems if they choose original TTD base graphics, everything will fit together nicely; if not and they haven't got it, then spending ten dollars/euros to purchase that CD from, say, Ebay won't break the bank. Otherwise, they have to live with terrain mismatches.

As for that issue about having to include 'original' TTD graphics is one of necessity. We have no choice; e.g. we have to attach 'original' terrain to road tiles, because they are one piece. That work was created years ago by many different artists, like lifeblood and Oz (to name some). If we had to redo that it would take a lot of time and work.

Two instances at least … I too bought one ...

Otherwise, discusson about copyright issues has been made in past on many an occassion; we don't have to revisit that subject again, as it won't change anything anyway ...

I have found no related posts, so I hope this is the right place for my question:

There is some nice looking development on tt-forums.net concerning graphics for nu-tracks. Is there any intention to make the Canadian Train Set/Canrail_V2.0 nu-tracks compatible? I think this would be a nice feature as different railtypes could make slow speed branch-lines more what they should be...

Any thoughts?

I have looked into New Rail Types; however, I wasn't happy with what I saw. Currently, there are no plans to let Canadian Trains loose on New Rail Types. There are far too many problems, too many to list now. Standard gauge Canadian trains will run on normal (and electrified) rail, whereas narrow gauge trains have been implemented in the Maglev slot.

As for the speed limitations of rail tracks. Canadian Trains are speed limited themselves, a feature of the set itself.

There will be more detailed information forthcoming about the reasons why New Rail Types are not for us ...

That's what I was getting at - you're honest either way with "it's not really allowed, but no one cares", or "it's not allowed, don't do it", but saying "there are no legal/technical problems at all if you also do this-and-that" is just a misrepresentation of the facts. "Fair use"/"fair dealing" only comes into play for things like (quoting Wikipedia) "commentary, [...], research, [education]", so that's a bit of a stretch, to say the least.
No need for that, version 1.0 at least works fine - the only problem is that the narrow gauge tracks are priced like maglev tracks, which is only a NuTracks issue.

Well, when I try to build a train in a non-very-slow depot, an error message pops up. Using very-slow depots is a way around, but it shows up a slight incompatibility between these sets.


Two other, rather eye-candy issues I found: The sparks of the electric locomotives seem to be placed in front of the engine. This looks a bit odd, especially on the shorter engines such as the Z1a, etc. In addition, the BBD MR-90 EMU-2 seems to have no sparks at all.

Have you used CanRail v1.1a (6 Aug 2012) ? This messsage indicates a dead end in the GRF; it cannot deal with the problem, if there is one. Can I have the save game via PM, including a list of all GRFs used.

I'll look into the sparks. I thought I fixed all of them.

Everything is fine in the newest, unreleased version of NuTracks. It still has one bug that needs to be fixed, but then it'll be coming up.

So I will wait for it. Thanks for the information