Looking to either join or create a trainz narrow gauge website.

C

crispypotato429

New member
Hi. I am new to the trainz forums/trainz on PC. I have been watching AM along with others speed builds for a while. However, this new thread concerns the fact that I see a severe lack of routes that are narrow gauge natively. I have done a decent bit of building on trainz mobile however am reasonably new to the trainz PC versions. I am currently running trainz 2009, however hope to upgrade the pc sometime this year or next year so that I can run a newer version of the game (probably T;ANE). If anyone is interested in seeing a strictly narrow gauge group come to the community please pm me on the fourms or reply to the thread.
 
Something to consider, currently working on finding a project that would be interesting to build. Preferably US based. I think that I'm either going to try to create my own site to put my stuff on or I'm going to start a thread here on the fourms for my route projects and just post a google drive or a mediafire link for the route download.
 
The problem with having remote sites is that when they close or get hacked ( and inevitably, they will) anything you created is lost to the community. An awful lot of older narrow gauge assets were remotely hosted and now , if their creators didn't allow updating , people see there are unknown missing assets when they download a route and most are not prepared to spend countless hours looking for the missing assets , so they delete the route.

As much as the DLS is a pain in many ways it does make accessing complete routes easier ( unless of course the creator used packaged assets or assets they used had changed status to packaged as by NV3).

As for a narrow gauge group, none of us talk much on the forum about NG , probably because we have widely different interests, I like UK and US NG but I don't make UK NG routes. Virtually no one here is interested in the Colorado and Southern which I am currently modelling so I spend my time on FB and specialist NG forums where the few diehards can contribute to my niche interest .

For some reason the forums really don't contribute a lot of talk about railroads as such, more the issues of Trainz's problems in operation and creation. One thing to consider is that if you only intend to work in TANE then you eventually won't be able to use a lot of NG content which has been created for 2019 and 2022, you will most likely find yourself in a very limited space.
 
I'd concur with dangavel's comments. TS22 gives the same or better fps than TANE by the way, same content and viewing distance.

Cheerio John
 
@crispypotato429 : I build in U.S. narrow gauge almost exclusively, and am working with @dangavel on his DSP&P route, building various scenery items for him.
(P.S. @dangavel, the rocks and clutter are mostly done ;))

I, like @philskene, also build MRR layouts that are NG - logging, mining and related. I do also have a strong interest in German, Polish and Russian narrow gauge stuff as well.
I have one small German NG MRR layout on the DLS, and two U.S. NG layouts as well.

I will agree that this group would be better off with it's own running NG topic and/or sub-topics in this forum, as we now have a much better setup for running such a group.
The new Xenforo forum platform will let us all share multi-media, documents, databases and anything else we might need/use, as well as the security of knowing the site will be up and accessible for a long time.

Discord could easily be used for any real-time meetings or, when Surveyor 2.0 becomes available to all future TRS Trainz product owners, as a tool to allow real-time streaming of co-op route and session building.
I will also add that the official Trainz Discord is NOT the place for NG enthusiasts, it's mostly filled with modern U.S. Diesel loco nuts, LOL. NG related posts get completely ignored by the membership ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The DLS is also the safest place, in my opinion for uploading creator work. I don't want my models on public websites if possible. Piracy is rampant in Trainz, even if your work is protected on a payware site, it can still be hacked and distributed.




Rico
 
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I think we can see that from the response to this thread that hardly any of the NG enthusiasts have contributed , either we are all too busy creating routes or we arent interested. I'd be stoked if I could find more pople who wanted to discuss ng, but as I said before, we are a group that tends to have our interests , and they often exclude other liNes, the NG discussion forum I am part of is very much involVed in the Cumbres and Toltec and Durango and Silverton, most other lines don't get a lot of chat. I started a thread on my latest project and hardly anyone has bothered to contribute with discussion to that thread because ( I presume) hardly anyone has any knowledge about the route . We are, niches within niches and we are few in number anyway, as Rico says , all too many users are diesel obsessed modern day railroaders who just arent interested and will ignore any NG content . Not a lot we can do about that I am afraid .
 
crispypotato429 said:
Something to consider, currently working on finding a project that would be interesting to build. Preferably US based. I think that I'm either going to try to create my own site to put my stuff on or I'm going to start a thread here on the fourms for my route projects and just post a google drive or a mediafire link for the route download.
Click to expand...
That's what most of us NG'rs have been doing. If you want to start a thread for NG discussion, I, for one am all for it. If it grows it can possibly become a sticky thread topic (y)
This is a suggestion < it could be good for the growth of such a thread, if it's inclusive of all NG discussion, from all nations and their various track gauges.

@dangavel mentions that NG'rs tend to be interested in a very specific railway, but I personally have an interest in NG railways from quite a few different U.S. locations.
Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and some in B.C. Canada. Just working on the DSP&P with him, has opened my eyes to a slew of small mountain railways in that area (B.C.) and places south.

The more research I conduct into my interests, the more places OF interest I find. I originally started with a buildup of a fictional layout by a French builder, that incorporates parts of the real Dolly Varden Silver Mine Railway, and have moved south from there into all of those other U.S. states.

I've enough layout idea material to keep my busy for the rest of my life, I think 😊
 
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Well, I'm not sure about any lack of interest. From the Download Station, narrow gauge layouts that I'm familiar with:

TRS19 -
Jenn Erik -- 2,600+ downloads.
Lilliput Logger -- 1,900+.
Yuan Gulch -- 3,900+
Hoofhearted -- 4,200+
Klozett -- 3,900+

T:ANE -
Cillie Oldpharts (two variants) - 8,700+ and 9,100+
Clear Lake - 8,400

Plus several others.

I don't know how these figures compare with downloads for standard gauged layouts, but it would seem to indicate that there is quite a bit of interest in narrow gauge.

Phil
 
Well prototypical NG hasn't that sort of appeal.Your MR routes get many downloads, very likely because they are small and not so demanding on the gpu or perhaps are more entertaining as you can do a lot of switching in a short space of time .

However Pitkins six sessions for the Uintah have about 700 downloads in total , whereas just one session he did for one of your routes outnumber the total downloads of all six. He was very discouraged by the response.

I spent five years creating the Uintah , huge number of specialist assets created for it , vast amount of work on research ,it was the steepest non rack railway in the world, plus I created the projected route to Bonanza that never was built, it was as accurate as I possibly could ever get it , but really given the effort and time put into it , hardly anyone bothered to drive it compared to your routes, about 2000 downloads of the 2019 route .

I ask myself was it really worth it and I have to say, no given the total response,vs effort expended to get it like that ,it wasn't.
Likewise Sek Hakunas DurangoTo SilvertonTRS19_1895_1 only got just over a 1000 downloads over three years .
Its a fact that many people like fictional routes, compare the Uintah total to the update to Timber ridge which got 9000 downloads over three years .

You have chosen the right formula to get more users and all power to your elbow, but how many of those users are interested in prototypical NG and would want to get into a discussion group talking about Narrow gauge, given the response to my current route, where I regularly get about 3 people reacting everyime I post an update, or the NG screenshot forum , I would estimate not very many , because hardly any of them are familiar with these routes so what do they have to discuss ? .
 
Perhaps more indicative of the numbers who prefer modern standard gauge railroading, whammo released a modern standard gauge route on 3rd sept and its already had 895 downloads, whereas Ricomons NG RGS model railroad which is also very high quality has only had 356 downloads and it was released in June.
 
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To be fair, whammo's route was in the newsletter.

Or was Ricomons' route also in the newsletter and did I not pay attention?
 
Also to be fair, Sek_Hakuna's DurangoTo SilvertonTRS19_1895_1 was only released in March of 2022 and states it contains payware dependencies in the description. That alone is a strong deterrent, especially since it doesn't say where to get said payware assets. I myself tend to avoid routes containing payware assets that don't tell me where to find them or what they are if it could result in swaths of un-textured baseboard.
DurangoToSilvertonTane_1895_ver.3, however, was released in March of 2020 and has over 4,000 downloads with a description stating the payware dependencies are of no consequence.

And from my perspective, sessions never really appeal to the casual player who would more likely want to simply plop down their favorite train and explore the route. To which the factor of speed comes into play. A long NG route could take several times as long to traverse as a SG route of the same length, even when ignoring speed limits. We all know them youngins of today don't have a long attention span to begin with, which I am guilty of as well.

That said, dangavel, your Uintah route was a pleasure to run along from end-to-end (over a period of several days) in a quirky little steam dummy acting as a track inspection vehicle. Please don't get caught up in the popularity or "worth" of your creations and simply create for the joy of it. There is and always will be interest for every type of route.
 
oknotsen said:
To be fair, whammo's route was in the newsletter.

Or was Ricomons' route also in the newsletter and did I not pay attention?
Click to expand...
True, it is a boost , Ricomons route was made using trs 2019, so I doubt they featured it, they really are looking for routes that use the new textures and terrain improvements which whammos route features fully.
 
hauntedclipp said:
Also to be fair, Sek_Hakuna's DurangoTo SilvertonTRS19_1895_1 was only released in March of 2022 and states it contains payware dependencies in the description. That alone is a strong deterrent, especially since it doesn't say where to get said payware assets. I myself tend to avoid routes containing payware assets that don't tell me where to find them or what they are if it could result in swaths of un-textured baseboard.
DurangoToSilvertonTane_1895_ver.3, however, was released in March of 2020 and has over 4,000 downloads with a description stating the payware dependencies are of no consequence.

And from my perspective, sessions never really appeal to the casual player who would more likely want to simply plop down their favorite train and explore the route. To which the factor of speed comes into play. A long NG route could take several times as long to traverse as a SG route of the same length, even when ignoring speed limits. We all know them youngins of today don't have a long attention span to begin with, which I am guilty of as well.

That said, dangavel, your Uintah route was a pleasure to run along from end-to-end (over a period of several days) in a quirky little steam dummy acting as a track inspection vehicle. Please don't get caught up in the popularity or "worth" of your creations and simply create for the joy of it. There is and always will be interest for every type of route.
Click to expand...
It's a big issue with prototypical routes in general , lots of relatively boring countryside , I can understand why people prefer short routes , and NG also generally has simpler yards etc, it has less scope overall and as you say , speeds are very slow.
unfortunately for me , I don't like to work without some feedback and the forum is a place where we don't offer much of that , I often get discouraged by the scale of routes I'm working on, but really I should just make them for myself , just adapt any assets I like and forget about sharing them like most people do. That would make life much easier , but I've never been motivated to do that, I can't really do stuff just for myself , as I have got into the habit of making things for other people to use right throughout my life.
one reason why I find modern society so depressing is that a sharing community is a concept that is rapidly disappearing . I think Trainz is one place where helping each other to achieve a common goal is still quite strong, but not as strong as it used to be .
 
As an aside. I want to thank you guys for saying my route is very high quality. Those praises are very warming to my heart, really, thank you all. 😊


Personally, I'd rather have the respect and kudos from the route builders here on this forum, than the acclaim of a high download count on the DLS.
Although, I don't mind the numbers I DO have. They aren't bad.

I've thought about promoting my work on Steam, to get more Trainzers using my layouts and assets, but I honestly don't want the resulting "will you please make me these X things for my layout" requests, that would follow, LOL. The few that I have already received are bugging me enough.

Rico
 
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