So Many Versions... So Little Time

Hello All:

A new Trainz person here. I've ordered Trainz 2010 and am waiting for its arrival. I hope that I will, some day, be able to contribute to this community.

I noticed that there is a wide variety of Trainz versions and what appear to be "Official" add-on pacs, like "Routes 1,2,3..", "Railwayz", "Paint Shed", etc. Are any of the older versions and add-ons worth having (I'm thinking for additional rolling stock or scenery, etc.)?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

-- Hopefully I posted this in the right place --

Some, but not all of those add on packs will work with 2010. I can't speak for specifics, because 2010 is not in my library. Paint Shed will be fairly useless for you unless you have an older version of Trainz to publish the results in, then port them over to 2010.

I can't give other advice because I don't see where you live, and can't even guess as to what your interests are.

Welcome aboard.

My interests -

I am trying Trainz ilo building a model railroad. I have little experience with the actual running of a true railroad but grew up watching trains run the rails through the Mon Valley area of SW Pennsylvania. I had Lionel and then N scale toy trains back in the late '60s through mid '70s then life took over and, well, here I am.

I recently took an interest in the local Rails-to-Trails paths that we have in central Florida and thought it would be interesting to try to model those (which date from 1870 - 1900). At some point, I would also like to model the FEC RR from the 1950s or the Mon Valley area of about the same era. I also really like to understand how a railroad works.

I asked about the other versions of Trainz as I was thinking there may be more routes, locos, rolling stock, etc. that could be run in Trainz 2010 (and maybe later reskinned for my specific needs) that I can learn with - variety being a good thing, I think. And... the older versions can be had for pretty cheap.

Thoughts?