Route making tips and advice?

I mean I know how to use the route maker but I feel like my routes are dull and uninspired. Straight, turn, turn, bridge. They look so boring. Forest, weird mountain, more forest, desert. Cities are either tiny or just bad looking. Any ideas on how to make a interesting, good, varied, route? What I'm making right now is a just a normal mainline with branch lines.

All track is just a series of continual repetitive straights, followed up by a curve, followed up by a straight, followed up by a curve ... etc ... etc ...

Mountains and hills on high sensitivity can oftentimes look like Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon backgrounds with sharp jagged peaks

Look at maps, photos, and other people's routes.

Download some routes by other creators and see what they did to make them special. Dave Snow's Ozark Valley and his Cotton Belt are quite stunning. There are also routes, those revamped ones by MGSapper from George Fisher are also quite awesome as well. These are just a few that come off the top of my head. There are many, many more of course.

Open the routes in Surveyor and poke around and see what was done to make them the way they are. Once you've poked around, try this on your own.

Now start simple, like a couple of baseboards at a time. If you get stuck, look at pictures of routes, historic maps, current maps, Bing Bird's Eye view, Google Earth Street View, and any other source. If you live near a railroad, go for a walk or bike ride and take photos or just stand around and watch, and look around at the scenery.

As time goes on, you'll get better and better so don't think your original route is going to be a masterpiece I'm sorry to say. Use this as a test and one to experiment with to get the hang of what can be done in Trainz. As you learn and get better, you can always go back and improve what you did previously and make your original route a core or a small component of your larger personal route.

This is the process I took over a decade ago when I first got Trainz TRS2004.

Kiantrain4014 said:

I mean I know how to use the route maker but I feel like my routes are dull and uninspired. Straight, turn, turn, bridge. They look so boring. Forest, weird mountain, more forest, desert. Cities are either tiny or just bad looking. Any ideas on how to make a interesting, good, varied, route? What I'm making right now is a just a normal mainline with branch lines.

Click to expand...

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/forumdisplay.php?22-Screenshots

Evening sir,,, when I started on my iPad with Trainz Driver 2,,,,, I felt exactly the same way I had a horrible time laying tracks trying to make mountains you name it. So one day I got an idea I'm going to download some kind of a small route see how they made it something that interests me and see if I can use their talents to help me make a better life for myself. That was almost two years ago I suggest that you go to the screenshot forum I put it up at the beginning of this note and take a look at all the different pictures from everybody that shared in that for him it's amazing you'll get some really good ideas the next thing is you have to practice and practice and then you need to take a break. It takes time I'm a very visual person so pictures really help me because I can go back and look at them and figure out how they did it and replicate it to some extent not exactly the same but at least I give it a good try I hope that helps you.

Here's a few things that may help. First do you want to make a real life line or a fictional one? What era do you want to do? Do you want and urban or rural route? Answering these questions will help you to focus on what you want.

Like the guys said above grab some routes and make notes on what you like and what you don't. Have a note book of things you like like buildings, track, ground textures, rolling stock, and on and on. Ask questions about screen shots you see and please be polite . Most route builders are more than happy to share their discoveries with you. And most of all...practice, practice, practice!

Be warned, once you start down the path of route building, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will! :hehe:

Dave

I've been playing Trainz for a fairly long time, two years or so, and these tips have helped me a lot especially because I have not played Trainz for a while, these are super useful. The idea with the checking what you like on a route is especially handy, I will have to use that. Thanks!

Forget routes. Do layouts.

Have a look at some of the DEM maps on the Download Station, especially the shorter ones by Joe Folco. The basic track is already laid, just a bit of staightening, smooth spline, look at google earth and add your scenery. Its a good way to get started and helps with inspiration. If the route looks too long, you can always trim it down to the part you really want to work on. Picking apart other peoples routes, as suggested, is a really good way to find out what makes a route tick and don't forget to add assets to a favorites picklist when you see one you like. To make your route look its best, try to use mainly HD textures. (these usually start with TS12 or TS2009 for built in and others by authors firstsoloflight and motorbreath from the DLS)
cheers,
Graeme

A simple answer...........................
Paint a picture as you progress. What do you see, and want to put in that picture? What is your route about? It can be very personal or terribly prototypical! Visual interest depends on what YOU display.
Runnin' trains up and down a track can be awful boring. So, what do you want to do about it?
There is a great many examples of prototypical routes from which you can draw from. Photos, maps, and Google Earth are your friends.
Check out the pix on the forums.

I agree with this, pictures and such have helped me very much when building routes.