stuartluff
New member
Am I crazy for attempting this? - Added Video see page 3
Hi there. This is my first post here. Had Trainz on my Mac for a month or two now and... well, you already know its great, thats why you're here right? Anyhoo... I'm a graphic designer, full of creativity and with a technical mind so stumbling on Trainz as I did and then discovering Surveyor I'm totally in my element building my own little world and working out the technicalities of track laying and signal placement etc. (even though I know very little about actually running trains). So I've taken it upon myself to create a really great route and with my perfectionism taking hold I need to ask myself, or more importantly other people, am I crazy for attempting the following route? (see link for image - 370kb ish)
I found a great stretch of river, purely by chance, on Google maps. Type 'Ohiopyle' into Google maps and zoom out a bit. From Connelsville in the North through Ohiopyle and down to Confluence. I thought that would look sexy with a winding track and a few steam locos chugging through that valley. So I set to work. Two months later and I have all the track laid, the mountains hand crafted using an overlaid grid I created in Photoshop using screen grabs from Google Maps. "12 squares East, 17 South, the river bends 10 squares to the west". Thats how I've created it all so far! About 30% of it is 'painted' and scenery in place. Two large train yards, various industries, a narrow gauge logging route and some complex, AI shunting and switching for getting those locos out of tight mountain valleys. I'll post links to images (may even do a little video) later depending on the response I get here.
I've studied signaling to get things looking and working correctly. In my mind the route is set in Canada as I'm modeling Canadian Pacific from the 50's but as I've said the route is based around topography in Ohiopyle PA.
So why am I asking if Im crazy? Well, I've done it Real Scale! On the image in the link look carefully to see a thin black line, thats the rough route of the track. That red bit on the far left, takes 5 minutes to traverse! From blue marker to blue marker (following the black line obviously) it takes just over an hour. All of that is what I have laid so far and 30% of that route is finished. The rest of the route on the image, I'm considering adding. What do you think? Am I crazy? Its a 150 square miles or so I think!
I'm a perfectionist, graphic designer, that means everything HAS to look spot on. The route so far has no, graphical glitches, like track slightly raised of the ground, odd looking grass splines, floating trees or dodgy track. If a tree looks in an odd position it gets moved until it looks right from all angles lol. I've gone a little crazy with the splines by the way but I have a maxed 27" iMac 3.4 i7 with SSD, 2GB VRAM and 16GB ram running at full 5000m draw distance with graphics settings all on max hehe and it never misses a beat
The mountains are hand sculpted with the terrain tools, they look good (in my opinion) from all angles). The two train yards (actually make that one I deleted one of them last night) took a week each to draw up, plan and layout! As I know very little about trains and running them I studied how to create a good yard that actually works efficiently with AI turntables etc.
I think once complete (if ever) I'd like to upload it to the DLS and let you guys enjoy it too. So if all this sounds interesting (i'll get some screenies up soon) and if you like the rough route on the link let me know and I'll forge ahead with it. Unless you think I'm crazy ad should go walk the dog or something?!
Image of partially completed route (between blue markers) and 'the rest of it' http://stuartluff.co.uk/trainz/anyavalley_route.jpg
Stuart
Hi there. This is my first post here. Had Trainz on my Mac for a month or two now and... well, you already know its great, thats why you're here right? Anyhoo... I'm a graphic designer, full of creativity and with a technical mind so stumbling on Trainz as I did and then discovering Surveyor I'm totally in my element building my own little world and working out the technicalities of track laying and signal placement etc. (even though I know very little about actually running trains). So I've taken it upon myself to create a really great route and with my perfectionism taking hold I need to ask myself, or more importantly other people, am I crazy for attempting the following route? (see link for image - 370kb ish)
I found a great stretch of river, purely by chance, on Google maps. Type 'Ohiopyle' into Google maps and zoom out a bit. From Connelsville in the North through Ohiopyle and down to Confluence. I thought that would look sexy with a winding track and a few steam locos chugging through that valley. So I set to work. Two months later and I have all the track laid, the mountains hand crafted using an overlaid grid I created in Photoshop using screen grabs from Google Maps. "12 squares East, 17 South, the river bends 10 squares to the west". Thats how I've created it all so far! About 30% of it is 'painted' and scenery in place. Two large train yards, various industries, a narrow gauge logging route and some complex, AI shunting and switching for getting those locos out of tight mountain valleys. I'll post links to images (may even do a little video) later depending on the response I get here.
I've studied signaling to get things looking and working correctly. In my mind the route is set in Canada as I'm modeling Canadian Pacific from the 50's but as I've said the route is based around topography in Ohiopyle PA.
So why am I asking if Im crazy? Well, I've done it Real Scale! On the image in the link look carefully to see a thin black line, thats the rough route of the track. That red bit on the far left, takes 5 minutes to traverse! From blue marker to blue marker (following the black line obviously) it takes just over an hour. All of that is what I have laid so far and 30% of that route is finished. The rest of the route on the image, I'm considering adding. What do you think? Am I crazy? Its a 150 square miles or so I think!
I'm a perfectionist, graphic designer, that means everything HAS to look spot on. The route so far has no, graphical glitches, like track slightly raised of the ground, odd looking grass splines, floating trees or dodgy track. If a tree looks in an odd position it gets moved until it looks right from all angles lol. I've gone a little crazy with the splines by the way but I have a maxed 27" iMac 3.4 i7 with SSD, 2GB VRAM and 16GB ram running at full 5000m draw distance with graphics settings all on max hehe and it never misses a beat
The mountains are hand sculpted with the terrain tools, they look good (in my opinion) from all angles). The two train yards (actually make that one I deleted one of them last night) took a week each to draw up, plan and layout! As I know very little about trains and running them I studied how to create a good yard that actually works efficiently with AI turntables etc.
I think once complete (if ever) I'd like to upload it to the DLS and let you guys enjoy it too. So if all this sounds interesting (i'll get some screenies up soon) and if you like the rough route on the link let me know and I'll forge ahead with it. Unless you think I'm crazy ad should go walk the dog or something?!
Image of partially completed route (between blue markers) and 'the rest of it' http://stuartluff.co.uk/trainz/anyavalley_route.jpg
Stuart
Last edited:
