I have about five routes in various stages of progress. A few of them are actually the works of others I've cobbled together in the real mergers and acquisitions fashion so now I can run long through freights while switching local traffic and yards.
The other two are totally from scratch. One route is actually version two of my original route I initially started in December 2003. This TRS2006 version went on to live in various components in the current version with quite a bit of renovations. Recently I found my original TRS2004 version. I imported this into T:ANE via TS12 and after going into convulsive laughter over my horrible trackwork and landscaping, I set about rebuilding and integrating portions of this route into the current iteration. The core theme was there right from the beginning, and the small segment I saved has fit nicely into my current route. There's still quite a bit of work needed to refurbish the old core, but that's coming along over time.
The problem though with any creative activity is burnout. With that in mind, I rotate my projects and mix in running other people's routes in between, looking at maps, photos, videos, and other routes. The in between stuff gives me fresh ideas, refreshes the creative spirit again, and then I'm back to route building where I set goals for myself such as finishing up a specific area before leaving the project for another day. As my larger routes have gotten more finished, I use this time to drive them and enjoy the fruits of my labor.
This aspect still is the best I think because we can see our hard work now playing out in real time in front of our eyes. This does also become a fixing time as well as I QC check for stupid things like trees in the way, floating roads and track, and other dumb things, which don't quite work. Testing as I go along also helps work out dumb AI things that may come up such as signaling issues, and even finding broken track segments, and disconnected fixed-track objects such as level crossings, for example.
Along with route building, comes renovating of older routes and sections of my routes. As my route building skills have improved, and better assets discovered, I've gone back to earlier routes which looked the bees' knees way back when they were first built, but look like pure garbage today. A little bit of rebuilding here, a bit of reworking of those sections that have "What was I thinking" plastered all over it, can make a world of difference.
The other thing I find too is when the blah, I can't stand the taste of the dry soda crackers any longer feeling comes on, I know then it's time for a break and I do something completely different like shoot enemies in Arma3, play with Cities: Skylines, or something totally different.
The process outlined above is something I've also used with my music studies. Over the years, I have worked on, destroyed, ruined, and horribly played many great piano works. As I've gone back through them, trying to undo my assumptions, mistakes, and pure stupidity, I realize there's only so far one can go before we no longer hear the music just like we can no longer see the route for what it is, and all we can do is step away and approach this again another day.
