An informal survey for route/layout creators

[ecco]

If not TransDem, let Google Earth / Google Maps be your friend. I did (west of) Altoona to Shankerstown, (including Horseshoe Curve) about 10 miles as the crow flies.

I also used it for the Tampa Rockport / Mosaic Route. Highly detailed showing all the businesses and industries from Google.

If you can get a second cheap monitor it makes a really big difference by being able to see the Google map and the Trainz layout side by side.

 

[wilts747]

My current route started in TS12 as a 30 miles single, twin track, with two village stations and portals at the end of each track producing a 30 minute passenger service. Over the years the route has grown to about 160 miles with perhaps 100 miles between the furthest two points. Portals still generate the passenger services both express and local. Industries and goods freight have all been added and currently I have 37 trains in total doing their own thing under AI control. To extend the route I add the appropriate number of base-boards, lay the relevant track and again relocate/add the portals to the ends of the new tracks as required. As stations and industries are added the instructions to the affected trains can be modified and so the route has grown in a number of small but manageable steps. Peter

 

[dangavel]

I like to make US steam era routes , both freelance and prototypical, freelance are much easier, because you can let your imagination run free, but I prefer prototypes and even if I make imaginary routes I try to base them on real practice. My advice is start with something really small scale and to chose an era which has plenty of authentic available assets of the time as the biggest obstacles I have encountered has been a lack of assets for anything in the USA before the 1950s.

I have some doubts as to people who want to create pre 1950s routes from the states will ever be well served in trainz , its nice to see a few youngsters like Trainboi who are still building steam from that era , but its the lack of small things that frustrates me ( like finding a NG handcart or a set of tools that would have been used by trackworkers ) and I have the feeling thats also what puts a lot of people off from modeling those earlier stream eras.

If you are considering being a route builder it also helps if you have skills in 3d ( and the time to make the assets ) as this will be invaluable . but most of all you need patience. On a big route I just jump to somewhere else which has different challenges when some things get too much to do anymore and then go back after a while when I'm burnt out doing the same thing .

I'm hoping that 2019 will make applying vegetation simpler and easier , because this is probably the procedure that is the most daunting to do in Trainz, (I am sure we have lost many promising routes because this aspect of Trainz is so time consuming and difficult to do well, both in making textures and adding vegetation ) but if 2019 does improve things we still need more up to date trees, shrubs and plants. The semi arid utah colorado route I am making has a number of trees that are from the area but almost none of them are speed trees optimized for TANE or 2019and it worries me that we have lost a number of our best tree makers over the past year or so , who will step up to the plate to fill the gap ?

I would be prepared to commission anyone who would make a new set of rocky mountain trees and plants that could be used in TANE or 2019. if anyone else is in the same boat let me know and lets see if we can join forces and benefit everyone in the hobby.

 

[JCitron]

You've brought up an interesting point regarding missing details. I've run into that even in the modern times. I find it's worse when you know the area too well because there are those details missing which you know should be there. This is something I've run into while attempting, for the third time by the way, to build my own hometown. The yard is long gone and so is the station, but on my route I put these back because I could, and then I ran into things I couldn't find that were close enough to fill the gap and then nothing looked right to me. My dad, though, recognized the area immediately and pointed out where he worked, and what mill building was what even though they weren't quite right to me. Thinking back now, I should have kept that version but it's long gone now.

Jumping to another location on a big route also keeps the creative motion going. I do that with my big 300 km route I've been working on since 2003. The route is big enough I can fiddle around with the opposite end when I get tired of rebuilding something else. I've done this for years with lots of success and really haven't thought about it until you mentioned it.

 

[FootplatePhil]

Although I have built and pulled apart a number of model railways in HO and G scale, I have only ever worked on one Trainz route (apart from very early experimentation). After a bit of burn-out I have returned a couple of times to rework and extend it. Currently it is 160 kms long, and creeping towards another milestone (9kms to Eugowra, at which point I shall upload it again).

I enjoy being able to bring back to life a recreation of the trains, and the world, I remember from my youth. As has been mentioned in above posts, the detail is not always (or even often) an exact match - I have not dabbled much in creating my own assets, and am happy to make do with what seems appropriate from items included with Trainz, or on the DLS. I just aim to recreate the look and feel of my prototype. I then enjoy 'flying around' the completed areas in Surveyor, tweaking as I go. And I enjoy watching the Trainz in AI sessions I setup. Early on I purchased a Raildriver, but I really only actually drive the Trains during testing of track quality.

Phil

 

[RHKluckhohn]

Transdem...

Yeah.

When I started my route I had to decide whether to spend $40 and the learning time on Transdem or plunge ahead and build the terrain by hand from TopoUSA and Delorme. The fool "plunged" and spent five years getting the terrain for 30 miles of track approximately right, along with roughing in scenery. It's all come out nicely but what a waste of time!

Though admittedly TopoUSA and TopoQuest did provide historical record of alignments that no longer exist. They'd have likely showed up in Transdem, though.

:B~)

 

[valbridge]

As an ex BR Signalman working routes, signalling, switching and all that goes with route construction is almost an addiction to me.
My first effort was an Australian route [Blue Mountains Line v2] which took ages to complete. And even then was not sure it was good enough to upload but did anyway and has had over 1600 downloads so far. Naturally that set a benchmark for me. Now on my second route, BR Souther Region-Brighton Line, which is proving as time consuming as the first.

Really enjoy getting track and route to make sense and work as close as poss to the real thing but hampered by the tedium of detailing. Poor detailing in my view ruins what otherwise might be interesting in-so-much as it must overcome boring anyone to death running it and subsequently ending up in the recycle bin.

I do find myself taking many breaks to google stations or yards in an effort to authenticate the route. I have found both Rail Maps On-Line and Raildar as essential research tools. Then of course there are the videos of cab rides from here or there to observe trackside detail. Honestly it never ends.

When you think you have concluded, something else catches your eye or a program update messes with you!

Sessions I am yet to fully master and have only done a couple of them. But see the value to an end user.

So far I am not tired of making routes but starting one is the challenge for me because I argue with myself on which route to construct. I must do a steam route..that is my ultimate challenge.

 

[Paul_Bert]

I have about a dozen routes and sessions that I alternate between. Most of these were started using TR 2014. As the years have gone by I have enjoyed updating them with new assets as they come along. With the introduction of TRS 2019 I will have many hours incorporating the new features into my old routes.

My routes are small compared to many I have seen. Most of mine are less then 100 baseboards. I enjoy tinkering with the scenery but I really enjoy building sessions using AI so I can have 30 - 50 trains running all the time. Most of my routes are made up and don't represent any specific area. Having grown up in Pittsburgh in the 40's I remember the wonderful trolley system and interurban system in that area. At one point they had about 800 PCC trolleys in operation some running to small surrounding cities 25 miles away. Many of these trolley lines paralleled the railroads serving the coal, steel, and glass plants. So some of my routes try to replicate what I remember from that time period. Lots of hills, trees, streams, and woodlands. Many of the trolley lines in Pittsburgh ran on their own right of way through some very scenic and wooded areas.

The challenge in recreating these old trolley lines is have enough trolleys from all the areas converge on the downtown area in enough numbers to make it realistic. On the downtown streets pf Pittsburgh there would often be 10 or 12 trolleys in a row lining up to pickup and discharge passengers on the major streets. So I have to use lots of track marks and invisible signals to make it all work. It is an interesting challenge to keep 60 to 70 trolleys running together all controlled by AI. And then I mix in some freight and passenger trains running between the small towns and industries.

When I get tired with one of my routes I then go onto another one and work on it for a while. And then I decide wouldn't it be nice to merge two of my routes together which sometimes is an interesting challenge since I use a lot of AI trains. When merging one route into another some of the AI commands get lost and need reprogramming - along with the opportunity to have the trains interact between to two old routes.

I don't build any assets so I appreciate those who have the talent and the patience to do that work. For me the joy is in building routes/sessions and programming them to run on their own and then work on refining the scenery to make the routes as realistic as possible. TRS 2019 will certainly as a new layer of realism to the routes.