Designing a Route

[Main_Line1]

I have been having a lot of fun making up smaller routes but I'm looking to start a larger, more complicated one. The thing is that I don't know where to start! Any tips on setting up the bare bones of a route and how to organize things and plan would be helpful! Because to be honest, most of my routes end up quite messy XD Thanks

 

[Euphod]

Are you looking for a prototype route, or are you going to make a fictional route?

 

[JCitron]

I have been having a lot of fun making up smaller routes but I'm looking to start a larger, more complicated one. The thing is that I don't know where to start! Any tips on setting up the bare bones of a route and how to organize things and plan would be helpful! Because to be honest, most of my routes end up quite messy XD Thanks

Welcome to the forums and to the world of Trainz, the ever life and time consuming program!

Start small.

What I mean by this is build a baseboard or two. Add to it once you're satisfied with what you've got done.

Pick a theme and stick to it.

My personal route, which is about 150 miles long now, is based on my home area of the Merrimack Valley, and the greater New England region. I have mill towns and sea ports, which are connected together. I've kept the general theme over the past 7 years I've had the program!

Keeping the theme in mind, also means that you'll easily come up with a story, or purpose for your railroad. This helps too with the consistency so that when it comes time to setup trains and run your route, you can easily pick the time period, and rolling stock to place. I happen to model the 1980s-present period, and being a parody on Pan Am Railways, I use a lot of their Guilford-painted engines thrown in with some older locos, which they inherited when they purchased the B&M and MEC, so you'll still see some U-Boats, and Alcos around as well as current CSX, Conrail, and NS engines, which frequent the rails up here.

You also want something that is plausible.

What you don't want, unless you really want this, is a gigantic city with skyscrapers next to the Grand Canyon, or other rather weird things. This is of course unless this is what you wanted to do.

Do research online.

Look at all kinds of maps, including topo maps as well as current ones. Google Earth is great for this, and so is Bing with the bird's eye view.

Be observant of what real trains do.

Live near a railroad? Do some railfanning, but safely of course. Bridges and other safe places are great for this.

Don't rush, take your time and enjoy what you're doing.

The problem is you'll get sucked into Surveyor, building and almost never come up for air. There's so much out there to do with this program, so take a break and go for a drive once in awhile, particularly when Surveyor becomes a drag both mentally and physically. This break prevents RBB, or Route Builder's Burn-out!

John

 

[Dan_Hat]

Ive done mostly fictional routes and I find the best thing to do is to pick a general over veiw of the route, curently im doing a modular set of routes that cover a masive nation.

generally I build the routes by creating several base boards at a time normally on 9x3 section and use a general height map and build up from there

 

[Nij]

Hi Dan_Hat

Some good advice above, as always.

I have two principal routes that I use all the time - both my own.

I have an ongoing project that maps my local area here in the UK, where I started with my home town station and built out to the next two stations. (Bournemouth to Poole) - I used Google Earth to get the distances and angles correct.
I have gone on to extend it somewhat since the start and add a bit to it now and then - who knows where I will end up?
When I want to add to it I just measure and lay the next set of tracks to take me to the next station up the line and then landscape it before moving on.

My other project was a conceptual design and I planned it all out ahead.
I wanted passenger and industries, so I made a main line from point to point and then set up a branch line circuit that intersects with it in a couple of places.
If you draw out a simple plan on paper first it avoids getting stuck later on.
I placed my passenger stations about five or six baseboards apart to give a comfortable distance without being too long and I placed my industries in convenient spots to ease the flow of goods - eg starting with the forest which feeds the lumbar yard and then the docks etc etc.
I seperated my goods and passenger tracks too so I can run both easily or just one or other.
The passenger services are all timetabled now and it's great to ride along.

Whatever you decide have fun and enjoy it all - I don't know which I like best - building or running - that's the beauty of Trainz!

Regards

Nij

 

[leeferr]

First of all, welcome to trainz and get ready to have your life consumed. It's a great ride. I've been here almost 6 years and I never grow tired of it although I do experience burn-out sometimes and have to switch off between content creation, route building and just running trains.

You've received some good, sound advice in the above posts. Don't get discouraged. Your route building techniques will improve with experience. I thought that the first route that I uploaded to the DLS was a masterpiece, but now when I go back and look at it, I cringe. It was horrible, and still is. Coming out of the model railroading hobby, which most of us did, I had my head wrapped around building the route like a model railroad instead of how a real railroad would operate. That's the key I think. Your route needs a purpose. Railroads haul goods from point A to point B. That's what they're about.

I find making a rough sketch of a route in the beginning helps me a lot. It doesn't have to be detailed. Just a linear drawing that spots towns and cities along the way with industries that are served there. This will help you in spotting railside services and industries.

Don't try to start too big. I usually start small and then I can add on to it later. I've done this with my Ashland Central System (which I'm still working on). I started with a division about 25 miles long. Since its creation, I've added two more divisions to it that are about 25 miles each. Who knows where it will start, but I use portals to simulate interchanges with other roads and it works pretty well for me. That way, I can receive or send trains to other roads.

Remember, the important thing is to enjoy yourself. There's lots of folks here to help you along your journey.

Mike

 

[Main_Line1]

Thanks a lot for the great advice. This all really helps and i appreciate it a lot! I'm excited to get down to business. Thanks a lot guys

 

[Main_Line1]

Thanks a lot for the great advice. This all really helps and i appreciate it a lot! I'm excited to get down to business. Thanks a lot guys

 

[Deano5]

So excited you posted twice. :hehe:.
Just remember though, have fun.
When you feel you are getting stressed because you can't do what you want, it's time to take a small break and pop into the forum for a chat.

 

[mjolnir]

I'll weigh in on this. Like leeferr, I tend to create a route so that it would look like a real railroad if it were built. But I start at an even earlier stage than Leeferr does, by creating a backstory that explains why the route exists--that is, what purpose does it fill, and why does it do what it does the the way it does. For example, a right of way surveyed in the 1870's or 1880s up a canyon will have sharp curves, and many bridges across the creek, because at that time the technology did not exist, or was too expensive to make it straigher. If the route were run up the canyon in the 1920's instead, the curves would be less sharp, but the grades might be steeper, and some curves would be eliminated by the use of tunnels. In the 1970's the same route would have much more gentle curves, and grades, and make extensive use of tunnels.

But (in my mind, anyway), before one can to have a really good route up a canyon, one first needs to know what was up the canyon that required a railroad to be built to there to get. What it was will influence how the track was built. A coal mine would have loaded short cars, so that the curvature of the track was not as much of an issue as if it was logs produced up the canyon, where the car length was longer so that curves had to be broader.

This approach provides countless hours of interesting research as I try to reach the goal of making a route that, if it actually existed, would be pretty much the way I modeled it.

As to longer, more complicated routes, I'm inclined to build these from smaller ones. Taking again the example of the route up the canyon, I'll develop "routelets", perhaps 3 to 20 boards, with the idea of eventually developing these into a larger route by connecting a number of these routlets together with intermediate boards. And I never totally discard a routelet, either. I've found too of the that didn't work for one place that I first developed it for, turned out to be ideal in another place with, or in some cases, even without, a bit or modification.

Another reason I tend to work on small pieces, with the idea of connecting them later is that when I find an idea turns out to be totally wrong for the place I was developing it for, or when it just doesn't work as well in three dimensions as I thought it would in two, it is much less traumatic to me to set aside the work on a small number of boards than on a large one.

Perhaps more later.

ns

 

[vonhammer_87]

Well I guess I'll pitch in my 2 cents on this topic.

For my first route I started in I modeled it after the 1 1/2" (1/8-1'-0" or 7.5" gage) scale White Creek Railway located in Cedar Springs, MI. The prototype has about 7.5 miles of track, so when I modeled it I ended up having about 60 miles. Right now Id say it's about 80% finished, I have all trackwork done and some of the scenery. I have to go through and add the industries. I'm planning on using the CMTM3 system created by Dap for operations.

While taking a break from White Creek, I started to model the layout at the club I belong to- The Detroit Model Railroad Club.

If you want good-looking junctions, use Andi06's Amimated Junctions they're really great to work with plus you don't get kinks in the track when used properly.