Making Content
Hawk, the usual process (and where I started) was to get GMax and the Trainz Asset Creation Studio and work all the way through a couple of tutorials (Google(tm) "trainz brick box tutorial" for scenery, "trainz simple locomotive tutorial" and then fish around until you find a link that's still good). Since you're at TS2006 the old tutorials should still work pretty well.
I had my first loco running in a week, but I cheated (not by cloning - that's expected - but I already had a couple of decades' experience in a shape creation system whose output could be exported to GMax).
Also, don't discount the DLS and other sources: there are some great trees out there already, as long as you don't look at them in TS2009 native mode!
