Layout creation tips needed?

[Falken442]

I'm a little stuck with what I should do first on my layout?
What is the order that I should follow to make a great layout?
Whats the good order of Texturing, making the terrain e.g. hills, lakes, placing objects, doing trackwork?
also can somebody help me with making a town look like a town, I'm going for a Australian style because its Thirlmere to Buxton.

 

[Dermmy]

Ask three route builders those questions and expect at least three radically different answers!

Truly you just play around in Surveyor, junk the first attempts, and work out what system works for you.

For me though terrain comes first (I always work on a DEM so terrain first is a given), then tracks, then roads, then any other trackside spline (fences, grass etc) because the grid can be helpful, then rough in ground texture, then structures and lastly tidy up the ground textures and add trees and shrubs. Then comes the bit I really enjoy - fiddling with all of the previous steps and adding small detail till it looks right - or at least till it looks better.....

Towns 101 - keep them as small and simple as possible. If you can't see it from the cab or tracking cameras it doesn't need to be there....

Andy

 

[cascaderailroad]

Practice with trackwork and switchs ... I have spent several years at it, and I am still learning new things about laying track and curves.

 

[Falken442]

Could you upload some photos of towns that you have done, if you don't mind.

 

[JCitron]

I'm a little stuck with what I should do first on my layout?
What is the order that I should follow to make a great layout?
Whats the good order of Texturing, making the terrain e.g. hills, lakes, placing objects, doing trackwork?
also can somebody help me with making a town look like a town, I'm going for a Australian style because its Thirlmere to Buxton.

As Andy says there are many, many ways of doing things.

First, before you build your mega-route of all times, start small. A small route can always be expanded and then some. I started my mega-route 10 years ago and since then it has grown from a little over 4 baseboards to something that is around 180 miles long the last time I checked. I have renovated and changed baseboards as my building techniques have gotten better, but the overall theme has remained the same including the locations of many towns and cities.

Don't rush things, let them develop on their own. If you rush the building process, you'll be frustrated with how the results come out.

Plan and research. This is probably the biggest part of a route building process. Look at maps, photographs, aerial images, books, anything that has information on your route. This works whether this is fictional or real.

and finally, have a purpose for the railroads existence. Is it a mine to factory? Is it a commuter railroad serving a big city, or is it part of a larger network which sees a bit of everything. The purpose not only makes the route more realistic, it gives you reason to run the trains. Just running trains in a circle or back and forth for the sake of running trains gets pretty stale after a short time.

Regarding making lakes, rivers, towns, etc. Download and open up existing routes from the DLS. These will give you an idea of how other people did things. If you use DEM (Digital Elevation Map) data, the overlay maps will have roads and locations of buildings. This will help you build your cities and towns, and will eventually give you ideas how to build your own without the use of maps as a guide.

For other things such as track laying and signaling, check out the various posts and tutorials on this.

Here's an excellent tutorial on track laying and signaling which will get you up and running fairly quickly.

http://trains.0catch.com/tutorial.html

The Surveyor's and Operations forum has a sticky on route building techniques. Read through the numerous posts on how to make mountains, cuts, place bridges, among many other things.

John

 

[Jrrrail]

I look at model railroader magazine track plans , are very large in general and take up full rooms in houses.
They can be elaborate, for me I tend to think I need some thing like that to be happy, however the space is not available to or most people...
another option is to join a club.

For my "real" model rail road N Scale is good for operation in a small space.
I sometimes get to be a protectionist, "nothing is good enough", because of what I see in the magazines or pictures from the screen shots.
I get in the ' comparison trap '...

I like to look at One tile/ one grid track plans, start out simple first, try not to be a self critic...

Enjoy the process...

John Riso

 

[Jrrrail]

I look at model railroader magazine track plans , are very large in general and take up full rooms in houses.
They can be elaborate, for me I tend to think I need some thing like that to be happy, however the space is not available to or most people...
another option is to join a club.

For my "real" model rail road N Scale is good for operation in a small space.
I sometimes get to be a protectionist, "nothing is good enough", because of what I see in the magazines or pictures from the screen shots.
I get in the ' comparison trap '...

I like to look at One tile/ one grid track plans, start out simple first, try not to be a self critic...

Enjoy the process...

John Riso

 

[frogpipe]

Start small so you don't burn out.

Be wary of too much detail, take it in steps until you see how it impacts performance. I totally over did Baltimore at first, and maybe still did!!

Sample the great routes of Trainz,start with built in and then move on to the DLS ones that folks seem to hold in high regard. Have a look around, and see how it was done. Drive them, and when you see things you like, open it in surveyor and pick apart how it was created.

Be prepared to think whatever you started is nonredeemable crap and scrap it, because that will probably happen too.

Feel free to ignore this as I've had at least 4 margaritas tonight...

 

[cascaderailroad]

Could you upload some photos of towns that you have done, if you don't mind.

I have yet to create an actual town ... I just lay track, with precise curves and intricate switchs !

I don't even use textures, buildings nor trees until years later ... when the route nears completion

 

[t8dagr8]

Thank you all for sharing your tips. They are most helpful.

 

[cascaderailroad]

I am willing to help tutor anyone with laying track, and with Trainz in general ... via Forum PM, or Skype

 

[mjolnir]

I'll not tell you what you should do to build a great route, but here's what I do to build a tolerable one.

There is always something that kicks off the route, but not always the same kind of thing. For example, on one route (not released, don't go looking for it), I had the idea that I wanted a visual of a train snaking through a cut (cutting) in a reverse curve. I also set myself a limit to see what I could do in three boards. Then, I created a backstory; every railroad has one. The better the backstory, the better the route. Once the backstory was complete, I began the terrain, including the waterways, because in the real world, terrain always precedes the railroad. Knowing something of the geology of the area improved the believability of the site. The backstory told me the rest, so it was simply a matter of laying the track, textures, and industries.

The backstory will also tell you other things--what part of the country the route is in, how big the communities are that are served (whether or not they are visible on the route). The size of the community will influence the size of the station, for example. The part of the country, and the period being modeled, will influence the architecture. For example, in the US South, roof pitches were lower than in the US North, because in the North it was necessary to have a steep roof which would reduce the amount of snow that would pile on the roof. In the South, snow was not an issue, and roof pitches were not as steep.

Smaller communities had more space between buildings than larger ones; and the type and nature of buildings was different, too. The smaller the community, the smaller the number of brick structures; the larger the community, the higher the number of brick structures in the commercial district. The smallest communities may or may not have an industrial district; manufactures, if any, tended to be small. Larger communities had a better defined industrial district, often located close to the railroad. Again, the sites offering aerial photography are your friends, here. The large map sites often have current aerial imagery, but image searches can sometimes give aerial photography from earlier eras.

Finally, don't throw away old routes, even if at one time you didn't think they were worth further work. I've astounded myself how many times I put aside something that just wasn't working as I wanted, and came back to it later, only to find that a couple of minor changes made it better than I ever thought it would be. Storage space is cheep.

ns