It seems that hardly a month goes by in these forums that I don't see some newbie posting that they are starting a new massive layout that they are going to build and release. Yet six months later, or even far sooner in most cases, we never hear from them again. Why is this?
First of all, even a modest sized fully landscaped and populated new layout will often take MONTHS of dedicated work to complete, if done right. Newbies being newbies have no idea of the amount of effort involved, and often being impatient, quickly abandon those projects. It is a real fact that good Trainz layouts take a lot time. If you aren’t prepared to devote that needed time and effort then don’t start or you are going to get frustrated quickly!
Second of all, many of the newbies try to design a 100% "mile-for-mile" absolutely prototypical route and find, surprise, that for a variety of reasons it is just not at all practical to do that. Reasons for this might be:
a. Content is not available on the DLS to make that happen. As an example, some years back I thought about building a route modeled after the Panama Canal Route but found that appropriate tropical and specialized Panama Canal specific content like the various locks and buildings content simply didn’t exist in enough quantity to make that possible, so I had to abandon that project.
b. Who wants many miles of scenery you must drive through with nothing of real interest in it? An example might be many miles of desert terrain that becomes rather boring after a while to drive through with your train. And of course, every real mile of that terrain must be designed, landscaped and populated with plants, rocks, structures, etc by you. This problem was faced many decades ago by the model railroading community and the adopted successful solution was “selective compression” which gives the essential look, feel and flavor of the route instead, but in compressed form. Basically, with selective compression you model the interesting bits and delete the non-interesting bits or at least keep them to the absolute minimum. If you must design a hyper prototypical layout, consider the diorama approach instead (more about this below).
c. The workload is just to great and never seems to come to an end anywhere near as fast as you had hoped.
FYI even I fell into the 100% “mile-for-mile” trap myself when I created my Wilsons Mills & Mount Olive route. After about six months of hard work I began to realize that I had bitten off much more then I could reasonably chew, and I had to delete a lot of proposed baseboards in order to finish the project. I almost gave up a few times but once I cut the route baseboards down to a more manageable level was able to finally finish it. Of course, there is nothing stopping me from adding on additional sections should I choose to in the future to that route. This trap is very easy to fall into, especially with a tool like TransDEM, which tends to give you a LOT more baseboards then you might want with your design. One thing I learned with TransDEM is that you have to be utterly ruthless in pruning off baseboards that really don’t add anything to the route you are designing, except for a lot more work on your part.
The best approach I would recommend to any newbie considering their first layout design project is to start SMALL with a project that has only a few baseboards in it. Another option is to tackle the project you envision in stages and expand the layout with additional sections over a number of years. In either case the most important thing for any newbie is to actually complete the project which will give you the experience and confidence needed to tackle a larger project in time.
Here are three forum threads I have posted over the years regarding layout design that I think you should check into before before you take the plunge into creating your first layout design project:
Newbie tip: Try a diorama approach to building your first Trainz layout:
https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...approach-to-building-your-first-Trainz-layout
MSGSapper Merge Modules Support Thread:
https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?123028-MSGSapper-Merge-Modules-Support-Thread
The How to Design a 1950’s North American themed Trainz layout thread:
https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sh...2s-North-American-themed-Trainz-layout-thread
Also, I would suggest you see this YouTube video called 5 Things You Need to Know Before Building a Model Railroad Layout which I found useful, even if it wasn't meant for Trainz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGug6AspxYk
Many of the tips I am giving you here have been learned the hard way by me over the course of my own considerable layout design project efforts since the early 2000s.
I invite other route designers to post their insights to the design process for newbies as comments to this thread.
Bob (AKA MSGSapper author of 14+ high quality layouts on the DLS)
First of all, even a modest sized fully landscaped and populated new layout will often take MONTHS of dedicated work to complete, if done right. Newbies being newbies have no idea of the amount of effort involved, and often being impatient, quickly abandon those projects. It is a real fact that good Trainz layouts take a lot time. If you aren’t prepared to devote that needed time and effort then don’t start or you are going to get frustrated quickly!
Second of all, many of the newbies try to design a 100% "mile-for-mile" absolutely prototypical route and find, surprise, that for a variety of reasons it is just not at all practical to do that. Reasons for this might be:
a. Content is not available on the DLS to make that happen. As an example, some years back I thought about building a route modeled after the Panama Canal Route but found that appropriate tropical and specialized Panama Canal specific content like the various locks and buildings content simply didn’t exist in enough quantity to make that possible, so I had to abandon that project.
b. Who wants many miles of scenery you must drive through with nothing of real interest in it? An example might be many miles of desert terrain that becomes rather boring after a while to drive through with your train. And of course, every real mile of that terrain must be designed, landscaped and populated with plants, rocks, structures, etc by you. This problem was faced many decades ago by the model railroading community and the adopted successful solution was “selective compression” which gives the essential look, feel and flavor of the route instead, but in compressed form. Basically, with selective compression you model the interesting bits and delete the non-interesting bits or at least keep them to the absolute minimum. If you must design a hyper prototypical layout, consider the diorama approach instead (more about this below).
c. The workload is just to great and never seems to come to an end anywhere near as fast as you had hoped.
FYI even I fell into the 100% “mile-for-mile” trap myself when I created my Wilsons Mills & Mount Olive route. After about six months of hard work I began to realize that I had bitten off much more then I could reasonably chew, and I had to delete a lot of proposed baseboards in order to finish the project. I almost gave up a few times but once I cut the route baseboards down to a more manageable level was able to finally finish it. Of course, there is nothing stopping me from adding on additional sections should I choose to in the future to that route. This trap is very easy to fall into, especially with a tool like TransDEM, which tends to give you a LOT more baseboards then you might want with your design. One thing I learned with TransDEM is that you have to be utterly ruthless in pruning off baseboards that really don’t add anything to the route you are designing, except for a lot more work on your part.
The best approach I would recommend to any newbie considering their first layout design project is to start SMALL with a project that has only a few baseboards in it. Another option is to tackle the project you envision in stages and expand the layout with additional sections over a number of years. In either case the most important thing for any newbie is to actually complete the project which will give you the experience and confidence needed to tackle a larger project in time.
Here are three forum threads I have posted over the years regarding layout design that I think you should check into before before you take the plunge into creating your first layout design project:
Newbie tip: Try a diorama approach to building your first Trainz layout:
https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...approach-to-building-your-first-Trainz-layout
MSGSapper Merge Modules Support Thread:
https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?123028-MSGSapper-Merge-Modules-Support-Thread
The How to Design a 1950’s North American themed Trainz layout thread:
https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sh...2s-North-American-themed-Trainz-layout-thread
Also, I would suggest you see this YouTube video called 5 Things You Need to Know Before Building a Model Railroad Layout which I found useful, even if it wasn't meant for Trainz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGug6AspxYk
Many of the tips I am giving you here have been learned the hard way by me over the course of my own considerable layout design project efforts since the early 2000s.
I invite other route designers to post their insights to the design process for newbies as comments to this thread.
Bob (AKA MSGSapper author of 14+ high quality layouts on the DLS)
Last edited: