Hi Tranzrail709,
there a few good resources on-line that should be able to help. The tool I've used for my latest route is
TransDEM (
Trainz edition). It's payware, but does a great job at creating realistic, relatively accurate landscapes based on real-world data. It can also place tracks for you as well (at least the mainlines). Plus it can create tiles using images from Google Earth / Google Maps / (insert mapping programme here) which you can use to help place buildings, trees, roads, etc.
In terms of difficulty to use, I spent a few nights working through a tutorial provided with the software, and then had two or three goes at making the route I wanted (until I was happy). Since then, I've been slowly (between family life / work & study) been "scenic-ing" the line, little by little.
Their are probably several other ways to go about it but this has worked for me.
For some other hints and tips their is a page on WikiBooks around
Trainz hints and tips. It's all user-sourced feedback and pretty handy (though admittedly the page could do with a tidy up in some sections)
A couple of other hints:
1) start small - I'm working on the Waitara Branch which is only ~7km long but it's still taken a while to get it feeling 'right'
2) save often, and keep backups. I suggest each day before you start working on it, re-save your route build with a different file name, so if something goes wrong it's only that days work you risk losing. You can always delete old versions once you are happy that you don't need them (I normally keep 2-3 'previous versions' but opinions on how many to keep may vary) but nothing as disheartening as losing 3 months worth of work due to a faulty file save!
3) try and use a minimum number of assets if possible (I'm pretty bad at doing this). This will help keep your route more responsive, especially when driving a vehicle around a sharp curve!
People on these forums are generally pretty helpful too if you have specific issues you need help with.
Hope that is of some help and best of luck!
