Route Building - Prototypical or Fictional?

[JCitron]

Hi John - That explains why, for all the really good routes on DLS, there are many which fit my earlier "why did they bother?" reaction. Of course we must not lose sight of the fact that Trainz is a game, which provides a broad platform for creators. Who wants to see Thomas (the Tank) doing 300mph over a 20% gradient hill? Not me, but other users of Trainz may differ in opinion!!! Regards. Colin.

Indeed, Colin.

Trainz is a hobby and for anyone to do as they wish. My little nephew had a blast with TS12 one and played for hours building a small loop of track after I showed him how. He was about 5 or 6 at the time. As he poked through the tools, he discovered the textures and buildings and went to town literally as he placed roads. I did assist him with the level-crossings, and he had a blast with that too. Many years later, he asked me if his route still existed but sadly it did not because the machine it was located on had a hard drive crash and everything was lost. Imagine a little kid like that just having fun. The look of absolute delight and glee he had on his face when he sat in the driver's seat and saw his creation from the ground. His exhilaration was most likely the same that I felt the first time I did the same way back when in 2003.

Revisiting an old route is probably something a lot of people don't do because they're not us. People like to throw them out there for us to enjoy as they do but for us, we work at a different level. This is route-building experience, but perhaps, this is a personality trait, or perhaps it has something to do with how we were brought up. Having studied piano since I was young, I had to focus on perfection since someone who plays the piano absolutely cannot make a mistake ever. I never went the complete professional route with that, but I still hold my standards pretty high there and in other things I do including Trainz and as I did with my career.

And as Lataxe said, I too have many non-starter routes that I either got bogged down in, or never had the feelings or just couldn't get going. They languished on my hard drive for years before being dispatched to the recycle bin. In some instances, I resurrected them a second or third time only to toss them into the bit bucket yet again a year later.

 

[Driver_Col]

Indeed, Colin.

Trainz is a hobby and for anyone to do as they wish. My little nephew had a blast with TS12 one and played for hours building a small loop of track after I showed him how. He was about 5 or 6 at the time. As he poked through the tools, he discovered the textures and buildings and went to town literally as he placed roads. I did assist him with the level-crossings, and he had a blast with that too. Many years later, he asked me if his route still existed but sadly it did not because the machine it was located on had a hard drive crash and everything was lost. Imagine a little kid like that just having fun. The look of absolute delight and glee he had on his face when he sat in the driver's seat and saw his creation from the ground. His exhilaration was most likely the same that I felt the first time I did the same way back when in 2003.

Revisiting an old route is probably something a lot of people don't do because they're not us. People like to throw them out there for us to enjoy as they do but for us, we work at a different level. This is route-building experience, but perhaps, this is a personality trait, or perhaps it has something to do with how we were brought up. Having studied piano since I was young, I had to focus on perfection since someone who plays the piano absolutely cannot make a mistake ever. I never went the complete professional route with that, but I still hold my standards pretty high there and in other things I do including Trainz and as I did with my career.

And as Lataxe said, I too have many non-starter routes that I either got bogged down in, or never had the feelings or just couldn't get going. They languished on my hard drive for years before being dispatched to the recycle bin. In some instances, I resurrected them a second or third time only to toss them into the bit bucket yet again a year later.

Revisiting the various comments on this thread, it makes me realize that for all our differences in age, locale, career path etc. etc. etc., Trainz makes it clear that we have so much in common, at least from a route building perspective! Regards. Colin.

 

[frogpipe]

I have faced the quandry, real or fictional. In the end, after many aborted attempts at fictional and prototype I found my answer, as with so many thinga in life, in compromise.

Study a real route, use it as guidance, and freelance the details.

So I generally used a real alignment, used toppo maps to guide my hand as I hand raised the terrain around it, placed industries and stations more or less at correct intervals, and used my imagination to fill in the details.

It's a WIP, and only 10 miles long, but it's done end to end at this time and I'm well pleased with the results.

I found the two key things to meet my expectations were short length and being in a valley so it was easy to set the boundaries of the surrounding scenery.

 

[Driver_Col]

I have faced the quandry, real or fictional. In the end, after many aborted attempts at fictional and prototype I found my answer, as with so many thinga in life, in compromise.

Study a real route, use it as guidance, and freelance the details.

So I generally used a real alignment, used toppo maps to guide my hand as I hand raised the terrain around it, placed industries and stations more or less at correct intervals, and used my imagination to fill in the details.

It's a WIP, and only 10 miles long, but it's done end to end at this time and I'm well pleased with the results.

I found the two key things to meet my expectations were short length and being in a valley so it was easy to set the boundaries of the surrounding scenery.

That's the thing isn't it. Experiment until you find what works for you. The bottom line of course is that it must give you some pleasure and satisfaction otherwise why bother! Regards. Colin.

 

[steviez]

Having read through all the comments on here I have come to the conclusion that is entirely up to the creator of the original route as to how they do it and how far they want to go with it. Its not painting by numbers (as in a prototypical route using DEM etc where the route is basically drawn on for you) Each layout is just that an artists impression of what in the minds eye was or is there. Whether others enjoy it is entirely up to them but judging by the responses as in downloads of routs the people above are pretty much on the money so keep doing what you are doing in your own style. The naysayers and critics need to get a life and keep quiet or make their own contribution to our hobby. When does a real life route ever follow to the inch and to every single house on the route it would be pretty boring to be fair. Like a work of art it is down to interpretation of the artist to make it work and for that I doff my cap to you guys as you are brilliant at it.

 

[valbridge]

Have mainly done prototypical. Perhaps I enjoy pain!
Its not so much getting the route [lines/signalling] right but for me its the detailing that causes build frustration. You can often search endlessly for that asset you want in a particular place only to compromise with something similar. I suppose that's the fun of it.

The Blue Mountains route was almost a year in the making and often drove me quite insane. Once finished and uploaded brought forth that feeling of achievement and satisfaction it had been completed. Now I feel it needs re-working seeing as though it is a few years old.

Having tried to produce fictional routes is challenging to the imagination but just as enjoyable as prototypical route building. The challenge being, is it interesting enough for others to enjoy.

There are a number of route builders in the SIM who are just excellent at producing routes that are not only visually attractive but also fun to ride. I learned from the best of them and continue to do so.

However, without asset creators much less could be achieved, so for my part I tug at the forelock for all here who take time to create assets which help routes become more interesting than they would be without them.

 

[Driver_Col]

Thanks for sharing. Please feel free to doff your cap whenever you feel the urge! Regards. Colin.

 

[Driver_Col]

Have mainly done prototypical. Perhaps I enjoy pain!
Its not so much getting the route [lines/signalling] right but for me its the detailing that causes build frustration. You can often search endlessly for that asset you want in a particular place only to compromise with something similar. I suppose that's the fun of it.

The Blue Mountains route was almost a year in the making and often drove me quite insane. Once finished and uploaded brought forth that feeling of achievement and satisfaction it had been completed. Now I feel it needs re-working seeing as though it is a few years old.

Having tried to produce fictional routes is challenging to the imagination but just as enjoyable as prototypical route building. The challenge being, is it interesting enough for others to enjoy.

There are a number of route builders in the SIM who are just excellent at producing routes that are not only visually attractive but also fun to ride. I learned from the best of them and continue to do so.

However, without asset creators much less could be achieved, so for my part I tug at the forelock for all here who take time to create assets which help routes become more interesting than they would be without them.

You are quite correct of course. Whereas this thread was intended to draw attention to the fiction vs non-fiction route building aspects, no route could be effectively created without all the assets that can bring the whole thing to life. Regards. Colin.

 

[autodctr]

For myself, I probably do things that no one else here would care for. I still remember from MANY years ago having a 3 level 150 sq ft layout that I build every year. (This started when I was about 12 years old.) 7 trains running on 3 levels, crossing gates that operated, many houses and other buildings with lights in them. The joy came from watching 7 trains circle around and around endlessly! My layouts today expand on that: 20-30 trains running on an immensely larger scale. No AI used at all. Main line is over 150 miles long and winds either up and back down the mountain or around and into the valley and back up. Latest layout is over 600 bases. My mainline (sight-seeing line) is where I watch everything from. My preferred view is from the front of the locomotive. On the mainline alone, I will usually have about 12 - 15 trains operating at one time. I change the speeds on them occasionally to keep them from running into each other, but with such a long track, that rarely happens. I also have started using the drone camera to watch what is going on.

 

[UnionPacificFan1005]

Personally, I like to work with prototypical stuff. The big reason is making topography, I just can't create that stuff on my own. There's also that I just like being able to go off something that already exists, and be able to make something off of that rather than creating my own, I just find that I really am not able to do it. And then there's just that it's fun recreating the places I have been or have been near in Trainz, and being able to add those small details.

 

[marky7890]

Although my Cornish Railways route has been years in the making a still build built, I have loved building it. Although much of it is countryside which is fairly easy to build. But I guess being set in the present day era makes it alot easier to build. There is recent high resolution LIDAR height map data available which makes the terrain so much more realistic, the embankments, and cuttings and already there. There is plenty of sources of recent aerial views which makes building towns easier, as well as things like streetview to see what types of buildings they are and what they look like. The whole of Plymouth even has 3D buildings on Google earth!
There are cab rides videos as well which makes it easier to work out where different trackside objects go, sectional appendixes showing where all the different speed limits are, and photos of the various Cornish signal box diagrams posted online to work out what signal types all the signals are.

the tricky part is sometimes finding a building which looks close to something that is there in real life, although being able to make your own assets definitely helps in that aspect. Most of the stations of my route use custom assets which I have built which really help the stations look like how they do in real life. I do enjoy building the stations trying to accurately recreate them.

A few years ago I decided I would finally release the Cornish route in an as is state, as pretty much all the lines were in place with a decent level of scenery. I though otherwise the route may never be released. I always find something to improve on and have gone up and down all the lines several times over the years improving things, right now for example I am updating the route with LIDAR height data, which I have been doing over the past couple of years snice I first discovered it and the Environment agency released it freely to the public.

Mark

 

[Driver_Col]

For anybody interested in LBSCR workings, my Drummond Route is currently undergoing a "make-over" in order to take advantage of, and be compatible with, TRS2019. As a number of other Routes are also getting similar attention, none are going to be available for some time yet however, the link below goes to a short Drummond LBSCR video recorded from TRS2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tga19Z8GI6M

 

[pfx]

Fact or fiction?

I've worked in both, updating to T:ANE standards and merging the Rosworth and Midshire routes. I enjoyed doing this as the starting point was of a high standard and a lot of the work was just waving a T:ANE wand across the routes, adding extra scenery, updating some of the older assets with newer equivalents and of course, adding procedural track to the whole lot, along with a few extra boards to bridge the gap between the two. Then I have Edinburgh to Glasgow on the go currently, which is far more time consuming but to me, more rewarding. Considering the route is one of Scotland's main intercity routes, it hasn't been recreated in any meaningful way since the partial Glasgow to Falkirk High route that was once built-in to Trainz. I'm fortunate to have plenty of reference material to work with, and a TransDEM created map which allows for prototypical gradients and alignments.

I can't say I prefer one over the other and both have a tedious side. Route burn out is a constant problem and I find myself leaving Trainz well alone for long periods. If pushed, I find real routes slightly more rewarding as something that starts as a map, takes shape as something I can recognise from the real world. I like the challenge of creating a building from existing assets that is good enough to pass a glance as, alas, I have not conquered custom content creation.

Cheers,
Innis