Where to start?

[jamason56]

This may be a bit embarrassing about myself . I've had Trainz since Trainz 2004. I bought Trainz 2006, then TC3 earlier this year. Yesterday I just purchased Trainz 2009. Over all of this time, I've never been able to really get started due to the vast nature of the 'games'. I *love* trains and I truly want to get started really using Trainz and getting into it. I know there is a wealth of information on the Internet which makes it even harder to find help for beginners. Has anyone else had problems getting started? What did you do? Any suggestions?
John
Comer, GA

 

[fuzzies]

I too am a new person here, and how I started out was by scanning posts in all the forums and reading topics which I wanted to know more about. Can we say information overload.

You didn't mention which aspect of trainz you like most so i will only give a general outline of what I do.


When I find a piece of information of interest, and there are so many, I would open up notepad/wordpad and copy-paste the information and save the document in a set aside 'trainz' folder. Now i have many different documents I refer to as needed such as:

tips and tricks
interesting stuff to look at/download such as layouts or any other Download Station asset
links to tutorials
links to utilities
etc.

Dont be afraid to ask a more detailed question relating to any specific area of trainz. Since there are many different places to post try to put you query in the most appropriate forum for the question. You will get many knowlegable replies that will point you in the right direction. The guys and gals on here are great when put to the test


I hope you have as much fun here as I do.


Hope this helps,
fuzzies

 

[wmmeyer]

I've been playing Trainz with UTC, TRS2004, TRS2006, TC3, and now TS2009. I've created a few routes of my own, and I dabbled in Gmax a little, but never got very far with any of that. What I do mostly is DL routes and rolling stock, just go for rides to watch the scenery, and run the sessions on the routes I have. I find that running sessions created by other people is a good way to learn how to do things.

I also have folders set up to stash info, links, etc, and thats a superb idea. But I've found that the way things works changes faster than I can keep up with it.

How to start in Trainz is simple. Just get in there and do what you know how to do, and play with the various features to learn how they work. As you come up with questions, use the search feature on the forums, and ask lots of questions. It never ceases to amaze me how versatile Trainz is and how much stuff there is to do. You'll find that you read something on the forums and had no idea what was being discussed. Then later you'll run into that situation and remember that you've read about it, and now you have a project to explore. It amazes me how much I've learned just from playing around with it.

The important thing to remember is: having fun with it is the whole idea. Don't lock yourself into a project because thats what someone else is doing. Do what you enjoy doing, and see where it takes you.

 

[greywolfretired]

Scroll down to trs 2004 section, look for surveyor landscaping guide, download it ,(its a PDF file) and have a look. It may help to get you going in the right direction.At least you may find out if you enjoy building or driving in trainz.
Have fun.

 

[xphantomx]

What I did before I started building my own routes was to open an existing route that the game came with in Surveyer and see how things were layed out, look at how the signals work, switches, how railyards are layed out and main lines. Only in surveyer can you see things like track and priority markers, track directional markers, figure out how the speed limit stakes and markers work, how Portals work, the supply and demand of industries. See how splines and buildings are placed, how people used scenery objects.

I started out by taking an existing route and modified it, by adding industries to interact with, if there was a single track main line I layed track right next to it and made it a double track main line. Expanding on a route thats already in the game lets you learn how to create and have existing present to use as a guide. Once you feel comfortable modding and creating that way, you'll feel more confident with creating a route of your own from scratch.

Being a beginner, creating a route of your own can be tedious and very time consuming depending how detailed you want your world to be. I still spend a lot of time just modifying existing routes cause I mostly just want to play and have running the trains.

 

[johnwhelan]

This may be a bit embarrassing about myself . I've had Trainz since Trainz 2004. I bought Trainz 2006, then TC3 earlier this year. Yesterday I just purchased Trainz 2009. Over all of this time, I've never been able to really get started due to the vast nature of the 'games'. I *love* trains and I truly want to get started really using Trainz and getting into it. I know there is a wealth of information on the Internet which makes it even harder to find help for beginners. Has anyone else had problems getting started? What did you do? Any suggestions?
John
Comer, GA

I have particular interest in a specific time period and location, and with the assistance of a library of books I recreate some aspects of it. Sometimes I take Murchison out and spend an hour or two logging etc. I have been known to look at layouts from different places such as France etc. just to play tourist.

Cheerio John

 

[john259]

The Trainz wikibook has a section listing some of the things you can do in Trainz, and the other sections are attempts to explain how to do some of them.

Happy driving! Or layout creating, or scenario writing, or rolling stock making, or....

John

 

[cmj6502]

What I did before I started building my own routes was to open an existing route that the game came with in Surveyer and see how things were layed out, look at how the signals work, switches, how railyards are layed out and main lines. Only in surveyer can you see things like track and priority markers, track directional markers, figure out how the speed limit stakes and markers work, how Portals work, the supply and demand of industries. See how splines and buildings are placed, how people used scenery objects.

I started out by taking an existing route and modified it, by adding industries to interact with, if there was a single track main line I layed track right next to it and made it a double track main line. Expanding on a route thats already in the game lets you learn how to create and have existing present to use as a guide. Once you feel comfortable modding and creating that way, you'll feel more confident with creating a route of your own from scratch.

Being a beginner, creating a route of your own can be tedious and very time consuming depending how detailed you want your world to be. I still spend a lot of time just modifying existing routes cause I mostly just want to play and have running the trains.

I'd echo this. The route I generally mess around with started life as Banks Heath in the original TRS2004, but there's not really much of Banks Heath left now. I think it's easier to create route by adding onto an existing one than starting from scratch - starting from scratch can be very daunting but you can add maybe a board or two to an existing route, or do some track upgrades, or add a new branch and then run some trains, see how it does or doesn't work, mess around some more.

I think I spend most of my Trainz time in surveyor, then I'll go into driver for a drive, or to let the AI do it's best (or worst).

 

[jamason56]

Thanks!

Thanks for all of the great suggestions. I've started a file of links and info that should help organize things a bit. I need to get into the online manuals as well. The surveyor .pdf was awesome. Hopefully I'll be able to do something like that one day. I want to model the Alaskan Railroad someday. So many ideas so little time .
John