Developing for Trainz is like being a musician.
It takes weeks and months to learn and years to master. The OP didn't do anything wrong and doesn't deserve to be treated as such, which is why I opened with "no offense intended".
The OP simply did not know and tried to do the right thing by offering some money for work. I don't like the term gimme-pig, because it ought never be taboo to ask for something of interest, but conversely, no expectations should be inferred by asking either. Politely, or financially.
The only reason I responded was because the OP thought 50 dollars was fair for a "decent" model, but once being apprised to the high level aspects of content creation realized what was involved. To their credit.
There's a huge difference between a prototype and a production model. Commissioning prototypes in any application are always greatly expensive and rely on a volume of production models to be sold to offset those costs. A business plan, if you will. It's been mentioned that some folks produce elaborate models for free and that's terrific, however like myself, I create an asset or reskin for my purposes first, then happily allow others to use it for free, that they may enjoy it too. I've also looked at other creator content for debugging or errors without expectations of cost, because we are a community with common interests and I wholly support making it a learning experience for them. I've made some terrific friends over the years. I've learned from some of the best, who unselfishly contributed their time helping with things.
Steam locomotives are the single most difficult asset to create in Trainz IMHO. In all my years of Trainz, I have seen many started, but never finished models. Modeling is not a simple matter of picking shapes from a list then linking them into a set. It requires patient, obsessive attention to detail, resizing, re-positioning over and over again until it's suitable. It's as tedious as it is difficult. On top of a linked set, models require lighting, textures, attachments, scripts and synchronized animations. Alpha ordering and shiny, specular and LOD are technical aspects considered in nearly every individual part of a creation.
Last month, I decide to create the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train. For a few hours a day over the course of a week I re-skinned 14 assets to the consist. For still photography, it looks nice, but for captured video (or the sim itself), it has a lot of shortcomings. Day/night lighting has yet to be resolved, scripts for sequencing textures for the synchronized flashing lights has yet to written, especially as it applies to the entire consist and not just the car itself. I have to go back to the drawing board and re-learn some things before tackling those tasks. Even then, I'd expect bugs or inadvertent features not anticipated until beta testing.
Also as mentioned earlier, even re-skinning can be a lengthy task. Scanning through thousands of photos to locate a ideal texture for each asset is greatly time consuming, even without assembling a single component.
For that reason, I didn't release it. I will poke away at it all year, an hour here, an hour there. Hopefully next year, it will be what I'm envisioning. And yes, I will upload to the DLS. It's really quite a spectacular train.
