A lost project

thecraftingguys

Trainz Veteran
A few months back I had to rip up my N scale layout, after a while I choose to attempt to recreate it in TANE/TMR17/2019, however the route didn't make the jump to 2019 and is since been lose to the black hole of my unsorted content folders or the recycle bin along with most of the WIP shots I had. However I thought I'd share the few shots I had of it. Never been much good at designing routes and layouts past track work, but I hope you like it all the same.

I can't figure out how to get the images to work for the life of me so links shall have to do.

NEm4qIs.jpg


C8RU6Dm.jpg


XBqLJbK.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
With Imgur all you do is click on the image you want, then click on the BBCode option and paste into your post.
 
You shouldn't have been so hard on yourself. That was a nice start and you should have kept it, but think of this as a learning experience. Route building takes time, practice, and lots of both.

My recommendation is to open up another route made by someone else such as Phil Skene. His routes are nicely done, not overly complex, and they'll give you a lot to look at and learn from. This what I did way, way back in December 2003 when I first got TRS2004. I downloaded different routes and poked around them to see how the route-builders did things. Some of the routes were better than others, and I used them to learn how to do things and fix things. One route, for example, had floating track, which I figured out how to fix. During this time, I also found certain builders had a particular style which I liked and I learned how they did things. George Fisher (gfisher), for example, became one of my mentors this way and today his style lives on in my routes.

And as I said, route building takes time and practice. Start a new route and use this one as a learning experience and go on to build yet another one, which will also more likely than not be another learning experience. The good thing with Trainz, any version, is we can have a lot of experiments, trials, and errors, and not worry about wasting materials. I'm sure you can well imagine how much money this learning experience would have cost with real models.

Another thing too is take breaks from building. I have found that I can get mired down in the construction and forget what I'm working on. Stepping away and coming back can give you a new perspective on what you've done. You'll find things that need fixing, but the outside in view will also give you a different perspective. If at this time some months later you feel that the route just isn't worth it, you can then back it up and remove it from your TMR2017.

But..., and this is why I make backups of everything, I also have found going back to old projects gives me a chance to rebuild them to my then current standards as if I'm remodeling an old model layout. What I thought was the cool beans back in its infancy, but turned out to be what I thought was garbage later, now doesn't look super terrific nor really that bad after all. A bit of track laying, fiddling, retexturing, and baseboard replacement, and the route lives on in another iteration.

Even today I still have portions of my original route from December 2003 in existence. This route lives on as the core of a much bigger empire that has grown over the past few Trainz versions. Recently I opened up an original backup I made from January 2005 just as TRS2006 came around. While looking at my landscaping and track laying techniques from this early route, made me laugh out loud, also saw that I had some great ideas back then, and the core of much to come was there but not quite developed.

Recently I've taken portions of this early, early version and have merged that into my current iterations. During this process, I have rebuilt the tracks, smoothed out the giant clay blob hills, and did a whole lot more renovations. The results are outstanding, and quite surprisingly good for something that started back in December 2003.

So in the end, don't be so hard on yourself and use this as a learning experience for things to come.
 
Those screenshots are pretty good! I think all you (and your route) need is some more time practicing layout construction. I was completely rubbish at making routes until very recently. Sometimes, I go back and look at something I made just a few months ago and think "ooh, that's bad."

Trainzing is a process. You get better at it the more time you spend working, but you need to spend that time before you can "get good" as it were. If you want to learn some more advanced modern route detailing techniques, I would highly watching Approach Medium's videos on youtube.
 
Back
Top