Interesting input. I live in New England and have an interest in the Industrial Revolution. The old textile mills in the area fascinate me. I even lived in one of the first large scale mills in the country (
Slatersville Mill) that has been turned into apartments! I was thinking about a "Semi-Prototypical-Semi-Freelance-Model".
I am more interested in simulating the operations than an exact replica. Laying out track to connect the textile mills to the coast for the importation of cotton and dyes and the export of textiles. And lets not forget the machine tool industry of New England. We also had the ALCO shops down in Providence. All of this within 25 miles of where I live now (Foxboro). I was thinking about an extensible model layout. The Kickstarter route has a good feel for me. Although I have no idea what the scale is for that layout. I was thinking about starting with a simple route that goes from a port to a mill on the river. with about a 30 min run. I feel that with virtual railroads actual distance becomes irrelevant. You CAN build a route that will run real time from DC to Miami. I think I saw one in the DLS. Impressive. I don't have the kind of time to drive that kind of route, let alone build it. For me each session should be about an hour. I figure shuffle a few cars at the port and take a mixed consist up to a mill with a 30 min run through the New England country side. That should get me started and add more later. Base the rolling stock on local road operationg at the turn of the 19th century to the 30s when the mills started to decline.
Couple of quick questions:
Does it matter what "scale" to use when starting the route? Given That time (60 min session) is the driving factor, I can't see it would make a difference. But I may be missing something.
Should I build in TANE or TSR19?. I have a new gaming computer with full TSR19 performance specs.
I just want to thank ahead of time all those creators who's original ideas and concepts I will so shamelessly copy...
It doesn't matter which scale you use because the railroad will still be at real-scale. What that scale does is change your rulers if you are building a model railroad. Personally I have never used anything but real-scale from the get-go for that reason. In addition I need to mention that it's best to keep the measurements in meters by default because even though you are measuring stuff in feet and inches, the grid is 10 meters by default. I found this out the hard way back in my early TRS2004 days as I built my route, I was measuring grid squares in feet, and ended up with some really, really high hills and unwanted steep grades. So in the end keep things default and work around them. It's a lot easier in the long run.
I would recommend building in T:ANE at the moment only because TRS19 is still in beta. The reason is a beta (testing) version can have major changes to it, which may make your files incompatible and all your hard work for naught. This isn't to say you can't bring your route into TRS19 later on, or play around with your in-progress route in that version, but I would keep all major work out of that version for now. Perhaps I'm erring on the side of caution, but I've run into this problem in the past - got stung back with TRS2009 and learned the hard way!
Anyway, welcome fellow New Englander.
I live up in Haverhill, MA on the other side of the state up in the Merrimack Valley. The mills up here followed shortly after Waltham, and Waltham's mills were based on those in Slatersville. Haverhill's main products were once bricks and then later shoes, and other leather-related products while the rest of the Merrimack Valley was all about textiles. Lawrence and Lowell were all textiles from the get go, and are covered with power canals and once had a spiderweb of rail sidings serving the mills. Today, Lowell is in better shape with its tourists, UMass campus, and restored mills made into apartments, and small businesses. Sadly, Lawrence didn't fare so well, though, what was once the world's largest worsting mill, the Wood Mills, has become Sal's Riverwalk office complex. The rest of the city, sadly, is trashed and the former M&L branch originally built in 1842 has been abandoned as is all service in North Lawrence.
But, getting back to topic. My Enfield and Eastern fictional route, the one I started back in December 2003, is exactly the theme you are talking about. The mills in Enfield once used the Enfield River to transport goods to Eastport. As the number of mills increased, it became impossible to transport goods because the mills would draw off water to power their machinery, which left the water levels too low to transport the goods. Strikes and turf wars broke out between the mill owners and the riverboat operators. To get around this, a railroad was eventually built between the namesake cities. This is based on some historical info about the Blackstone Canal.
The line eventually became yet another subsidiary of the nearby Boston and Maine, which built a competing mainline. The E&E river line survived as a secondary freight line while the B&M's mainline became a commuter route, but typical of Guilford the line became a trash pit and was run completely down. My route is set somewhere in the modern times after Guilford ran the line to the ground and a small company bought up the line to run it. Today they have become the designated operator of other lines, and have increased their business... This is the gist of it, but there's a more extensive back history for the route.
Anyway. This is how addicting Trainz is and there's so much that can be done that no one can really say they're bored with the program.
