Is it possible to do the Whole USA? or even a state?

On a DEM it would take years to lay the track. I heard that there was a Microsoft Train simulator route from FL to NY, that took several crew changes to complete

I hate flying (as my arms get very tired in my old age) and I debated taking Shamtrak from Phila to New Orleans via Chicago, and it took 40 some hours to get there (bathrooms and showers on a passenger traincar must be atrocious) :hehe: Even the direct route takes 20 hours

It would be interesting to see how many baseboards 2 wide could be laid, until a route size got so huge that Trainz crash's to desktop
 
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On a DEM it would take years to lay the track. I heard that there was a Microsoft Train simulator route from FL to NY, that took several crew changes to complete

I hate flying (as my arms get very tired in my old age) and I debated taking Shamtrak from Phila to New Orleans via Chicago, and it took 40 some hours to get there (bathrooms and showers on a passenger traincar must be atrocious) :hehe: Even the direct route takes 20 hours

It would be interesting to see how many baseboards 2 wide could be laid, until a route size got so huge that Trainz crash's to desktop

Well lets see if you made the route from say NYC to LA Via Chicago. 790 miles from NYC to Chic, then add another 2015 miles to LA, that's about 2900 miles 2 boards wide would be about .8 miles lets just say 1 mile. you would need about 6000 boards possibly a bit more as some of my track layouts end up needing 3 boards and sometimes 4 to get a good span. keep in mind that this is only one train route. and nothing else. I know that when I imported google maps from basemaps it too about 4 hours to begin laying track and that was about 60 miles worth. hmmmmm lets see again. 60 miles = 4 hours /3000 it would take 200 hours just to import google maps into trainz to even begin laying track and probably another 200 hours to lay out the track.

Conclusion. it that route possible? I think so. Would it be a route I would take on? probably not. but if the software holds up it could probably be done if some one was willing enough to put in the time to do it. would it be laggy? most likely. and it would probably take a ton of PC resources. and ages of hours to complete. but a route like that would be fun just to marvel at it :)

I ask you guys at NV3 can your software handle such an animal?
 
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Well lets see if you made the route from say NYC to LA Via Chicago. 790 miles from NYC to Chic, then add another 2015 miles to LA, that's about 2900 miles 2 boards wide would be about .8 miles lets just say 1 mile. you would need about 6000 boards possibly a bit more as some of my track layouts end up needing 3 boards and sometimes 4 to get a good span. keep in mind that this is only one train route. and nothing else. I know that when I imported google maps from basemaps it too about 4 hours to begin laying track and that was about 60 miles worth. hmmmmm lets see again. 60 miles = 4 hours /3000 it would take 200 hours just to import google maps into trainz to even begin laying track and probably another 200 hours to lay out the track.

Conclusion. it that route possible? I think so. Would it be a route I would take on? probably not. but if the software holds up it could probably be done if some one was willing enough to put in the time to do it. would it be laggy? most likely. and it would probably take a ton of PC resources. and ages of hours to complete. but a route like that would be fun just to marvel at it :)

I ask you guys at NV3 can your software handle such an animal?

The devil will be in the details. How much do you want to include? A straight track isn't very interesting, and there will be tons and tons of content needed for that route. I'm not saying it can't be done, but given the amount of stuff your computer might sack out before you get as much done as you want.

If you want to partake in a project like that, you want to do it right and therefore I recommend looking at TransDEM. It's about $30 and available here:

http://www.rolandziegler.de/StreckeUndLandschaft/startseiteEngl.htm

There's a bit of a learning curve, but plenty of help and the program will reward you with topographic and orthographic maps placed exactly and accurately on top of DEM-data generated Trainz routes ready for importing and completing.

2015-12-14 005901.jpg 2015-12-14 005652.jpg

The base data download was 359MB zipped/536MB unzipped. The route exported from TransDEM is 512MB, which was then trimmed down to about 250MB before any track, or objects are placed. As the route is added to, the assets will be kept track of in various files and these will grow. I combined my HT&W (Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington, aka Hoot Toot & Whistle, and aka Hold Tight & Worry), with the connecting East Portal of the B&M Hoosac Tunnel and mainline. This is the advantage of using TransDEM. You can build one section, merge, and continue and everything will line up pretty seamlessly. In this case my buddy used a lower resolution DEM, but everything merged up perfectly.

Good luck with your project, but seriously I'm not sure how long you'll last. :)
 
I am reminded of a museum in Victoria, B.C. where they had a model railroad of Canada. Of course it wasn't ALL of Canada, and no terrain, but they built the route along one side of a room divider and then it did a 180 degree turn around the divider and went back along the other side. Along the way they made scenes typical of the different regions as you cross the country from east to west. You MIGHT be able to do something like that, and even add some typical terrain, if you kept it to a reasonable size.....
 
Complicated. For sure, it will take a long time to do all the necessary kilometers of lines and terrain.
 
The only practical way to do this would be via some sort of condensed distance, similar to what the truck sims do.

Speaking as a veteran route builder who has produced long(ish) linear routes in all three of the big sims, it is tough going. For starters a route 2 boards wide purely featuring the infrastructure is not going to appeal to many users, when the whole point of such a route is to pass through the various and changing scenes such a cross country journey evokes. You can reckon on 2 - 3 months to lay and detail a 50 mile route to reasonable freeware expectations. So x that by 60 or thereabouts for a 3000 mile TransCon route.

Each tile or baseboard has a minimum size of around 200kb and that is before any terraforming or asset and texture placement. Even if you only placed tiles out to (say) 5 either side of the track line you are looking at around 2Mb per linear 720m (the size of a tile). Trainz is unlikely to cope with a 3000 mile route which would be several Gb in size. It certainly wouldn't go on the DLS and unlikely you would find a file hosting service willing to supply a file that size for free.

tl:dr Answer to the OP (IMHO) is a resounding "no", at least not to scale.
 
My route is 1.09GB in size, and must have a million baseboards, and has to be transferred as 6 separate files (trk, obs, gnd, bmk, config, screenshot) and import those content files into Trainz
 
Cascaderailroad, what route is that? If I look you up under author name will I be able to tell what pieces the route are?
 
Maybe some time in the future Trainz will evolve where multiple users can build multiple routes and share those on a network. Maybe you could have a special portal to traverse from one networked route to another. So you could start your train on your system and traverse whatever routes were available on the network. Something like Multiplayer on steroids. Just thinking about the coordination of effort makes my head hurt. :)

The TrainzDev members briefly played with a route building tool that allowed multiple users to participate in building a route although there were no running sessions. It was kind of fun watching invisible hands adding stuff to the route.
 
I built a route back in TS12 days that ran from LA to Chicago. It used existing routes merged, but not joined together. I used portals to get from one to the other.
I set delay times between the portals to simulate a distance. It was an ai route with a lot of trains running and worked without many problems. There were I remember, 47 portals.
The only drawback was that it took about 5 minutes to load at the start.
Cheers,
Mike
 
It seems like this subject comes up every once and awhile, so here’s my two cents worth. I have beenbuilding layouts/routes for the last fifteen years in TRS2006 and TRS2010. I had a good PC before it died, and I currently use a Laptop, so I am limited to the early releases. Never the less I have had some success with route building.
As with most newcomers to TRAINZ, when I first got into TRAINZ I thought it would be possible to create the layout of my dreams – that is a recreation of the two-foot gauge lines that existed in Maine from the 1880’s to 1940’s. While not as extensive as a state or national route, I found it interesting and frustrating to recreate a specific prototype.
So far I have recreated the 100mile Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes RR; the five mile Kennebec Central RR ; the six mile Monson RR; and the twenty one mile Bridgeton and Saco River RR. My goal was to create eachline in as much detail as possible using the research material and vintage geographical maps in my collection. I choose 1910 as the time frame and built each route to include all branches, yards, and sidings as they appeared throughout their existence.
I choose to define each baseboard as one square mile, which resulted in the SR&RL having 420 baseboards, with full scenery and including the iconic and unique structures, Industries, villages, and businesses of theprototype. I also choose to create all the rolling stock for the TRS2010 routes. For TRS2006 I used what was available on the DLS. It takes one hour to complete a run between the most distant stations.
Here is where it becomes more than just laying track. To achieve even a small measure of authenticity requires that you need to learn a 3D modeling program, as the DLS can not provide the required infrastructure. Istarted with G-MAX, but switched to BLENDER to create the desired structures, engines, and rolling stock.
My biggest problem with these routes was adding realistic scenery, especially trees in the numbers needed torepresent a Maine railroad. Trees, thousands of trees, all positioned in a realistic setting. As such the SR&RL took over three years to get to the level of detail that I wanted, and even now I go back and improve it. The five mile and six mile routes were the most enjoyable, as I could add a high level of detail without the frustration of repetitive effort.
Based upon my experience I would suggest you start with a prototype based short line railroad, and that you learn Blender. Over the years I have scratch built a lot of scale model airplanes and model railroad rolling stock and structures. I have found that you need to love the subject you are modeling, otherwise it will neverget finished. Same for a TRAINZ route, large or small. So enjoy!
 
I think that JCitron is diplomatically correct in passingly mentioning the amount of detail is important! On an even wider aspect I with due respect think that the idea of doing the whole of the USA railways is not possible. Years ago i can still remember someone here in Great Britain saying he was going to build the whole system and considering that would entail mileage into the five figures I just shook my head.
 
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