Help choose the next Trainz route location

[n3vpolsen]

Our in-house team has picked 4 USA locations to base a future route on. We are interested to hear from the Trainz community on what location you like most out of the 4 options and whether you have an alternative as well.

Options are:

• North Shore Scenic Railroad
• Royal Gorge Route
• Western Maryland Scenic Railroad
• Great Smoky Mountain Railroad

Why these locations? Well we wanted something that looks achievable in the time frame we are looking at, reasonably rural but not arid, not all obscured by trees, short 10 – 20 miles, scenic, standard gauge and allow us to extend from this as a base.

Head on over to maps.google.com or even better Google Earth Pro to see these locations in all their glory!

Please submit your choice HERE to help us determine which location we use as reference.

The Trainz Team

[kin3]

• Great Smoky Mountain Railroad

[nugget2225]

smoky mountains, everyone enjoys mountain routes, i am building my first public route myself, alot of mountains, time consuming.

[nathanmallard]

North Shore. Varied rural/urban scenery, stock from three very different RRs (DMIR, CNW, GN), quite long but not too long. Am I right in thinking there is also the possibility of running CN freight services over it as well?

[cascaderailroad]

The Great Antarctican Rwy from McMurdo to Mawson

Or Royal Gorge

[jordon412]

I picked the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad for several reasons:
1. Just outside Dillsboro, you'll see the remains of the train wreck from the movie The Fugitive
2. Just outside Dillsboro is also the shops for the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad
3. The entire route is beautiful in the fall
4. During the steam era, 2-8-0's were used on the Southern' Railroad's Murphy Branch, now the Great Smoky Mountain Scenic Railroad, so K&L Trainz's Southern 2-8-0 #630 and #722 will be right at home. In fact if you watch the video below, at 0:48, you'll see the tender of Southern 722
Also, it's Great Smoky Mountains Scenic Railroad, with an 's' on the end of Mountain.
If you want to see why I picked it, watch this video and you'll see.

[ish6]

Royal Gorge Rout

[oknotsen]

Since the information supplied is rather... well... lets call it "limited", I tried to find maps and looked up the locations roughly on Google Earth.

North Shore Scenic Railroad runs from Deluth in the bottom left to Two Harbors in the top right:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/No...1!4d-92.103548

Royal Gorge Route Railroad runs from Canon City (bottom right) to the Parkdale Quarry:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ro...4d-105.2414113

Western Maryland Scenic Railroad has a not that useful map on their website but seems to run from Ridgeley (bottom right) in an arch to (I think) Wrights Crossing (on the left):
https://www.google.com/maps/place/We...!4d-78.7749982

Great Smoky Mountain Railroad seems to be traveling from Bryson City (top left) to Dillsboro (bottom right):
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gr...9!4d-83.447714

If anyone is able to supply a more detailed map either of the routes, feel welcome to share as even these maps are pretty unclear.

[applegathc]

Host my route.

[davesnow]

I picked the Smokey Mts. too. The reason being, almost everything (videos, rail magazines, TV) these days is focused on either the north, east or west. If there were a choice even more southern that the Smokey Mountains (Tennessee), I would have picked that.

[Christopher824]

My vote North Shore, I may be biased because I grew up in the area.

[JCitron]

I've been thinking about the North Shore.

[jordon412]

So far Great Smoky Mountains Railroad is winning with 5 votes, North Shore Scenic Railroad with 4, Royal Gorge Route with 2 and Western Maryland Scenic Railroad with 0.

[Thad09]

Royal Gorge for me, or GSM is a good choice as well

[smash]

I have to choose none of the above.
I had to go with Cass scenic Railroad.