Building Routes - The Best Way

Hello everybody:wave:,

So I've had TranzDEM for a while now. I have gotten the hang of using and learning it. I have downloaded fishlipsatwork DEM maps and used TranzDEM to create utm tiles; place it in the map, trace the railroads and place the buildings the best I can. This process is tedious and time consuming and for the life of me, I am wondering, is there another easier way to build a prototypical map? I'm still new at building layouts because when I download other layouts that are nice, prototypical, I'm like how do they do it?:'( Any and all help is appreciated.


Thank You.

How to build routes?

S L O W L Y

As my now very old very first piano teacher used to write so many times in my lesson books. Seriously and I'm not kidding here.

The process takes time and you need to take breaks and do other stuff then come back and do a bit more.

Since you are also a beginner you are saying, I highly recommend building a small non-prototypical route to start with then think about bigger railroad empires later on once you gain some experience. Start with a route that's maybe a baseboard or two to start with. You might want to think of this as a test route that you will throw away, or if it's good enough use it as part of a later much bigger empire. You have to remember there's nothing here stopping you from having several, a dozen, or even a lot more routes in progress, or completed. Remember we're not bound by the same physical space and budgets as those working with a real model railroad.

Once you get the tools down, you can then work on bigger and more complex stuff, and yes a TransDEM prototypical route is much more complex.

If you do as I suggest, I recommend establishing a theme for your fictional route, and build around the theme. Just like a prototype, this fictional route needs purpose to exist. For my first route that I finally worked on, I used a theme I had been using for two previous model railroads. instead of building a small subset of a much larger entity that a physical model railroad is, I planned on the whole route, which is still in existence today.

One of the things I did back when I first got TRS2004 in December 2003 was to open up other people's routes I downloaded. I wanted to see how they did things and I used their methods to build my own routes. There were a couple of route builders that became my virtual mentors through their work I downloaded, and this style has continued since in my routes.

But the main theme through out all of this learning was take it slow and easy, and learn and do a bit at a time. I found that when I've become bogged down, I'll take a mental break and do something else like run another route whether built-in or from the DLS. I also watch train videos to get ideas, and look at lots of maps. Google Earth is one of my favorites for this because of the Street View option. I've traveled all over the US and elsewhere in the world looking at lineside buildings, and getting ideas for my own routes.

I also found if I set a goal of working on a few baseboards at a time, I would accomplish more than staring at a huge blank map or baseboards. When I worked on my Enfield and Eastern, the route started as 4 baseboards centered around the Eastport terminal. Later on the route expanded to include other suburban towns and larger cities along the same line, but I only worked on a few baseboards at a time during the week, and no more than twice that on the weekends. Over time, I built an empire that amounted to nearly 150 miles of lines including branches and yards. Over the years this route has grown, shrunk and expanded again as I updated things and made changes.

But the key here is work slowly, and gain experience by looking at what others have done. Don't feel that they have magical powers and could put the routes together in a single night. In many cases the route building, testing, and fixes took a year or more before publication on the DLS or website.

JCitron said:

In many cases the route building, testing, and fixes took a year or more before publication on the DLS or website.

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I can confirm that. Not one of my DLS routes took less than a year to create. Then add in the Sessions and another year flies by.

Having TransDEM do all the landscaping will speed things up but it is not perfect and you will still need to do a lot of sculpting. Then there is the textures, the flora, the track, the man made scenery, etc.

minernut said:

Hello everybody:wave:,

So I've had TranzDEM for a while now. I have gotten the hang of using and learning it. I have downloaded fishlipsatwork DEM maps and used TranzDEM to create utm tiles; place it in the map, trace the railroads and place the buildings the best I can. This process is tedious and time consuming and for the life of me, I am wondering, is there another easier way to build a prototypical map? I'm still new at building layouts because when I download other layouts that are nice, prototypical, I'm like how do they do it?:'( Any and all help is appreciated.


Thank You.

Click to expand...

If I may make a recommendation, make a point of recording (in your own typing) the steps you individually took to create your first TransDEM route. The first one is the hardest and slowest. Then using these notes, your second one will happen much faster and your speed will improve. Then you will refine your notes for the third attempt........etc etc. After a few routes made, and recording your refinements as you go, you will have an excellent working reference to guide you through the process and you will become quick at it.

Yes it's tedious, especially all the Google Earth polyline/KMZ/imagery collection work, but it is still much faster than building terrain manually - and you will never match the results building manually either. Like John said below, do some small routes first then move onto your dream route after that. HTH

I hope to see your prototypical routes on the DLS one day !

A71

John

Your advice is spot on! I am finding I need to relearn some techniques after several years away from the simulator. I am taking it SLOWLY! I, once again, after my hiatus am enjoying route building again!

Cheers,
John

HOG routes have rounded terrain, and are way off, with tracks down in river channels, and roads way up on hillsides where they at easily 20 - 40 m off register

Even with Transdem, it takes a lot of practice to get track placement so they don't make huge 200' cliff rift cuts through terrain

Automatic hills generator

There is a keyboard combination that I forgot, you can find it in settings under keyboard shortcuts. Anyway, it makes automatic hills and it helps when making mountains and stuff.
Renocerous

Renocerous said:

There is a keyboard combination that I forgot, you can find it in settings under keyboard shortcuts. Anyway, it makes automatic hills and it helps when making mountains and stuff.
Renocerous

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I just remembered, it was Alt Ctrl Shift P

Renocerous

If using any kind of DEM firstly after creating it and before chopping off bits you think you might not need back it up, you may find later you needed that chunk you deleted! Yes It happened to me, I deleted Snowdon! on my FR / WHR route, which I hadn't realised should have been visible from the route, had to rebuild that bit from scratch!

As said when building routes, take it easy, don't rush things, take a break every so often, my first route took 8 years to complete before it made the DLS, I also did create an awful lot of content for it which wasn't available so that probably doubled the time spent.

There really is no easy way to create a route. It's time consuming, and requires a lot of attention to detail. After creating a map using TransDEM, the first thing I do is adjust the track to create smooth curves, and straight sections. Then I install the grades, which can be a difficult job. Rather then using a ruling grade between point A and point B, I set my grades to follow the existing terrain. When complete, I don't touch the Smooth Spline Height tool yet, but instead, open the Topology menu, select the widest radius, the lowest sensitivity, and starting tapping the mouse to raise or lower the terrain until the track is barely visible. Now I use the Smooth Spline Height tool to smooth the terrain. I do this for the whole route, and then I go back and check all of the grades to make sure I haven't missed a section of track with too high or a low grade. The last thing I do is run a consist the entire length of the route to make sure everything is OK.

Now comes the important part of the construction. I take a 10 or 15 mile section, and completely finish it, so that it is DLS ready or whatever method you prefer to distribute it. Over the years, I created a 25 item typed checklist that I use to construct each completed section. If you don't follow this method of construction, and start jumping around from one area to another, you will have a lot of loose ends, you could lose interest, and never finish the route.

Of course we all have some days when our enthusiasm level for route building is blah. When this happens to me, I open the route and force myself to start building. It doesn't take long to get fired up and then spend the better part of the day working on the route. There are two things that have kept me going since I uploaded the Cumberland to Connellsville route in 2006. Firstly, I enjoy route building tremendously. It still amazes me to transform a terrain generated map into a finished product, and secondly, I enjoy sharing my routes. If I couldn't share them, I would never finish them. Several years ago, I converted all of my routes to DLS content only, and uploaded them to the Download Station. This way you don't have to spend a lot of time looking for missing content.

I'm not much of a train runner. Most of my operations in Driver are for testing purposes, but I'm very much aware that a lot of trainzers are interested in prototype style operations. Over the years, I've seen quite a few nice routes that are not industry related. All that you can do is run trains. For this reason, I try to add a lot of multi industry related content to my routes for those that enjoy this type of operation. To save time, I created a lot of copy and paste items that I use over and over again during construction. Several years ago, I set up a 6 baseboard map with all of the different copy and paste items, and content that I use on my routes. I called it Mergeable Content Map. When starting a route, I merge this map to the route, and when completed, I delete the baseboards. The map has now grown to 12 baseboards, but is easy to delete, and saves a lot of construction time.


Lastly, if you are seriously considering route creating, I strongly suggest that you invest in a copy of TransDEM. IMO, 50% of route appearance is TransDEM related. Some users feel intimidated by the program, but once you start using it, you'll find it very easy to work with. It has several excellent tutorials, and support is readily available in the Trainz, and TransDEM forums. I started using it when it was first introduced, and over the years I acquired a folder full of problem solving content that I copied and pasted from the forums.

If you enjoy building routes and sharing them, then you are probably a candidate for route building. I'm in my 17th year of Trainz, and I can still say that my enthusiasm has never waned.

Good luck,

Joe

Thank you all,
I love your Cumberland to Connellsville route ever since I found it on Trainz Pro Routes. You were saying about TransDEM. IMO. I have the TranzDEM program but I don't recognize the .IMO feature you're talking about.

minernut said:

I have the TranzDEM program but I don't recognize the .IMO feature you're talking about.

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IMO is textspeak for In My Opinion and is a feature we would all like in all software :hehe:

jrfolco said:

I take a 10 or 15 mile section, and completely finish it

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I'd like to second this gem of a suggestion from JR. My current project is 300km long (180 miles in the old money), and I can vouch for the fact that doing 10 miles or so at a time makes the whole route much more palatable, as you have completed sections to admire as you go. This keeps me fired up, and I am currently managing to completely finish 7-10 miles per week of mainline, as my Real Life is pretty busy.

If one is lucky enough to be retired or otherwise has plenty of time on hand, completing 10 miles of mainline and scenery on DEM generated terrain could take as little as a day or two depending on your techniques, trackage complexity, and desired detail level. You can set your own rate and admire completed areas as you go. Take a week off building occasionally if you get "Creator's Block" or "Square Eyes".

I always wondered how jrfolco managed to churn out amazing prototypical length routes so routinely - this is one of the secrets.

anathoth71 said:

I'd like to second this gem of a suggestion from JR. My current project is 300km long (180 miles in the old money), and I can vouch for the fact that doing 10 miles or so at a time makes the whole route much more palatable, as you have completed sections to admire as you go. This keeps me fired up, and I am currently managing to completely finish 7-10 miles per week of mainline, as my Real Life is pretty busy.

If one is lucky enough to be retired or otherwise has plenty of time on hand, completing 10 miles of mainline and scenery on DEM generated terrain could take as little as a day or two depending on your techniques, trackage complexity, and desired detail level. You can set your own rate and admire completed areas as you go. Take a week off building occasionally if you get "Creator's Block" or "Square Eyes".

I always wondered how jrfolco managed to churn out amazing prototypical length routes so routinely - this is one of the secrets.

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Yup. It's exactly how I do it as well. It works for a lot of creative processes including music. Right now I'm working on some really difficult piano works, which require lots of concentration. Putting in an hour a day at them makes them go together a lot better than rushing through them and ruining something in the process. I agree being retired does help because we can put in a bit more time into the process.

Anyway back to the topic....

By completing a section before going on to another, it gives us to time as you said to enjoy the fruits of our labor as well as give us time to troubleshoot that part before building the next. I have found that by doing this, I can clean up the most obvious stupid things before adding to the route, otherwise, there are those times later on that we notice stuff, but never seem to fix them. I've got a few routes from some great builders who like all human beings have some imperfections in their creations as much as we would like the absolute perfection. (A hint here for the OP). The original author may not of noticed a bump in the tracks, or a hole under a road, but as a second or third set of eyes, we see these things. Since the route is being modified and merged in, I now have a chance to repair these things. The problem is sometimes, more often than not actually, we find these things while driving along at 100 kph and mutter to ourselves to fix that tree in the way, that bumpy curve, or something else, but for some reason never get to it because while we open the route with intention on going for those very things, we get side-tracked and do something else! The simple solution for this is to keep a pad and paper nearby and write down the bugs, which does work when I don't get sidetracked and go off to fiddle with something else like adding in another siding, a wye, or building.

Bugs? When I find something not quite right in my route building I screen shot it so I can find it again and make a note to check it.

I also do a lot of research which can take as much time as building the route and things like gradient profiles if you can find one are very useful, take note though with a dem it's not always possible to get an exact gradient without carving out chasms that do not exist on the route so a bit of creative thinking is often required to get a compromise between looks right and actual gradient may even need to slightly deviate from the actual route as marked on the Dem to avoid having to indulge in major engineering works on a hill side to avoid deep cuttings or track floating in space!

Depending on the DEM source some are more accurate than others both in height and location not forgetting that the Trainz world is flat where as the earth is round!

I love your Cumberland to Connellsville route ever since I found it on Trainz Pro Routes.

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There is a newer and DLS only version of the Cumberland to Connellsville route on the Download Station. Do a search for "jrfolco", or use my kuid # 73500.

Joe

when I used TransDem it put the rails in for me. Had to tweak it a bit but pretty much right on.