Ray,
If you have T:ANE, I wouldn't get TMR2017. TMR2017 is an older version that came out just ahead of SP2 so it has some SP2 features, but not all the other fixes that came out afterwards. In a sense it's like the special "lite" releases of the Trainz Classics series in many ways with it's specific routes and smaller content set. What's interesting is you still have access to the DLS and can still download non-MR routes, but run into issues with missing built-in content, and if you have T:ANE Deluxe, the TMR2017 routes will download and become part of the built-ins. Once that happened, I uninstalled TMR2017 because I had all those routes in T:ANE, besides, why have two versions of the same thing with one being limited and I needed disk space for other stuff.
Anyway sorry for derailing the thread a bit too far.
Back to topic...
I too love the older-style model railroads as well. They're actually a bit of a challenge due to their compact track layout. I have a bunch of layout books that I've been eyeing again. There's some great plans in there that are really nice and it would be nice to see them built. Linn Wescott and the other great authors would be amazed with what we can do on the computers with their plans.
What I've noticed is things don't quite work as they show on their plans either due to the publisher scaling stuff to fit the pages, or perhaps to fudging on paper. I ran into that on one particular route I started a year or so ago, but need to go back to it again. I ended up scaling up a bit more than I wanted because using the scaling given in the plans made isle ways too narrow for a person to walk between. I did, however, convert the heights to the scale given, and that works perfectly for tunnels and bridges.