Running a railroad - how to get started - suggestions

Had TRS19 since Oct of last year. I've driven many routes/sessions, created sessions, modified sessions, created a small route, etc, etc - but I've yet to "setup and run a railroad." Not sure even where to begin.

I'll start with an existing route that has lot's of industries but then what? Seems like there are so many options. I know it's all "in my head," what ever I want it to be... but is my railroad going to have a booming coal business?, freight business?, small local? etc etc etc. Do I just start running a single commodity and then grow from there or plan something bigger from the start? This is for fun... not trying really to be prototypical.

I realize it's all in my hands but... Any very general advice on how to get started?

Thanks.

I like to start with smaller sessions. For instance, haul some loaded lumber cars from the sawmill to a furniture manufacturer. Don't worry how the logs got there for now. Real railroads have computers and full time schedulers to keep all this running, not to mention real customers making requests. If you try to do everything, you will just get bogged down in details.

If you have single mainlines, try to avoid AI trains, you will probably never get it right. Put lots of scenery rolling stock on sidings and spurs wherever you can.

Start a new session to get logs to the sawmill, and so on.

Try to use instant load or other type commands to avoid trouble with auto-loading industries. If commodities are invisible, maybe just don't bother with loading (unless you care about the weight).

Put most if not all rolling stock into sessions to avoid being locked in when they are in the route.

Keep the session instructions simple for yourself. Look at the Philskene style; just pick up there, unload there, etc.

pitkin said:

Edited: I like to start with smaller sessions... try to avoid AI trains..lots of scenery rolling stock on sidings and spurs wherever you can. Start a new session to get logs to the sawmill, and so on. Try to use instant load.. maybe just don't bother with loading (unless you care about the weight). Put most if not all rolling stock into sessions to avoid being locked in when they are in the route.

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Thanks for the suggestions...

- Weight! That never even came to my mind. Something to think about.

- AI Trains.. Major point I guess. So the owner/operator could setup a "day" with AI trains (and likely have AI trains stuck all around the route) -or- run the railroad "live" (with schedule) and dispatching in "real time." (which is what I'm guessing "running a railroad" is for most who do this?? (yes, I'm at a really basic level here... )

Before getting into the details on actual Trainz operations, I always take that 10,000 foot view first. I've written this in many places here, but typical of the search mechanism, it's difficult to find.

Railroads need a purpose to exist. That raison d'etre can be anything whether the railroad serves coal mines and breakers and sends of mine contents to long distant power plants all the way to a full-fledged Class I serving a whole region with a bit of everything including through passenger service, or a tourist line operating on a once forgotten branch. A branch line operation too could connect to a mainline somewhere whether it's a portal, or an actual mainline, long or short, with portals on either end. My Gloucester Terminal Electric, created originally from George Fisher's Gloucester Terminal, is just that as a passenger trolley operation with some freight switching operations. Let the imagination run wild, but pick a theme. I'll cover this in detail.

When developing a route, come up with a theme and stick to this. The actual route-building portion will take forever so I won't go into details about that, but develop a back history for the railroad's existence. This might sound over the top for a virtual railroad or model railroad, but what it does is keep the railroad to a theme so that it's easy to build and you don't have weird things, unless you want them, like a giant coal mine next to skyscrapers next to something like the Grand Canyon. The other thing this does is keep the building consistent so that the coal mine in the mountains has that look and feel and that interchange with the mainline can develop as well as give you a goal to work towards so that the bowl of spaghetti routes don't develop.

Look at maps...

This is the most invaluable thing to do. We're lucky today with so many mapping sources available online. Bing, Google Earth, and other historic map services, not only provide a wealth of information including past and present railroads if they exist, but they also can give us something to look at to plan a fictional route. Using TransDEM, for example, the imported route can then be explored on the ground so to speak, and lines built where none exist. I've done this with a few routes I've started and still working on. A map may have some spurs and a string of power lines going off towards somewhere, for example. Since I'm looking at a topographic map in this case, I noticed that the lines followed a valley and a road, and the route is fairly flat with some hills here and there requiring some extra surveying. With a little bit of manipulation, this power line route becomes a railroad. In this case, I'll keep the roads mostly intact as well as the small towns where I can put in small industries that would be typical for the area and build upon that.

Look at various railroad operations...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_carrier_freight_railroads_in_the_United_States

This is another invaluable source. I've read bits and pieces of it over the years, but this rather comprehensive list contains various railroad histories, some in better detail than others, and other things such as commodities and industries carried, interchange partners, trackage-rights, and other good stuff that can play into a route. This stuff mentioned here doesn't mean your routes have to be prototypical. You can use these bits and pieces to develop a fictional railroad.

Actually write the history of your new route...

This sounds corny, but it actually helps nail down everything that we've discussed here. My old Enfield and Eastern, a route I started in December 2003, has an extensive history as a regional rail line that connected a mill city to an ocean port. The Gloucester Terminal Electric too has some history behind it as well. Here's a bit on the GTE:

This route was once an electric switching railroad built in the early 1900s to serve the various industries and docks located in and around Gloucester. The line dieselized in the 1950s and ran with small switchers due to the aging infrastructure which required a major overhaul. Under various management and owners, service declined and business moved to trucks, however, there was still a need for the railroad. With the ever increasing traffic in and around Gloucester (In real life it's truly horrid), the trolleys returned as modern LRVs imported from Germany, and the freight service was expanded with help from the state and the Cape Ann regional business association.

Freight is handled by diesel road switchers of various vintages and some still retain their former owner's reporting marks (Thanks to Joint Rail)... The commodities handled by the GTE are: Seafood, frozen foods, manufactured goods, oil, brewery-related commodities, propane, and plastic pellets, which are interchanged with the Boston to Rockport mainline. (In reality the Rockport branch terminates at a passenger station, but here there are portals to provide operating interest) where there are through freights of various sorts as well as Boston and Rockport-bound commuter trains.

Anyway...

JCitron said:

Before getting into the details on actual Trainz operations, I always take that 10,000 foot view first. I've written this in many places here, but typical of the search mechanism, it's difficult to find. - snip -..

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Thanks much for your insight...Appreciate it. Lot's to consider. (I did search the forums for the topic but as usual didn't find the info.)

If automation of AI is your thing you can go really really deep with all the different rules and commands available. I'd start with Enhanced interlocking towers first, basically they work like signal boxes, you set up all the paths you want the AI (or yourself) to be able to take and then it's pretty straight forward to run trains without conflict, even run human trains without AI hogging/locking the points up.

Davie_UCF said:

If automation of AI is your thing you can go really really deep with all the different rules and commands available. I'd start with Enhanced interlocking towers first, basically they work like signal boxes, you set up all the paths you want the AI (or yourself) to be able to take and then it's pretty straight forward to run trains without conflict, even run human trains without AI hogging/locking the points up.

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Interlocking Towers is something I've yet to do so yes, I need to experience that setup..

So what I'm gleaning here so far is that in the "Trainz" world when one says "run your own railroad" it can mean a variety of different things. My thought was to perhaps make a four hour plan, get the basics in mind, setup a session, do some trial runs, then get up one morning and run a "typical" weekday morning's work for four hours. Similar to what a club might do with their layout on a Sat morning.

1611mac said:

Interlocking Towers is something I've yet to do so yes, I need to experience that setup..

So what I'm gleaning here so far is that in the "Trainz" world when one says "run your own railroad" it can mean a variety of different things. My thought was to perhaps make a four hour plan, get the basics in mind, setup a session, do some trial runs, then get up one morning and run a "typical" weekday morning's work for four hours. Similar to what a club might do with their layout on a Sat morning.

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KISS.

Start small and expand from that small core. Use the first try or two, or three as test routes.

Setup a blank test route to try out assets and techniques for texturing and track laying so that you're good to go when your working on the route. Think of this as a scratch pad.

Work slowly, but set a goal. My Enfield and Eastern is still a WIP route, but major sections are quite operational. With that said, take breaks from building and test things out. Clean up the stupid things like floating roads, floating track, stupidly tight junctions, crooked things, trees in the way, and other stuff.

When things get to be too much after a furor of working endlessly, or it seems that way, take a break and dive in again another day.

Session building takes planning and is related to the route building. Put in track marks and direction markers where needed like at complex junctions to keep the AI toeing the line.

Basically you're working in layers, not physical layers, but metaphorical layers as you build your route from the ground up.

1611mac said:

Interlocking Towers is something I've yet to do so yes, I need to experience that setup..

So what I'm gleaning here so far is that in the "Trainz" world when one says "run your own railroad" it can mean a variety of different things. My thought was to perhaps make a four hour plan, get the basics in mind, setup a session, do some trial runs, then get up one morning and run a "typical" weekday morning's work for four hours. Similar to what a club might do with their layout on a Sat morning.

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For me, i've always loved the idea of an automated layout/route where you can just watch the trains but also can grab a train and do your own thing without it totally screwing up what the AI is doing.

I'd agree with JCitron, keep it simple at first

Just to restate.... I'm not referring to Route building or even typical session running, but rather, a "real time" (game time) working of a railway. Simultaneous operations going on for good periods of time and possibly even reflecting different operations on different days, etc.

Your goals seem to parallel mine in areas. My quest has been for a timetable first, since the CLOCK runs railroads. N3V should, but does not, offer a timetable routine. 100% AI is my goal. A reasonable size - the number of baseboards, with all the "stuff on them" makes a big difference when you are switching between running(testing) and editing. If you have the data and program on SSDs then that is less of an issue. I have adopted an "editing mode" where I strip down the density of stuff/assets so I can switch between modes in a reasonable amount of time. 1 Minute is too long in the full rendition of the layout. Disable is your friend.

I have no desire to build my own railroad. Patience and available time dictate that. So, I tried several non N3V routes and some of the builtin routes. To select the one that offers the most realistic visual feel I spent the time to convert TANE routes to TRS19 and "fix" existing TRS19 routes to my taste. There were some great routes but they were so big it took a long time to do the edit/try loads. Plus, running a coal train for 1.5 hours to go end-to-end was not in my patience profile.

Finally, for me the Most Important element is not just a real "operation" but also a real environment.On "premade routes" (made by others) I ask where do the workers live? Where do they shop? Where do they bank? and of course where do they go when they die. The how do these services, including the local gas station, pizzeria, etc, get their supplies? Do you need a truck terminal as well as a railroad? In short what is the day-to-day functional profile of a town that you build? Or, you could just place boxes labeled town and city with no regard to anything other than the railroad.

Oh, the time table can be built around Quick Portal Manage rule. I times emissions of trains from portals. However, traditional strategies of using existing "in-the-yard" train assets can co-exist but the Manager's time table does not recognize them. So trains running outside of your layout can "arrive" through a portal at a specific time. The schedule is displayable.

Under all this is time which is the foundation of a railroad. The critical time is when does the train leave from each stop? A nice rule is "Wait game time". It allows you to specify when a train is to leave a stop. If the train is late leaving the repercussions are evident. However, leaving early is also bad. Not everyone has arrived at the station and the train pulls in, loads and leaves. People closely timing their arrival at the station are left behind despite arriving within the timetable published times. It is one thing to arrive 5 minutes late but standing at the station for an hour for the next train is really bad.

boleyd said:

Your goals seem to parallel mine in areas. My quest has been for a timetable first, since the CLOCK runs railroads.

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Nice reply! Thanks. You reflected my thinking in several points. Have you selected a route or are you still looking? How much of this do you have working? It would be great if someone would document their "quest" in a post or some other means.

I can recommend several MGSAPPER routes. He is working on updating some from TANE to TRS19. Of course I can't wait so I have a few running on 19. I also looked an the Hinton route that came with 19. I spent some time getting rid of the goofy bright green trees (they only exist on planets not yet visited). Trees are important. But Hinton was just too big with a minimum run time of about 1.5 hours Hinton to Thurmond. I really wanted it to be the answer since it is only a few hours driving from me. But I can't sit and do nothing for 1.5 hours (the Shift key helps). Nebraska is interesting. Flat simple vegetation. The towns are only around 50% accurate but that is fun to fix. But again the route is quite large and the big Bailey yard slows reloads. On the other end of the scale is Coal Country from Jointed Rail. While the area is not specified it looks very familiar and close to where I have lived. So I spent many hours converting it to TRS19. I even added some geography to allow larger trains on the tight route. Close but just too small for simulating a real railroad. There were a few others. One had ALL, and I mean ALL, of trees from CL.Every one of the dozens of species and sizes were use and looked bad in TRS19. Since it was not as large as Nebraska I spent the time to replace all of the 4-sided trees. Again I live close to the mid-west/heartland of the USA. Mountains to the East and flat-land to the West. But too small for big grain trains.

Back to MGSAPPER and his New England Coastal route. I had messed with it for a few years. However, when I finally decided to try to build a running railroad it became very attractive. Once again the trees were TANE and looked bad. But new trees and some of the new textures led life to the route. The visuals are good with the ocean on one side and the pine forest on the other. Hills are not excessive. Nice towns but needed TRS19'd. That is where I am today.

All the MGSAPPER routes have a feel for reality. The towns have many of the requisite services of reality. The route, while partially real, is mostly imagination but with a foundation of reality. That allows me to "accept" it and feel "comfortable" that I am not in a fantasy route. Additions are easy for more geography. Just grab a baseboard, copy, rotate it and include it. I make no attempt at a formal merge. I leave that to those that appreciate the special realities of railroads.

That is it. I will spend much of today getting trains running on time and performing real tasks. The MAJOR problem I have is signals. I stripped out ALL signals and the route ran smoothly with a single train. However, if I added some appropriate signals (searchlight variety) I had some problems. Something I had not seen before with a signal being a permanent red because of a fault many miles away on the selected route. No idea what the fault is, or where. So trackmarks and driving instructions, plus time, will find the fault.

I would never think of publishing a route. The social rot of the Internet permeates forums and society.

Yes... I really like MGSAPPER routes. I have a few. As soon as they are updated to 19 I grab them right away. (I also have some older ones.) I don't have the NEC so I grab that and take a look...

Thanks!

Personally. Go look at JR screenshots of their WIP Locos/Routes. Released routes, etc. That is quality. You will learn nothing off the DLS from 'simple' routes. Even those updated to 19, are not fully 19 ready. They only use one single TurfFX effect for the whole route, they use PBR wrong, no blending ground colors, tracks just stand out like a sore thumb when its nothing but a simple green on 50 feet each side of the track and no detail...

I learned 'detail' and 'precision placement' all due to JR routes and their authors. Quite honestly I've learned almost nothing from any route off the DLS. Only a few FEW are anywhere close to proto-detailed as JR does.

My 2 cents. JR routes/pics/videos. Real life area/map. Your own trial and error. Start small. Or you will just hate yourself.

You will just learn bad mistakes from looking at some routes off the DLS. JR has a few routes in pipeline for 19 coming soon apparently. I know Appoarch medium also has a TANE one coming out soon, but his routes are easy to transfer / asset replace into 19. I love his P&B. Which OP, you should download actually even though its TANE. That is something to study off of. It's on JR Route section Penn and Berwind.

Thanks much... Yes.. I've considered JR routes and I appreciate your reply to my post. But... I'm 66, semi-retired, and can't afford to pay top dollar for routes. I'm also in this for fun and joy and many of the free routes provide plenty of that. My attempt to setup and "run a railroad" is more about the challenge and fun of doing it and not so much about being as prototypical as can be. I'll settle for 62% prototypical

But, I do have a gift card with some funds on it yet so perhaps I'll venture over to JR....(hoping their payment system accepts gift cards which some don't.)

Thanks Kilrbe3... I do appreciate all ideas and suggestions. Any particular route perhaps you'd recommend for this? (You can see, I'm TRS19 only.)

RE: JR Routes...

I've avoided JR routes as they have no "official" TRS19 routes.
When JR says "for Tane only" will those routes work in TRS19 (since Tane routes are supposed to be compatible with '19??? Or perhaps there are "killer" missing dependencies?)

1611mac said:

RE: JR Routes...

I've avoided JR routes as they have no "official" TRS19 routes.
When JR says "for Tane only" will those routes work in TRS19 (since Tane routes are supposed to be compatible with '19??? Or perhaps there are "killer" missing dependencies?)

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Their T:ANE only routes will work fine. You may want to replace the cardboard trees (billboard and flipboard) because they look like cardboard. Other than that, they're great routes. The great part of purchasing them from JR is you can modify the routes anyway you wish. I've taken their Legend of the BN 1 and Legend of the BN 2 and merged those together and then merged in Eagle River, which I modified as well by adding in another branch among other things.

They're also really great about dependencies. You purchase a route, and there is a link back to their website with sub-links (it's a nicely laid out page) for the dependencies. Occasionally there's a mess up, but that usually occurs when the route is first released, but after that things settle down and it's a matter of downloading them.

JCitron said:

Their T:ANE only routes will work fine. You may want to replace the cardboard trees (billboard and flipboard) because they look like cardboard. Other than that, they're great routes. The great part of purchasing them from JR is you can modify the routes anyway you wish. I've taken their Legend of the BN 1 and Legend of the BN 2 and merged those together and then merged in Eagle River, which I modified as well by adding in another branch among other things.

They're also really great about dependencies. You purchase a route, and there is a link back to their website with sub-links (it's a nicely laid out page) for the dependencies. Occasionally there's a mess up, but that usually occurs when the route is first released, but after that things settle down and it's a matter of downloading them.

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The TANE routes from JR that I have are of great quality. I think most Trainzers should treat themselves to at least one.

Doh.... Palm of my hand is slapping my forehead... I have a JR route.... "Legacy of BN v2" that I obtained thru my Silver membership....