Jerry,
Don't give up, please. There's a lot to this program, but once you get the hang of it, you'll do fine and above all ask and we will help you.
In summary, here's an extra lite overview of the tools you'll need the most.
Starting on the righthand side:
Topology tool basics.
Here you raise, lower, and add and remove baseboards.
Advanced tools give you displacement maps and now the procedural Turf-FX grass and plants. You don't need to worry about that stuff for now.
Textures (Painting)
You can click on a texture in the list, adjust the radius and direction and paint the surface. The radius tool works exactly the same as the one in the topology tools.
You can use the picker and get the texture already on a baseboard.
Objects:
This divided into two kinds.
Left side is objects such as trees, houses, buildings, etc.
Click on the plus (+) to add objects.
X to delete, and the raise lower object tool to adjust height.
If you want to rename something or access other parameters click on the ? then click on the asset.
Right side is splines such as grass, telephone poles, roads, and their ilk. This tab works similar to the tracks.
Click + to add in something from the list after clicking on the item.
Get a track, straighten, break splines.
Advanced gives you height adjustment, add other spline points, grades and track quality.
The second tab is for signals, speed limits, bumpers, and their ilk.
Third tab is for track marks and direction markers, triggers and stuff related to interlocking towers.
Some of these assets have additional parameters.
Tools is for copy, paste, rulers, and fixed cameras.
Layers is that, and requires a bit more detail than this overview.
and finally trains.
After laying track, you can place a single train, or click on the consists to place a whole consist.
There's a lot more to it than this of course, but this is pretty much it. In the beginning, get used to the main tools then spread out to the sessions, layers, filters, pick-lists, and so many other things. When I started this hobby back in December 2003, the first thing I did was open up other routes to see how it was made this started me on to trying things and playing around with the tools. With that said, I will say that this is the best thing you can do as well. Remember you can't break a thing in this unlike a real model railroad. There're no cats here to steal parts, or eat wires, or little kids to break things, and there's no expense if you change your mind.
When you open up someone else's route for editing, it becomes yours when you save it. The route or session will be assigned to your user id. This means the original is always preserved and you are always working on the clone. There are ways around this, but for the most part you don't need to know this. Yes saving is found under the main menu in the upper left corner. We can discuss the other tools at another point.
