Any good surveyor classic tutorials out there?

[rocker12341234]

hey, i recently got the game and wanted to try my hand at a bit of route building and stuff but all i can seem to find is s2.0 tutorials or stuff from old trainz games. i dont have trainz plus so i dont think i can use s2.0 so i was just wondering if anyones got links to some usefull tutorial videos/series in the classic surveyor that still apply. thanks in advance.

[JCitron]

This might be helpful.

Help:TRS2019 Surveyor - TrainzOnline (ts2009.com)

The tutorial says TRS2019 but everything else is exactly the same with a couple of additions.

In the Tools menu located at the top is pause and Drive.

These additional items are also found in TRS2019 Platinum edition but are standard features in TRS22. The reason for this is there is a unified interface that lets you jump between driver and surveyor as you build your route. This is great for testing complex junction configurations and railroad crossings in particular if you are using the hand-built ones that utilize triggers and individual objects such as the ATLS and TC4 crossings. These may be a bit advanced for you right now but will be part of your Trainz diet soon enough.

The reason for the pause is when going from driver to surveyor to fix stuck AI, they will continue drive in Surveyor making that absolutely impossible to untangle them. During out beta-testing for TRS19-Platinum, we all said we need a pause to prevent the AI from running away on us. The side-effect of this is Surveyor is quiet because there's no traffic or animations, and rail signals may not be lit when they should be.

[pware]

If you look at https://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/HowTo you will find many Wiki Pages dealing with route and session building in Surveyor Classic. As you appear to be an "apprentice" builder (as TRS22 is the only entry in your product timeline) I would recommend starting with the basics at https://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/...Session_Basics (which is also in the list from the previous link).

[rocker12341234]

If you look at https://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/HowTo you will find many Wiki Pages dealing with route and session building in Surveyor Classic. As you appear to be an "apprentice" builder (as TRS22 is the only entry in your product timeline) I would recommend starting with the basics at https://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/...Session_Basics (which is also in the list from the previous link).

thanks and yea im very much an apprentice/rookie. ive dabbled with route building very minorly in train sim classic, but i only just got trainz yesturday and wanted to give it a go haha

[pware]

Welcome aboard and, depending on how complex you want to get, it can be a long but rewarding learning curve. I have been on that curve since the very beginning back in 2002 and I am still learning.

[ricomon35]

thanks and yea im very much an apprentice/rookie. ive dabbled with route building very minorly in train sim classic, but i only just got trainz yesturday and wanted to give it a go haha

Welcome to Trainz, and the world of route building.


I am going to suggest that you start with building a small route. Preferably a model railroad layout with some variety in terrain features. Lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, hills and scaled down mountains. Attempting to learn the terrain tools will be much easier at the MRR scale of things than the 1:1 scale of building a full route. You can learn the ins and outs by doing, and of course the tricks and tips by asking questions of us that have some surveyor experience, on this forum.

I unfortunately, like many others, got supremely ambitious back in the TS12 days, thinking I would build a fictional layout in the Grand Canyon... Which I did attempt, and got partially done. I even bought Transdem for importing DEM mapping data and had a good time learning that app, and ended up with fairly accurate terrain imported into Surveyor. The problem was that I chose a 26x13 kilometer chunk of the canyon area with what seemed (at the time) accessible sections of the Colorado river. After trying to build an interesting rail line that would zigzag it's way down to the river and back up again, and supremely UN-realistic bridges crossings, I gave up. It was too much work to achieve what I wanted, and it looked sillier the longer I kept at it. Finding desert cliff textures at that time was a real pain as well, everything available was too low res, or suffered from severe stretching issues on the semi-vertical cliff surfaces of the canyon map.

The old proverb of "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach" applies here, LOL. You can see what little full texturing work I actually got done in this FB album. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...0479566&type=3

The next attempt was a smaller fictional desert layout in Utah. It encompassed the Moab city area and the long, wide canyon west of the city, and the winding canyon that runs north. I gave up on that one after I realized the near impossibility of modeling the striated rock formations that dominate the area, and highly repetitive job of texturing the terrain over so much acreage. Tedious does not begin to describe the task. Just ask dangavel, who has been doing that just that for several years now on his Colorado routes.

I eventually got into building Model Railroads in Trainz and haven't looked back. I can build out an idea in a few months time, rather than many years, and then move onto the next idea. I finally released a couple of layouts last year, after having been futzing around since Trainz 2010 Engineers edition. But, I did get a great compliment from a forum Trainzer on my KleinStadt MRR layout, saying it was payware quality, and that N3V should look at it for how a good payware layout should be built (I take that one with a grain of salt, LOL) and another on my Sissiboo NG layout, saying it was one of the funnest NG layouts he's run on.

I currently have around a dozen MRR layouts in the works, with a modified Rio Grande Southern layout, (from the March 2011 issue of Model Railroader) releasing next week, and the Sissiboo Lumber & Railway - Extended which takes half the original Sissiboo layout and adds it to a Rob Chant trackplan and a mining extension that I designed to make a nice multi-ops period layout. All of these include many of my own scenery models that i have built over the last year. Something like 150-ish new models, and a bunch of reskins and re-meshes of older Trainz assets.

So, take it slow, build small, build what you know and you will learn and progress at your own pace and be happier over the long run, than if you get overly ambitious and decide to build 400 miles of double track mainline and all the industries, cities and towns it encompasses.


Rico

[JCitron]

I'll add a bit to what Rico said.

Think of your very first attempts as experiments with the various tools and plan on throwing that route away. I recommend opening up other routes either from the installed DLC or those downloaded from the Download Station (DLS) to look at and dissect to see how others built their routes. There will be some things you like and others you don't. Look at the details carefully, using the get asset tool, click on various assets that catch your eye. Add in a baseboard or two and place them, place some track and give things a drive around. This is exactly what I did back in December 2003 a couple of days before New Years 2004.

Once you get the lay of the land so to speak, come up with a plan and build your first route. This may not be a stellar project, but it'll be a first attempt. Plan on scrapping and redoing things over and over, and even plan on redoing things in the future should you keep the route. Heck, my original plan still exists in parts in a current route. I rebuilt those sections to my modern standards, and they blend very well into my current build of the same route.

When building, take your time. Don't get yourself into a building frenzy and end up burning out. We recommend taking breaks from projects and diving in another day or two, or sometimes longer. Keep in mind that as large as these routes are, they take up very little physical space unlike a real model railroad.

When building your own real route project, come up with a plan, create a backstory for your route. That backstory acts as a foundation and helps you choose specific assets for your route and keeps the project consistent. This also helps when finishing up specific areas because it creates a goal to work towards.

The main goal in all this is to have fun. When you're not having fun, it's time to take that break to give yourself time to refresh your energy so you can dive back in and continue on.

And finally, Trainz is addicting. You'll spend lots of time thinking about your projects, get lost in your own virtual world and time will spiral and spin away without you realizing it.

[pware]

And don't think that a project can ever be "finished". I am currently reworking a route I thought I had finished and uploaded to the DLS 16 years ago. It is currently getting an update to TRS22 standards and a significant increase in its length.

As John pointed out, Trainz is addictive.

[rocker12341234]

Welcome to Trainz, and the world of route building.


I am going to suggest that you start with building a small route. Preferably a model railroad layout with some variety in terrain features. Lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, hills and scaled down mountains. Attempting to learn the terrain tools will be much easier at the MRR scale of things than the 1:1 scale of building a full route. You can learn the ins and outs by doing, and of course the tricks and tips by asking questions of us that have some surveyor experience, on this forum.

I unfortunately, like many others, got supremely ambitious back in the TS12 days, thinking I would build a fictional layout in the Grand Canyon... Which I did attempt, and got partially done. I even bought Transdem for importing DEM mapping data and had a good time learning that app, and ended up with fairly accurate terrain imported into Surveyor. The problem was that I chose a 26x13 kilometer chunk of the canyon area with what seemed (at the time) accessible sections of the Colorado river. After trying to build an interesting rail line that would zigzag it's way down to the river and back up again, and supremely UN-realistic bridges crossings, I gave up. It was too much work to achieve what I wanted, and it looked sillier the longer I kept at it. Finding desert cliff textures at that time was a real pain as well, everything available was too low res, or suffered from severe stretching issues on the semi-vertical cliff surfaces of the canyon map.

The old proverb of "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach" applies here, LOL. You can see what little full texturing work I actually got done in this FB album. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...0479566&type=3

The next attempt was a smaller fictional desert layout in Utah. It encompassed the Moab city area and the long, wide canyon west of the city, and the winding canyon that runs north. I gave up on that one after I realized the near impossibility of modeling the striated rock formations that dominate the area, and highly repetitive job of texturing the terrain over so much acreage. Tedious does not begin to describe the task. Just ask dangavel, who has been doing that just that for several years now on his Colorado routes.

I eventually got into building Model Railroads in Trainz and haven't looked back. I can build out an idea in a few months time, rather than many years, and then move onto the next idea. I finally released a couple of layouts last year, after having been futzing around since Trainz 2010 Engineers edition. But, I did get a great compliment from a forum Trainzer on my KleinStadt MRR layout, saying it was payware quality, and that N3V should look at it for how a good payware layout should be built (I take that one with a grain of salt, LOL) and another on my Sissiboo NG layout, saying it was one of the funnest NG layouts he's run on.

I currently have around a dozen MRR layouts in the works, with a modified Rio Grande Southern layout, (from the March 2011 issue of Model Railroader) releasing next week, and the Sissiboo Lumber & Railway - Extended which takes half the original Sissiboo layout and adds it to a Rob Chant trackplan and a mining extension that I designed to make a nice multi-ops period layout. All of these include many of my own scenery models that i have built over the last year. Something like 150-ish new models, and a bunch of reskins and re-meshes of older Trainz assets.

So, take it slow, build small, build what you know and you will learn and progress at your own pace and be happier over the long run, than if you get overly ambitious and decide to build 400 miles of double track mainline and all the industries, cities and towns it encompasses.


Rico

funny you say that, thats exactly my plan as soon as i sore the game had the ability for model railroads i was like "hell yea this is sweet always wanted one of those" and wanted to make a model railroad to experiment and play with the route building tools and learn them. me and my friend want to try our hand at building a proper route eventually but yea, im doing the model railroad first as like a constant wip thing to learn the tools

[pware]

Suffering from hair loss can have a big impact on your self-esteem.

The above post reported as PAM. Fortunately, all my hair is fully intact.

[raymac1946]

One other comment. Be gentle with yourself when it comes to your route building skills. You have great tools at your disposal but you must be a meticulous artiste to create a really great Trainz route. I found out some time ago I am neither. But it's fun to learn new things, and I am finding the new S20 toolset a blast. If you get tired of your route building ugliness you can always drive a train on one of the great DLC routes or some of the classic routes available on the DLS - might I put in a good word for MSGSapper?

[billgatesthethird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNpryD-jLwI
The first one or two are quite elementary but it pays to get the basics right.