after being away from the editor...I'm trying to get back to it..

[amtrak115]

Last year (before Halloween) I was working on revising the "Step-by-step Guide to Building Routes for Microsoft Train Simulator" by Michael Vone into a version using TSRE. I was doing this to learn the route editing process as well as the application TSRE. That stopped right before Halloween as I have another all encompassing hobby of putting on an animated Light and Music show at my house for both Halloween and Christmas. Once I started on that...route editing was put to the side for a while. I'm trying to get back to this effort. When I stopped I was working on a route that I call the "Big Easy". If anyone has taken the Sunset Limited, City of New Orleans, or the Crescent, this track layout should be familiar. I decided to run it through Open Rails before I fix a few oddities with the track layout. (you'll see some extreme track jogs I did to connect some track and that's what I'll start working on). I've attached a 10 minute video of a train leaving NO Union Passenger terminal, then reversing through the Wye and back into the station. If anyone has suggestions, comments, etc. I would appreciate it.

thanks

Amtrak115

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFIskqxT20o

[Vince]

I watched the video: In some locations you are attempting to follow camera offset errors in the mapping!
Ask yourself this: Why would a RR designer put meaningless 'jogs' in the track unless for a good reason to avoid a structure. Follow those maps as a general guide.
RR's hate curves and use them as little as possible. Curves=added friction=higher operating cost.

Other than you getting too picky following map imperfections that is a good looking layout. Putting in the necessary scenery is gonna' be a long task but that always is the toughest part of building a route.

regards,

[amtrak115]

I was trying to use map more as a guide than just following directly. My plan is to smooth out the jogs and see how it looks. The Wye was a big concern however it appears to be working out. So you've done big routes....is it better to do all the tracks or scenic small sections them move on?

[eric]

Track laying is the easy part, but most people burn out when it comes to scenery, which is why so many incomplete routes exist.

My suggestion on track - find the end points for your long straight sections, and calculate the QD between them. The Object Rotate spreadsheet does this, and so does Tangent (available for free on DigitalRails.com or you can make a free-will donation knowing the money will go to help railroad preservation at the Illinois Railway Museum).

I find that I have to work a few days on one area and then switch to a different area, and won't spend more than 4 or 5 weeks before switching over to a different route or occassionally a reskinning project.

Others find that working work a mile at a time works for them.

[Vince]

I was trying to use map more as a guide than just following directly. My plan is to smooth out the jogs and see how it looks. The Wye was a big concern however it appears to be working out. So you've done big routes....is it better to do all the tracks or scenic small sections them move on?

I understand. I was a bit concerned you were attempting to get an 'exact' line up and was just passing on a heads up to the maps built in distortion.
Yes, some highly detailed routes; My method to avoid burnout is to lay about a mile of track and then add full detailed scenery. But then all my routes tend to be urban with thousands of objects on a tile. I usually have SketchUp open at the same time as the editor. This is handy to build unique trackside buildings.
So it's a bit of track and then final scenery. Avoids burnout for me. And like Eric says there are so many incomplete routes because track is so easy and scenery not. So unless it's a desert or endless farmland a bit of track then scenery.

My building has been put on hold for the present emergency as I've dedicated my entire machine running ROSETTA@Home which is a number crunching program investigating the COVID-19 virus. It's a project out of the U of Washington. If you interested in letting your system run 24/7 (which mine have for the past 20 years) trying to decode the amino acid chains which make up the physical virus, go to BOINC and get started.