Somebody was venting his frustration at the route editor in another thread, I didn't toss my 2 cents in since I didn't have anything new to add. I for one sympathize completely, the route editor is an unholy beast from the spawning pit of demons, and all to often I need to vent about the #&^*$#! thing too.
Brooksy's comment caught my eye - "do not expect a PO&N at the first attempt." - and Patm41 was talking about the original PO&N in another thread earlier. So just for fun, I decided to see how small I could get it zipped, and here it is in all it's raw, unfinished glory:
http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3c805fad2e115d0a.zip
http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3c805fd52e7842a0.zip
http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3c805ff22ed29412.zip
Download all 3 zips, extract all 3 zips to \Train Simulator\Routes, and double click on PO&N.bat in the Port_Ogden folder to install. You don't need to uninstall PO&N4 or 5, but if you have any version previous to 4 you'll have to delete or move that first, since this has the same .trk file as PO&N2, 3, and 3.1.
I replaced the original buggy batch file with a version of EZstuff3, but otherwise left it untouched. All the early learning curve errors are in there, the unfinished terrain, experiments with odd buildings & track layouts, too tight radius on wyes and dynamic track, mainline tracks that suddenly end, round tunnel sections, a pathetic excuse for a "mountain division", sudden grades without transistions, you name it. It's still a fun route to do switching on, and for those with low end systems it's a lot easier on the framerates than PO&N5. This is a complete route, doesn't require any files from any other version of PO&N. It's based on KingJPW's (MSTS Buddy) "2x2 route standard" from the early days, being 2 tiles by 2 tiles, four tiles in all, which is why it zips to less than 300kb.
I'm offering this for the newcomers too, since I know a bunch of you have routes you've been working on that you don't think are good enough to upload, so take a look at what I felt was good enough for a first version. Maybe it will inspire you to bite the bullet and share what you have with the rest of us, and you'll probably be as pleasantly surprised as Bill was about Seaview.
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