How to build good routes?

Hey everyone, I just downloaded the Full Bucket Line and it's tons of fun. I was wondering, how do you go about building a good route that models realistic railroading? I've been piddling around with a route of my own but it's pretty crappy. How did you guys learn to do it?

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RE: How to build good routes?, CaptFuzzy4, Dec-16-02, 00:35 AM, (1) RE: How to build good routes?, mivone, Dec-16-02, 00:46 AM, (2) RE: How to build good routes?, CaptFuzzy4, Dec-16-02, 01:01 AM, (3) RE: How to build good routes?, Vince, Dec-16-02, 03:10 AM, (4) RE: How to build good routes?, gatecityca, Dec-16-02, 03:54 AM, (5) RE: How to build good routes?, gatecityca, Dec-16-02, 04:12 AM, (6) RE: How to build good routes?, CGW409, Dec-16-02, 06:41 PM, (8) RE: How to build good routes?, GMOF3A, Dec-16-02, 10:04 AM, (7) RE: How to build good routes?, MarkMyers, Dec-17-02, 00:10 AM, (9) RE: How to build good routes?, CaptFuzzy4, Dec-17-02, 00:24 AM, (10)

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LAST EDITED ON Dec-16-02 AT 00:37 AM (EST)

I got in the Route Design Forum and started reading and asking specific questions, I downloaded a number of progs and utilities before I found what I was comfortable with.
And IMHO, an invaluable resource on this is Michael Vone's Guide to Route Building. It will walk you through, step-by-step, building a tutorial route. It also has alot of info on things like switches, car spawners, etc. If you are truly serious about making a "good" route, you really need to get this guide, I don't remember the specific link, but if you do a search for mvone in this forum, he includes a link in his signature, or you could try PMing him and I'm sure he would send you the link or repost it for ya.
Well, that's about all I can tell you here, if I can be of any more help, feel free to IM me or post here and I'll do my best.Steve
CaptFuzzy4@aol.com

CSX-The Spirit of West Virginia Coal.

CSX Tri-State Route-Building the Barboursville Yard. (Tricky stuff!!)

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Thanks for the plug! And here is the link for the plug!Michael Vone
Step by Step Guide to Route Building for MSTS - http://trainsimulatorworld.com/catalog/b506.htm
Albula Line 2 Route
Rocky Islands Route
Cliff Hanger Route
http://avsim.com/hangar/utils/mvchallenges/

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No problem Mike, This guide has been a life-saver for me.Sorry I spelled your screen name wrong...

CSX-The Spirit of West Virginia Coal.

CSX Tri-State Route-Building the Barboursville Yard. (Tricky stuff!!)

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Bruce, I started route building by hacking the default routes. I made many, many mistakes. In the first two months after I got the Sim I must have had to re-install about 20 times. This was a valuable experience learning what NOT to do.

Some things to remember:
Backup the route folder often, every hour or so. This way when you trash the route you only lose an hours work. Notice I say when you trash the route as you will trash it, lose an hours work and learn from the experience.Every four backups or so, burn them onto a CD-R. This way if your system gets struck by lightning your route is safe. I have seen the result of a lightning strike and it's not pretty. Charcoal disk drives .There wasn't anything left electronic inside the case. And this was a strike on a phone line.Very Important:
Get Michael Vone's Route Building Guide

Regards,
Vince Cockeram
NEC Track Team
http://hometown.aol.com/nectrackteam/main.html
E-Mail me at vcockeram@lvcm.com

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Well, I don't have a whole lot of experience with building routes yet, so I'm probably the last one to be giving advice. I have played around with the Route Editor quite a bit lately though. One thing you should do is think about whether you want your route to be based on a real railroad route (a historical line, or one that still exists) or if you want to create your own fictional route. Either way can be just as fun and rewarding, although if you want to base your route on a real-life line you'll want to do some research on it first, depending on how accurate you want it to be. And in either case, you can always take a bit of artistic license with it. It's never going to be perfect.Imagine a whole concept for a town. Visualize what you want it to look like, and you might even want to sketch out a little map. Set up different areas, like residential, industrial, etc. And think of how a real works and lives, and how a railroad would serve that town. Where would the downtown station be located? Where would sidings be for lumber yards, steel mills, etc? Would your railroad maybe too have lines that go down to local attractions, like the park, amusement parks, etc? This is especially true if you want to model a trolley and inturban line. And as far as the terrain and natural scenery is concerned, study some real natural scenery a little...like if you live near the mountains, you can see how the vegetation changes as you go up in altitude. Shrubs, grasses, and sage brush grows near the foothills, with coniferous trees up higher. Capture that in your route. There are a ton of really great add-on scenery objects here that you could use to help. Just be sure to give the modellers credit if you want to put your route here for people to download.When you make activities for your route, be creative. Have fun with it and think of it as telling a story. Maybe a severe thunderstorm hit and the player needs to deliver supplies to the depot for repairs? Or maybe your railroad company has just recently completed a new line and the player has to run an excursion to show the new line off to the company executives for inspection? Or it could just be something as simple as taking visitors to a mountain resort. The sky is the limit.Try this out and just experiment a little and you'll have a great-looking route that's fun to play!Chris

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oh yeah, Vince, good points! You definitely want to be sure you save often when you're working in the Route Editor, and back up your route folder frequently! The RE takes a huge amount of memory and it WILL crash on you eventually...you can be sure of it. I don't know of anyone here, even with fast computers with like 500mb of RAM, who hasn't had RE crash on them at least once. What you should do is every once in a while, save your work, and completely close MSTS editors and tools. Then reopen it and continue. This will clear up the memory and keep it running stable. And keep an eye how how it is responding when you're working. If it starts to get really choppy, or if you start to get a lot of flashing or flickering when you open and close the RE windows, then that's a warning sign. Save your work and exit the program. You can then reopen it and you should be okay. Also, add more RAM to your computer when you have extra cash and some free time. The more memory you have, the better. And it definitely helps to defragment your hard drive regularly. Point is, try to keep your system running in top shape, and save often, and the less heartache you'll have. Also, there have been a couple of suggestions here lately people had for getting the RE to run a little more stable. One member suggested something about using the "page down" option on your keyboard, which will decrease visibility so you can scroll a little more smoothly when you're working in the RE. And don't be shy about asking questions if you run into some trouble...the people here are a really friendly, helpful group.Chris

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Bruce
As a quick get you going until get route building guide DL'd
Pick up the Sybex MSTS hint book as it has basic info to get you started.
Save often and back up your work,learn it love it live it.
Do not install any thing interactive(signals, siding markers etc) until all track is down.
Look into DEM's and Demex unless you're real fond of sculpting your own terrain( had I not been so far along on the CA&E when I discovered DEM's I'd have used it.
Look up some of the topographic map sites on the web if the line you wish to model is still around (or in my case the bike trail that used to be your route) you can get your long & lat co-ordinates there.
definately look into a 3D program you never know what you may need for your route(plus it's kind of a neat way to give a little pay back to the group)
And lastly be prepared to take ol Uncle Bill's name in vain when the RE inevitably fubars your most recent work.

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LAST EDITED ON Dec-16-02 AT 10:21 AM (EST)

Hi Shawn.All the tech info on route building is essential to creating a realistic route in MSTS.The key to route building realistically is this:When your out on the right of way watching real trains...what do you see? Look really hard at what's there, loose ties, scrap rail laying around, pole lines, wires everywhere, trees and brush, weeds, lawn and gardens, houses with garages, trash cans...ground leveling and banking..hills, creeks, bridge abuttments, road signs, SHADOWS on objects.(shadows are a main addition for a good look verses an average look)..etc.Having a good object modeling program is essential to building a realistic route as well. This way, you can "whip" something up when you need it, and you do not need to wait for others to create it for you. All this takes time...alot of time. A realistic route can take much longer to create than an average route. All who have created routes here can tell you that.Now..keep in mind, all these goodies take memory..much memory.A plus is, there are new systems which can handle this memory hogging technique.I just priced out a new motherboard and 512MB stick of DDR ram at $300. The board BTW was a KT-4-400 with 8X AGP video..(I think that's what it's called, not sure the make) but this will tell you just how far PC advancements are going. In another year...my 6 FPS will be 20 FPS on the new systems..and I've got a fairly high end system now, if that tells you anything.Anyway..a creative eye will get you a realistic route..just look at the real thing...and build your route that way, the way YOU want it.AND...BE PATIENT! RE is a monster!..it can grab your work and delete it all in an instant..so back up your files, your WORLD files, your TDB and RDB too...back them up at least 3 times in different places...do this often..or you may need Prozac like the rest of us before you get your route done!Hope that helps some.

Paul...
www.mstsgmo.com

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LAST EDITED ON Dec-17-02 AT 00:11 AM (EST)

Effexor works for me You build routes like you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice. Practice. Adn then practive some more. All of the above is great advice. Mike Vones tutorial was a major life saver. A Million and one thanks for the work Mike.I have been practicing at the MSTS editor for over a year now, and am actually building my first real route. I will leave it to the learned ones here to tell me if it sucks or not. But remember, one mans ceiling is another mans floor. The route you say stinks, might be fun to someone else. So don't sell yourself short. You are probably a better designer than you give yourself credit for.

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I like this guy's attitude!! lol.

CSX-The Spirit of West Virginia Coal.

CSX Tri-State Route-Building the Barboursville Yard. (Tricky stuff!!)

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