How much is too much?

[xxuntitledxx]

Back to the OP, working on average an hour or two a day on a route you can probably reckon on around a month per 20 linear miles of route working solo to achieve a realistic level of finish. Don't forget that RSC/Dovetail have a team of professionals working full time on their stuff which is, 1. Why it looks so brilliant, but 2. Is making it harder for the solo freeware builder to keep up in terms of route length and/or quality. Factor that figure into your plans x how many months you expect to work on a project without getting bored of it or distracted by something else and there's your answer.

I usually try to do an hour at least, but i've spent time fine tuning the area around Manville for a while now... regraded twice and my mainline is off slightly, so I'm working on it. Since that's pretty much the middle of the route... I'll send pictures once my route is somewhat "presentable".

[NorthernWarrior]

Built up areas triple or even quadruple the time required to achieve a reasonable level of finish, unless the builder is content with RRT3 or early MSTS plonk a few houses down for a town and add a couple of office blocks and factories to make a city! It can get frustrating (and boring) as you spend days bogged down in one small area of your route. Probably why many of the projects that make it to release run through either wilderness or the mountains! Maybe at some point either RWTS or one of the other sims will give us an editor with autogen to take some of the tedium out of certain route building processes - it is possible to enjoy the end result but not necessarily all the processes to get there.

[xxuntitledxx]

Well said. I am still working on sections at a time I have about...20 miles already down, I'm working on reworking manville yard. I'm using track charts to make sure the grades are accurate and now I'm working the CSX section of the yard. I should hopefully be done with it sometime this week. I want to get the Conrail portion complete before I work on the rest of the NS portion.

[Toripony]

Built up areas triple or even quadruple the time required to achieve a reasonable level of finish, unless the builder is content with RRT3 or early MSTS plonk a few houses down for a town and add a couple of office blocks and factories to make a city! It can get frustrating (and boring) as you spend days bogged down in one small area of your route. Probably why many of the projects that make it to release run through either wilderness or the mountains.........

How right you are, how right you are....... Some days I long for a project with no streets and towns and houses and shops and cars and people and lights and city sounds and bridges and sidewalks and telephone poles and street signs and cows and fences and streams and outbuildings and........

I don't want auto-gen though... then every route would look like a clone. I often remind myself, though, that RSC/DTG has to build a route the same way we do... a piece at a time.

As plain as I find them personally, I recommend building flatland routes.... the player can't see more than 100 feet from the tracks. Not true when your route is in the hills and has an Amtrak train where railfans like to travel and take photos.

But when I see the end result that looks so similar to the real thing that it gives me a shiver, it's all worth it. BTW, I just spent three weeks sorting out my rolling stock, so that part of the game (hobby? it sounds more like a hobby) can be tedious too.

sigghhhh... now back to laying out two small cities and 30 miles of riverfront homes and another golf course....see ya in a few months.