Long Routes

[emdsd90mac]

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

I am curious to know if it's possible to build long routes; long as in 1,2,3 or even 4 hundred miles or more? For example, Terminal Island to, let's say Belen, NM; a realistic run on the BNSF Transcon. And is it possible for multiple people to work on a different section of such a route at the same time and then stitch then together at the end to make a long route like this? The reason I ask is because I think it would be kinda neat to do a project like this to where multiple people can work together on a project and share ideas and such. A route this size from end-to-end would of course have to be driven over the course of a few days. Thoughts? Aside from I know I'm crazy.

[PapaXpress]

Donner Pass is probably the longest available right now. I think its 150+ miles.

My route is 185+ and MadMike and I are looking into making a route around 250+.

[PapaXpress]

Just remember that the further you go the longer it will take to finish the route.

[jpetersjr]

I find longer routes more fun because you don't end up with no more track so quickly.

[harryadkins]

Perhaps you could divide your route into sections. Complete one section before you move on to the next.

[SCLALINE]

My A line project is 250 Miles i have 75 miles of track left to lay, but it is a lot of work its not so much the track work but the scenery, however a transcon near seligman has simple scenery so may be easier

[emdsd90mac]

My biggest question on this topic I guess is the feasibility of "stitching" sections together. How do you go about doing this? Cut and paste?

[PapaXpress]

There is no real way to join to routes together. That said there is a thread around here that talks about putting them together virtually. For instance. My route starts in San Jose California and ends in Roseville. Donner Pass Starts in Rosville and ends in Reno, and there is another route in progress that starts in Reno and ends in Sparks. So you could have have scenarios written in a way so that you pick up and drop off across routes.

[Flywheel]

Papa, i think you have hit it right on the head, maybe incorarate the yards of each route, pull up for a crew change so to speak, load the next route and scenario and highball it. Pete

[davedingler]

There is no real way to join to routes together. That said there is a thread around here that talks about putting them together virtually. For instance. My route starts in San Jose California and ends in Roseville. Donner Pass Starts in Rosville and ends in Reno, and there is another route in progress that starts in Reno and ends in Sparks. So you could have have scenarios written in a way so that you pick up and drop off across routes.

I too am working on a "long" route. My route covers the greater Houston, TX area and extends from Rosenberg, west of Houston to Beaumont, east of houston as an Amtrack route. It also covers the industrial complex of tracks for the Chemical and refining industries plus the routes in and out of Houston. I was hoping to find a method of converting each individual section as generated using RWDecal and Google Earth to place the path markers and then joing the individual sections into a "Greater Houston RailRoad System" to create scenarions in.

I have generated the paths in Google Earth and some of the decals with RWDecal and started to lay track on a couple of the paths. I currently have 28 paths layed out for the routing and have spotted a few more set of track in the Houston area that I might add. The major problem that I run into is that the decals overlap and is duficult to determine which is correct for the route being worked on.

Any ideas on the best way to procece before I get too far into this project will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave

[5292nate]

I'm currently testing the ice of route building by attempting 2 different long routes. Both in excess of 200 miles!

[PapaXpress]

Start SMALL first! It doesn't even have to be prototypical. Get a feel of the tools, and how terrain and terrain texturing works. There are also a ton of thing under the hood which can make your route unique like custom ground textures, time of day, cloud texturing (look for a tutorial soon), weather... the list goes on.

And THEN...

there are models. OH THE MODELS... I am still working on them.

Don't let this discourage you though. Take your time. This is not a race. Have fun learning it all.

[5292nate]

I had planned to start small, on my big route. I had planned to build the yard and maybe 5 or 10 miles of mainline, build realistic buildings, signal, and scenery. I figure that way, I'll get a good bit of practice. Then, maybe if I need to start again, I'll scrap it, and reuse things like the 3D models.