Thanks to all , a bit busy with real life snow but will try and work out later. I have been playing around with the Glasgow Carlisle route which is a superb piece of design work . I design courses for Microsoft Links golf 2003 and it takes about 6 to 9 months to get one complete . How long does it take to make one of these masterpieces.
It depends entirely on how 'big' and how 'real' you want your route to be. 'Big' by MSTS standards means a mainline with at least 100 miles with a few stations and maybe a couple of yards, depending on the era. Think in terms of years rater than weeks or months, most of the 'big' community routes have had several revisions during their existence. It's probably better to try a few routes out first and find out what you really want to acheive by building your own. I have had a few favourite projects on the go for quite a while now. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is in research to get the routes a 'real' as you can. Most of the basic steps are covered in articles over on 'Steam4me'. There is the Michael Vone book published by Abacus and available as a download from that site, but it does not cover basic topics such as creation of terrain from DEM data (see the 'Route Building' Page) , and making marker files using Google Earth as a resource. It's possible to DEM the terrain for a route and create the markers with a few hours work, track laying can be fairly swift at 100 hours, depending on accuracy of gradient data and layout, but individual items of scenery such as bridges and buildings can take quite a while, with work stradding days or weeks. You may need to go on a photo recce of features of the route to get an idea of the textures you want. You may decide that you need to build some rolling stock, also. From a standing start, the goal is a long way off.
Regards,
Steve
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