It always seems that the routes that prove to be the most popular, and enduring, are the ones that are the most realistic. There are quite a few routes that have been released over time, are popular for a short while after their release, and then quickly die partially because of their lack of realism and detail. For instance, over in the Train Sim library, and elsewhere, there are literally hundreds of routes, and I think I remember Randy awhile back posting a listing of the MSTS routes available in the US and abroad. But just what makes up a good route? One that will be worth keeping on our hard drives. That is what this installment will consider. After all, it takes just slightly less effort to make a bad route as it does a good or even excellent route.

Each of us looks at the Sim from a different perspective. Some look at it as nothing more than another roll playing game, one that features trains. Others perhaps as a way to become an engineer, if only in their mind, something they always wanted to do since being a kid and just never had the chance. Other’s perhaps like being rail fans and setting themselves up in a favorite spot to two and snapping shots as trains come by, (something quite difficult in MSTS, but it can, and has been done for several routes), and still others want to create that favorite railroad or perhaps just a town or area from when they were younger and find that MSTS gives them more freedom to do it than traditional model railroading allows. Then there are others of us who have spent years and years over in traditional model railroading, who love prototype operation, and for one reason or another find themselves in the position that does not allow the building of a traditional model railroad.

In installment #1 we talked about Yard Design, of the prototype considerations that should be given consideration when planning and building a route, and now that we have covered the yard itself at some length, and actually there is still much more than can be said, we will head out onto the mainline and take a look at what we find there. In later installments I will address engine terminal design and other aspects of realistic route design, but for now, let’s look at the main line. Since there is much to cover, and to keep these installments to a reasonable length, this subject itself with be broken down into several installments.

If the yard could be likened to the heart of a railroad, then the mainline can be likened to the main arteries, allowing trains to flow from the heart (yard) to where they are needed, (industries or interchanges with other railroads). Route planning has quite a bit in common with the planning of a traditional model railroad. Actually more than many of us are willing to admit. For may of us train siming is the digital equilivent of traditional model railroading. In both instances we are trying to recreate a replica of a particular railroad or division or branch line thereof, or perhaps a railroad memory in a given location and point in time. True, traditional model railroading has the limitation of space, why even a simple shortline, if modeled in it’s entirety in HO Scale would, or rather, could, take a space the size of Yankee Stadium, or better yet, one of the domed stadiums to keep the weather out, (doesn’t help to try and run trains in the middle of a rain or snow storm - one of the limitations of out door G Scale layouts). As a result, since just about everyone doesn’t have that amount of space readily available somewhere in their house or apartment, let alone that amount of funds at their disposal necessary to build it, things like selective compression, (the taking of a prototype object, be it trackwork, or a building, or whatever, and selectively eliminating repetitive portions to reduce it’s overall size to something more manageable - I will deal more about this in awhile), have been developed and employed successfully. As a result, miles long mainlines have been reduced to mere feet on the always to small model railroad layout. Well, space is not at a premium on MSTS routes, they can be a mile long or a thousand miles long and they will still take up the same amount of physical real estate, the footprint of our computer. As a result, we can faithfully recreate sprawling yards and miles long mainlines without the space limitation. But do we really want to?

Sure, we could faithfully recreate a prototype division point yard with every track modeled in our route, some of them many miles long, along with every building and it would be a masterpiece of digital modeling. The problem would be though that we had already possibly more than shot our object count limit, (we have size limits of a different type to deal with than the feet and inches and room size of traditional model railroading, but they are limits just the same and can not be ignored any more than the size of a physical room can), even before placing a single car or engine, not to mention the endless other little details that bring a yard to life like these by the clean-out tracks.

So perhaps we need to employ selective compression too. It isn’t really necessary to faithfully reproduce each and every yard track to give the "impression" of a large yard. Sure, we need to recreate the yard to a reasonable extent so that other’s familiar with the area or prototype we are recreating say "yes, that is yard xyz alright.", but it isn’t advisable, or even necessary to include each and every one, or for that matter their full length either. When we are planning things out, and I can’t stress this to strongly, (planning that is), we need to plan our route to a "reasonable" extent before beginning track laying, (even when it comes to a fantasy route, a protolanced route, or freelanced route), so that we know where we are headed and where we need to concentrate our research time and budget. In our planning we also need to think ahead to the types of trains we want to run, or might end up running because if our object counts get much over 1200 we reach a point where we are asking for problems, both in creating our data bases for the routes during construction and in frame rates afterwards when we try and run a long train or one with well detailed equipment. MSTS can phone home on it’s own more than enough without our helping it along the way.

So lets get started with this installment on main line planning. Over in traditional model railroading the late John Armstrong was known as the dean of model railroaders, especially when it came to track planning. Over the years he had developed, and had published, hundreds of articles on different track plans he drew, each based upon reality, either entirely or in part. John, who it was my pleasure of having met and gotten to know many years ago, knew the subject of railroading quite well. He knew it to the extent that he was just not writing articles for the model press that many of us may be familiar with, but also as a consultant to the real railroad industry itself, having published several books on the subject for the full scale railroads. John over the years taught me many things about railroads in general, much more than I could have ever learned on my own and for this I am eternally grateful.

So, what I am going to try and do is distil some of what he taught me about the real railroads that, when allied to traditional model railroading made the resulting model railroad much more believable, as well as easier to operate, and through this series of installments, try and port these principles over to things we need to consider as we go about planning and building routes in MSTS, Trainz, and whatever other Sims come down the road. All of this is so that they too become more realistic and not just a picture of what someone thinks a railroad is all about, and easier to operate at the same time.

I will start off here stating that, in my opinion, the different train simulators, be they MSTS, Trainz, or whatever, each have their own strengths and weaknesses and I view each of them the same way as a person over in traditional model railroading would view the different model railroad scales, HO, O, N or whatever. Each has different advantages and dis-advantages, and each has their following and I am not going to get involved in the controversy as to which one is the best, model railroad scale wise or simulator wise. Truthfully, back in model railroading I modeled in several different scales, changing as time and circumstances dictated, and now needing to model in a digital formate because of space limitations down here in Florida, I have them both but I prefer MSTS for most things. I will say that some of the examples I intend to show will come from both of the current sims and have been chosen purely to illustrate a point.

But enough philophizing, so let’s get started. We will break this installment into two parts. Part "A" will deal with actual track layout while part "B" will deal with the details that help bring everything to life and what is right, (at least in real life), and what is not. So, let’s pull this train out of the yard and onto the mainline so to speak.

Curves:

Real railroads would like nothing more than to have all their mainlines straight as an arrow between point "A" and point "B". The problem is, the nature of the planet we live on just does not allow that, and so it has become necessary from the very beginning to have curves, tunnels, bridges, etc. to get around or over these obstacles. The longest straightaway found on a real railroad in the US that I am aware of is found in the state of South Carolina and it is around 100 miles long. As nice as that may be for the economy of pulling a train, (curves in real life add resistance to the pulling of a train and thus cause locomotives to have to work harder), it is also, when it comes to driving an engine, or watching a train in one of the simulators, very boring, just about as much as going through a 6 mile long tunnel. On the other hand, excessively sharp curves are the most obvious barriers to satisfying operation. Long cars, be they freight or passenger just do not look good going around them and they can also cause problems with your trains in the form of broken couplers, just as uneven track or abrupt changes in elevation can. On the other hand, operation into a curve is smoother if there is a gradually increasing rate of curvature at the start of the bend, an arrangement always used on the full-size railroads and is called an "easement". This can be achieved by first of all using one section of a broader radius curve at the beginning of our curves before starting our base radius curve.

Now, we come to another problem that is seen on quite a number of different routes. On just about every route at one place or another we will see a series of curves that cause the track and therefore the trains on them to appear to be undulating like a snake wiggling across the landscape. Now, while there is really nothing wrong with this, and it happens in real life all the time, it causes the same situation we discussed in the first installment where we discussed yard tracks like this

This situation is known as the "S" curve. At the point where these two curves from opposite directions meet the end of one car will be projecting to the right of the track because of the left-hand curvature, while at the same time the adjacent end of the next car is projecting to the left from the effect of the right-hand curve. The couplers will therefore be at a more severe angle than they would in entering a single curve of the same radius. This can, if the curve is to sharp or unequal length cars are coupled together cause a derailment, not to mention the cars just don’t look right going through the curve.

The solution to this, (and Randy, I am not picking on you here, almost everyone is guilty of it in one place or another), is to install as we are laying out our routes at a minimum of at least one section of straight track at least as long as the longest car expected to travel along the line between the two curves.

The same situation can also occur when switches are located near the end of curved trackage. With a crossover located at "B" as an example, there is an S-curve at location "C" that can cause trouble. If we relocate the crossover to location "D" the problem is eliminated.

Track Spacing:

Full-size railroads normally space adjacent tracks on 13-foot centers, (on straight track), and this holds true for both yards and on passing tracks. On curves the tracks are spaced wider apart to allow for the overhang of cars rounding the curves. Now what about how we should lay out tracks in our routes to look prototypical. Here from a recent model railroad magazine is a good graphic showing how it should be done to look proper because in real life all track is not on the same level. Shown is an example of prototype standards, of single and double track, of the different levels of passing tracks, of a spur track (industrial sidings etc.), and a comparison of yard and mainline tracks.

Again, by following things like this our routes become more realistic and place them a step above the average route. Wayne Campbell on his L&PS has researched quite extensively the railway he has modeled and just one look at his creation shows to the extent he has chosen to follow reality. The result is not some route that has been developed relatively quickly, but one that has taken years to build, one that sets the standard for others to follow. Any of us can have something like this if we are wiling to spend the time and not rush things. Also size does make a difference since the larger the route the proportionally less overall detail there would be, with us concentrating our details along the right-of-way and around any towns. The rest can be done with low poly and grouped objects that may be made of of many different items but only count as one object.