Basic tips for route builders

Here are a few basic tips for route builders which i hope will be useful.

When starting a new route, first lay down your track, build the railyards and railstations, then place the trackside objects (catenary, signalling) and after these steps are finished place the scenery objects (trees, buildings, textures). The reasons are:
1. Your FPS rate will remain high while you place the track and the trackside objects and its quite important to have high fps rate when working with tracks;
2. Its much easier to move a tree or a building than to move, rethink or rebuild a yard or railway station;
3. You don't want to mess the splines from the catenary with other splines like grass;
4. The infrastructure can be seen better withouth interferences from vegetation or other objects;



Now, if you want your route to be realistic try to do the following:

Get your inspiration from real photos. It is important to know how the reality looks and especially when talking about railway infrastructure.

Diversify the ground textures to avoid the uniformity and artificial effect created when just one or few textures are used.

Where possible, lay your track in the direction the trains will be travelling. This helps the AI as it prefers track which is laid in the direction of travel.

Set the "Draw Distance" to the minimum while you are in Surveyor Mode building. This will greatly improve your performance.

Hold down SHIFT key as you are moving or placing a spline or track point to prevent it from joining another spline or track.

Hold down CTRL key when you try to modify the height of a scenery object for a smoother up and down movement (TS2009 users).

Hold down CTRL key when you try to rotate a scenery object for a smoother rotation movement (TRS2006+TS2009 users).

When placing large numbers of trees always use the "Randomly rotate new objects" function in Surveyor options to avoid the forest to look uniform. Also diversify the trees to avoid the uniformity effect.

When placing tree splines, don't place them in straight lines - lay short stretches in criss cross lines to make them look less uniform.

Always paint the forest floor a darker green than the surrounding area for a more natural effect.

Don't use the UNDO function in Surveyor in TRS2006! There is a known unfixed bug which sometimes corrupts the layouts. The bug has been fixed in TS2009.

More will come.

Good luck!