OK, I’m a bit addicted. 🙂
Fired up a new route this weekend…this one is based on the Union Pacific line around Las Vegas.
I also did a little research into the Trainz “iPortal” feature – it lets you send a train off “your” route and onto a friends. I tested it by adding iPortals to the north and south end of the line where before, it just stopped. I can send a train out the North end, and it reappears at the South end.
While I was at it, I looked at the regular Portal features, too. So, now that I’m done with the “rebuilding”, I have several options that are fairly cool…
I generate “SLC Inbound” trains every 27 minutes – they all are scheduled to head straight to the “Los Angeles Outbound” Portal on the south end – it takes about 30 minutes for them to get there.
I generate “Los Angeles Inbound” trains every 32 minutes – and they all are scheduled to head straight to the “SLC Outbound” Portal – except for the passenger train, which stops at the Kelso Amtrak Station, and again at the McCarran International Station (yeah yeah, I know Amtrak doesn’t go to the airport – that’s what the layout designers set up…*shrug*), and then it exits for SLC.
I also added some extra local industries alongside turnouts that were just “deadspace” in the current incarnation…
Sanford and Son Furniture – General Goods in, General Goods out.
Sin City Brew Crew – Barley and Wheat in, Beer Pallets out.
Las Vegas Auto Dismantling, Inc. – Automobiles in, General Automotive Parts out… *heh*
Georgia Pacific Forestry Products Division – Logs or Lumber in, GP (labelled) Lumber Products out. (see, I DID find a use for those centerbeam cars I wanted to use!)
Finally, I set up a “Las Vegas Local Industry” portal, which generates small (1-2 car) trains every half hour that go to a specific industry, load up, and head back out the SLC Portal, never to be seen again. 🙂
So, for *my* fun, I wind up with an extra locomotive or two, and the list of Trainz-generated Waybills, hustling around from this industry to that, loading and unloading, while trying not to hold up the “scheduled” trains in the process.
And the next step in the process will be to load up the Gorre & Daphetid (gory and defeated…a truly *classic* layout that sadly burned down to the ground in 1971, shortly after the builder’s death), load up some Log Cars, and send them through the iPortal to the Las Vegas layout…
The beauty of the layout (compared to the G&D, especially) with the portals and the through traffic is that it’s all spaced far enough apart space and time wise, that I can load it up, and walk away, and when I come back it will all still be running smoothly… The G&D has quite a few places where two trains want to occupy the same stretch of track, and that’s definitely *not* good for smooth running…
Once I know I can trade trains across layouts on my own, we’ll try exchanging trains with another live human being… 🙂
I was looking at the Trainz website. This really does look like an interesting game! And you’ve been enjoying it quite a bit… I may have to look into getting it! It looks like a 2006 version is going to be released. You are playing the 2004, right? Is it hard to play? I’m not as technically oriented as I was a few years ago… Brain is getting tired I guess!
Rab
I’ve got TRS2006… You can get it at your local Wally World (if your Wally World is the sort that stocks PC games alongside the PS2/PSP/Gamecube stuff) for around $20…much cheaper than the AUS$56 that Auran wants for selling it over the web. 🙂
It’s got 6 tutorials that range from the most basic operation to being able to manage a steam locomotive, using the actual controls, from in the cab…
The Auran forums are a tremendous source of information (and also a source of gripes about what’s *not* been fixed in the last 4 years…)
It’s a good piece of software for a “tinkerer”-style gamer… The limits are only what you can imagine.
You can “play trains” on the routes that are supplied with the locos and rolling stock that is supplied, or you can go whole hog and create a model of a prototypical route based on United States Geological Service DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data – and dig into GMAX (a “lite” version of 3dStudioMax) and create all new custom content for your route…or anywhere in between.
I’ve been enjoying taking some routes that I’ve downloaded off the aptly named “Download Station”, or DLS, and tweaking them to my liking (addint industries, portals, adding some track here or there to change a single line (that causes bottlenecks) to a double line (that allows trains to pass one another)…I don’t really have the patience to create a route from complete scratch, as much as I’d like to. 🙂
Heck, go for it, Rabbit…you can waste $50 on most “modern” games that you might play for a week or three… Trainz (like Microsoft Flight Simulator or World War II Online) will nibble away at you in dribs and drabs over the next several years. It’s money well spent. 🙂