For those of you who sit home and wish they had a layout so they could run with the train, have a look at this,
- posted
17 years ago
For those of you who sit home and wish they had a layout so they could run with the train, have a look at this,
Too bad the Mac version is only "under development"...
Yah but so is the mac hehehe...
Er, I think you meant Vista...
hehehe... touche' pussycat...
I'm pretty tempted by this. I've had that 101 track plans book since I was a kid and I still look at it from time to time to fire my imagination. I never did get to build that big layout I always wanted. I came close but I built it in the basement, and it was apparently too dusty down there, and the maintenance got to be a pain so I got frustrated :(
It should be noted that for $29.95 you only get 10 plans out of the book. If you want all 101 it's $59.95, and if you want the TrackLayer too then it's $79.95. Quite a jump. It looks like there are some other free layouts you can download on there however, including some nice user layouts.
I downloaded the demo and I have to say this is the nicest program of this kind that I've seen so far, although I don't claim to be an expert. There are some limitations to running a railroad on a space the size of your monitor screen however, even if it does have a zoom and a follow the train feature.
Just to update, I did end up getting the version with all 101 track plans. I think it's a little expensive for what it does, but for me it was a no-brainer, I had to get it. Because that Wescott book is pretty legendary to me, I've spent so much time looking at it for ideas that each plan is like a long lost friend to me. So it's great to be able to run trains on them.
Funny thing is, some of the plans I was most fond of ended up being rather boring to operate, while some of the plans I dismissed as being too dull were the most fun to operate. Interesting. Makes you rethink what you really want in a layout.
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