Anybody know what program the magzine uses for their trackplan illustrations. These are so cool, I want to try doing these.
Thanks
Don Carman
Modeling Conrail in the 90’s
Digitrax with CMRI
I believe that Bergie once mentioned that they have artist’s that draw and color in the track plans that work for MR so no program is used…the old MR mags had track plans that look like they do now, but they were done in black lines with a red background divided by grids that were also drawn by artists…chuck
When I posted this topic, I also sent an E-mail to Model Railroader asking them the same question and I got a very nice reply from the Main Illustrator guy…see reply below
Hi Don,
Thanks for the kind words. The Naugatuck Valley RR was especially fun to do
because it was built by David Popp of the MR staff and I was able to
personally sit down and compare details with him, and he was kind enough to
provide overhead digital photos of the layout, which really helped!
We use Adobe Illustrator for our illustrations, but in many cases add
backgrounds made in Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Painter gives us the nice earthy textures we use in our track plans, and also allowed us to build
an “image hose” that could essentially spray trees we made in Photoshop.
For the more mechanical type drawings, we use the CADtools plugin for
Illustrator from Hot Door software.
I’m glad you enjoy reading MR as much as we enjoy making them!
I hope that helps,
Rick Johnson
Illustration Supervisor
Kalmbach Publishing Co.
210207 Crossroads Circle
Waukesha, WI 53186
The April RMC had a very nice overhead photo of a layout that was superb, not rendered into an illustration.
overhead photo view of small layout
http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/aaa.jpg
I enjoy drawing and painting trackplans in Photoshop for posting on net and emailing.
Trackplan of my existing East Texas layouthttp://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/acj.jpg
Photoshop allows working in layers. I have a grid layer which disappears when I finish. I draw out circles for various radii according to the grid and drop, cut and paste in place.
Trackplan of my planned Texas coast Island Seaport layouthttp://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/ael.jpg
I usually use one layer for the grid, one “template” layer for various standard track elements I can pick up and transfer to another layer, a track layer, and a “ground” layer I paint under the track layer once track is laid out. I delete the grid and template layers and flatten the layers to a jpg for compression and posting at a reasonable size for internet.
Trackplan for ATSF along Route 66 in Arizona for discussion on this forum a few weeks ago
http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/aha.jpg