I have been going through the model railroader track plan database. I see that they are the same plans that have been published over the years. I think this is wonderful to be able to find all the plans in one area.
I do have a question though, what program do the use when making up these plans? I am curious where they find all the scenery items, the track ballast, rivers, buildings, mountains, etc. I have been using Xtrakcad which I really like, but have to use paint to get even a rough idea as to the scenery. I would love to use the program that MR uses for designing my layouts.
I believe that MR still uses Adboe Illustrator to create the track plan art. As you may know, this is not a layout design program, but a high-end graphics program. They probably have a variety of templates for different buildings, trees, etc. on file to drop into the drawings.
The MR artists use a variety of different inputs from authors, even hand-drawn. Then the MR artists create a new drawing in Illustrator for publication.
For a high-quality print magazine, this makes sense, but it does allow the authors to create track arrangements that could not be built (overly tight S-curves, tracks too close to other tracks, etc.) and these errors are sometimes carried over and appear in print.
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