That's some nice rolling stock, Ken. Your idea of an around the room shelf layout sounds nice. They can be very time consuming and expensive because the cost of the locomotives is so expensive now. The program is unlimited. You can build huge layouts (routes) without spending anything more than you do for the initial program, and much of the content including rollingstock is free.

There are rumors, whether these are true or not, that say that people have ended up in divorce courts because the neglect the spouse and play with their Trainz instead.

I am/was an N-Scaler so my stuff is a bit smaller. There was nothing like dropping to the cement floor a $250 locomotive I just purchased. When I did that, I gave up on the layout. Back in 2002/2003, I started to have very unsteady hands and kept dropping little springs and things on the floor. I also noticed that I couldn't paint models very well either. One part would be okay, but another part was sloppy. I was losing my fine motor control and didn't realize what was going on.

Anyway, the MS version was more of a driver program. There was a route developer for it, but it was really complicated to use. There's a new version coming sometime when, but there's no official release date. KRS is out now, but it has a lot to be desired. Many TRS users went to KRS only to return very quickly because it kept crashing and was also very difficult to use.

Trainz TRS2006 is really easy to use. The Surveyor module is the easiest out there and the company has won awards for this reason. Laying track is as simple as stretching a spline from one point to another. Turnouts appear automatically at a spline point when you connect tracks. There are also "fixed" track turnouts that are more detailed if you want. Placing buildings and other objects is only a matter of clicking on the item on the list then clicking the + and placing it where you want it. You want a hill? No problem, sculpt and pull it up out of the baseboard up to 3000 m if you want. The same with valleys and gorges. Use the landscape tools to create whatever you wish, and you can even import grayscale images.

Yes you can share the layout with others. Auran runs what is known as the Download Station. This is where the $20.00 a year comes in because the default download speed is in the kilobytes instead of the hundreds of k-bytes with an FCT or First Class Ticket.

There are nearly 100,000 objects to download. They range from super terrific to mediocre and are made by the user community. If you desire, you can upload your route when it's finished so that the other users can download it. In addition if you like someone elses route a lot, you can modify it and even merge it into your route. Then with their permission upload the modified route again.

The program is quite customizable. There are so many aspect of it from content creation and scripting (Java-like program) to just driving the layouts. I spend most of my time in Surveyor with a little time spent in Driver to enjoy my route and those of others that I have downloaded.

John