Modernizing Model Railroad Tours

Model railroad tours in the magazines have been largely static and even on the web we see the same format. First, there are a number of good pictures of the layout accompanied by a plan of the pike. These images are then accompanied by a large body of text that introduces us to the modeler, the layout, and anything the modeler wishes to tell us about model railroads. This “National Geographic” model has remained relatively unchanged to this day.

Allow me to introduce a new concept in model railroad tours built upon the ideas of one of the first role playing games, Adventure, later to become Dungeons and both released for the PDP-11 back in the pre-Lisa days of the 1980s. This enterprise would later morph into Dungeons and Dragons and then give us such adventures as the “Zork’ series and even the Adventures of Zelda from Nintendo. The concept is simple; the world is made up of points, connected by paths. At each point we can interact with a number of objects, take closer looks, and even zoom out to a large map of the place we are; in some versions we make that map as we travel along. Altogether, I shall coin this model railroad tour model as the “Model Railroad Adventurer” model and invite you to come on the very first theoretical prototype trip with me

In the model railroad world, each pike would be a standalone world; that is to say, each pike would be a different title and thus an entirely different adventure in the Zelda Series. When we start our adventure, we would start at that door to the pike. And in this moment we would see a number of things immediately at our fingertips; these are things that include n author Bio, a link to the author’s railroad blog or other pages, and perhaps anything the author has decided to put on this door. But the thing we are looking for is the Doorknob, and upon clicking it, we enter the layout room!

This entrance plays much like a movie; that is to say, once we have clicked the mouse, the door opens and the camera moves into the layout room to the first “Action Point.” At this action point we have a number of options. First, the Author has made provisions for a panoramic view; that is to say, we can turn 360 degrees on the plane. The Author has also provided us with a couple “Items” to look at in closer detail. The first is a close up “Caption Image” taken in this part of the layout. The second is an “Interactive Action’ option to RUN the little donkey loader. Run the donkey loader???? Yep, we click it, and we watch as the donkey loader loads a log car. If this was more advanced, preloaded video could provide users with a full interactive experience not unlike being on the model railroad pike, complete with animations for actions that might not even be allowable in real life. You never saw THAT in a model railroad magazine!!!

The current Action Point has become dull, as we explored all of the “Interactive Actions” and seen all of the “Caption Images” We look on our map and see we are only at the First Action point in the room; there’s still 16 more, hurray!! And as we turn our Action point camera towards the direction where you see the Aisle, we see an arrow pointing in that direction, much like “Return to Zork.” When we click on the arrow, we enter another movie as we follow another “Destination Path.” The speed we move is entirely determined by the speed the video camera moved along the path, though if we tire of the video we can click once and instantly appear at the next action zone. And so in this manner we can “Visit” the entire layout

Coding each adventure from scratch would be quite painful, so we have to develop a base model that takes the most advantage from other technologies around us and comes together in a cohesive manner. In this case, I use the example of the Internet photo album as the perfect pre-model for this idea, and from there we move into a realm not yet before explored. To make this model useful, we need to do nothing more upon development other then create the environment to “build” each of our new adventures.

The first step will require either an editor or the author to download the environment, which at this point we will ignore as we develop the features necessary to create a Layout Adventure. Our adventure developer starts the process by uploading a plan of the model railroad image into the Adventure Environment. In the toolbars specific to this program he sees that there are a couple icons for plotting a Tour. The first icon is for the “Door Point;” the author puts this at the point where we enter the layout room. Next to this icon is one that is for “Action Points.” At this point the author looks through all of his pictures and puts an action point close to where each image was captured. Finally, the Author has to connect the points in a logical manner, so he would click on the “Destination Path” Icon and in effect connect the dots, each path between two points being a separate path. Naturally we want a pretty map of the layout, so our author may modify the shape of these paths much like we can modify objects within programs such as xtrakcad 4.0. We Click the “Modify” icon, select the element, and modify it as the convention is done for the element in question. At this point we have coded our map!

Now that we have coded our map we still need to “Color’ it. We do this by uploading a file to the main bin for this layout tour and then associating that file with a point in the tour. Two video files would be used for each destination path, whereas we need one for both directions along that path. Next, we have images for both the panoramic backgrounds at action points as well as the Caption Images. And of course we have Action point videos to further facilitate additional user interaction with the layout, where each action is a different video.

But just how do we get everything orientated properly at an action point? Here the Author would use the use the modify tool to first click on the Action point; this would open the Action point as a if a visitor were taking the trip but provide the author with additional developer tools to create icons, [“Click the Donkey”] position the icons, and position caption Picture Icons – where each caption picture uploaded to the Action point is represented by an image icon with a figure label. Finally, the author would place the Arrow Icons in the places where the Destination paths would lead. Once complete, the Author would now lock all features in the environment and package it for the Internet into a single file or even zipped folder. Visitors such as you or I could now download this file and with no extra software we could go on a New Layout Adventure!!

Perhaps we are lazy armchair modelers and we don’t want to go on the layout adventure; we WANT a Rag version! So there on the door there is a picture of a can, with a rolled newspaper in it, with a graphic on the can that says “Canned version.” This version of the rag would contain all of the Caption Photos, the Layout map, and the Written Article. The author would place this Icon at the door point, where it would then appear and the canned stinkers of this world would have their cake too!

Thus I plant the idea – we shall see where it goes!!!