TrainPlayer Software is proud to be associated with Kalmbach Publishing Co., the place where model railroading began. We are working together to bring you the world's finest collection of track plans, on your screen and runnable with TrainPlayer.
The
first release of the program features the most popular book of track plans in
history: Linn Westcott's classic 101 Track Plans for Model Railroaders.
First published in 1956, the book has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide and is
still in print. The plans in this book come in all shapes and sizes (101
of them, to be exact), most illustrated with that great Linn Westcott artwork
which -- while nowhere close to what today's MR artists can do on their Macs --
has an irresistible old-fashioned railroad charm about it.
101 Track Plans is just the beginning. Kalmbach has been producing state-of-the-art track plans for over seventy years, and their closets are jammed with books and back issues full of great plans. Watch for these to start showing up in TrainPlayer format.
There's one plan more interesting than any of these: your own. If you have a picture of your plan -- or your club's, or the one you operate once a week -- there are a couple of ways you can convert it for TrainPlayer use, so you can run your own trains on your laptop:
TrackLayer is a part of TrainPlayer designed to do a very specific job: apply track on top of diagrams. It's not a CAD program -- although it IS a great way to sketch ideas on an outline of your space, and then run trains on them -- it doesn't do 3D perspective, or show you the view looking out the cab, or build fractal scenery, or even print. It has just a few simple but powerful tools for drawing track, curves, and turntables. It doesn't take long to learn and, like on your model in the basement, you can take a break from building and run trains any time.
We accept user-submitted track plans and prepare them for TrainPlayer, and with your permission post the results on our website for public download. There are some fine user-submitted plans on the site now, at www.trainplayer.com/Site2/User Track Plans.html. For more information about converting and posting your layout, ask by e-mail.