Inspired by JackTannery's Gold Mine, I wanted to play around with the Brush Tool in Xara (Xara didn't previously have a brush tool until version 9, which I have now). In the past I've never tried to do railroad tracks as without a custom brush tool to create railroad ties, I'd have to create and place each one at a time (I was never going to do that!) So I thought I'd give a dwarven mine a shot.

I've laid almost all the tracks - I plan to place a little more length in the maze tunnel in the top left corner. The gray areas are intended mining chambers. With the Pit I'm going to attempt a tiered pit with the track ramping downward towards the bottom of the pit. The Old Pit has been exhausted of resources, so it's abandoned, used for general dumping. The main track will be bridged over this pit since it's mostly not used. A small access rail is still available. The Workshop was also mined out in the past, so is now used as an area to create and repair tools, equipment, ore cars, etc. There will be smithies and shop areas throughout the workshop. Lhoram's Cove is a cave alongside the underground river and serves as a lunch room area for miners with a famous tavern and eatery serving lunching and ale for all shifts. The Ore Car Parking area is kind of an assembly area where ore cars are placed at the end of each shift to keep the tracks less busy with unused cars.

This mine is bit more planned in design, which was intentional. I tried a different layout earlier and it was too senseless and chaotic, so this is a better attempt. Doing this is definitely inspired by JackTannery's Gold Mine map. I may even play with some lighting as well.

I'll be doing my standard photo-realistic style with cgtextures for fills using Xara Designer Pro 9, and probably include this as a sample map for my upcoming guide book - 25 Quick & Dirty Map Tutorials Guide.

GP

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