Quote Originally Posted by Mattias Jansson View Post
This means we (I’m not alone in this) will have to produce maps that mainly consist of lines, whereas they won’t require super detailed landscape relief. Basically only coast lines, lakes, navigable rivers and canals are necessary as far as landscape features are concerned. The basic background can be white or possibly light yellowish, maybe with some depiction of mountainous terrain and some other very basic features (but nothing like built up areas since they vary too much over time and it would be too complex to recreate the exact urban sprawl for different decades). Other than that the rail lines will be the focus in the form of solid, dashed or pointed lines in a range of different colours (to separate type, gauge, ownership, relative importance etc.). While this may not require extremely high resolution, we do intend to make maps that are of good enough quality that we may eventually be able to print them.
To me, this suggests that you should look at vector graphics programs like Adobe Illustrator for a more illustrative than painted look.