ICG Freight heading north through Grand Junction, Tennessee.
May Creek in Tennessee. About five miles downstream of this point May Creek flows through our family farm. Usually, the sandy creek looks dry with no flowing water. My Dad told me under the surface water is moving through the sand. I verified that once while crossing May Creek on a horse. The horse in the middle of the creek sank up to my saddle. I jumped off, made it to good ground and with the bridle pulled the horse out of the quicksand.
This time, we're focusing on the town of Clyde. Founded just as the railroad was being built through the area, Clyde was intended to be a place where ranchers to the east and loggers to the west could bring their products to market. While the town never had that economic boom the founders were anticipating, today the tiny town is abuzz with industrial activity, now home to four on-line customers for the railway. "Clyde Yard" isn't officially recognized as a yard, it's a couple sidings at best, but as traffic in and out of the town have increased, crossovers and pullout tracks have been built so switching ops never have to enter the mainline. Today, we're observing the Clyde Turn as it services local industries.
The Clyde Turn arrives in its namesake town and crosses Main Street.
First order of business is to break up the train into more digestible sections, so they won't have to shove the entire train into each industrial lead.
First stop is a logging loadout. Four empties will be swapped with five loads here.
With the swap complete, we head back to Clyde Yard.
Our next stop is Southern Pine Lumber. One empty centerbeam is being swapped with one loaded with lumber.The empty will be added to our outbound train.
Now on to the two freight houses in Clyde. Building 2 gets three boxcars of inbound goods and gives us back two empties, building 1 gets two empty boxcars and gives us back two loads.
With the four boxcars added to the outbound train, it's time to head back across Main Street to tackle the beast...
Cascade Recycling is by far the largest customer in Clyde. They were recently awarded a contract to scrap railcars that had aged out or were otherwise regulated out of service. Today the local will be picking up eight loads of scrap metal and two empty flatcars, and dropping off nine empty gondolas and two retired tank cars.
The pickup...
And dropping off. The cars picked up here will be added to the outbound train. And with that, today's chores in Clyde are complete. The outbound train is fully assembled and ready to head back to Fort Bellows. Before taking off, the crew breaks for lunch at a local tavern. The engineer glares longingly at the bar, wishing he had a beer to go with his burger. But alas, he's on the clock, so Diet Coke will have to do.
Tinkering with lighting a little bit on the never-ending Cascade Pass II project (seriously, I will probably never finish this. Please stop with the DM's asking when/if/where it will be released. You know who you are.). Parts of the route just seemed to me to be rather... dull? So I'm trying to find that common ground between bright and colorful, and headache inducing. I think I might need to tone it back down a smidge, but I thought I'd go fishing for opinions first. The following screenshots are around Clyde, where I've done a little more detailing since my last post, at noon sharp on a clear day. None of the ground textures or greenery have changed.