Indiana Rail Road, Indianapolis Subdivision... Large Pic Warning (1440x810)

Hello all,

For quite some time now, I have been working on creating the Indianapolis Subdivision of the Indiana Rail Road for Trainz. Spanning some 115 miles from Indianapolis to Sullivan, IN, trackwork alone has taken me years to complete. The route includes large yards at Indianapolis and Jasonville, and includes the G.E./Rogers Quarry branch in Bloomington, a branch to Bear Run Mine near Dugger, the Midland Subdivision from Dugger to the yard at Jasonville, and the Chicago Subdivision from Linton to Jasonville. Interchanges with CSX and Indiana Southern are included. This is over 130 total miles of track. I used photographs, maps, and Google Earth extensively in track laying, to ensure everything is as prototypical as possible.

Industries modeled include Hoosier Energy, the Bear Run mine, General Electric (refrigerators), Berry Plastics, Rogers Quarry, a trans-loading facility, and U.S. Foodservice, with various other industries ranging from scrap yards to cement plants. At this point, trackwork is 100% complete, and I have about 15 miles of scenery completed. This is my first real Trainz creation, but I feel like I am constantly learning.

I will use this thread to showcase the route as scenery springs up. Any advice on how I can better my technique is greatly appreciated!

At the current point in time I am not planning on making this available to the public. I'd like to give a big shout-out to the guys at Jointed Rail. Some of their midwest stuff is right at home here. I'd like to start the thread with some shots I took during a switching session in Indianapolis yesterday.

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The mouth of the yard. Note the older crossing signals; elsewhere, ATLS crossings are used, but with several tracks converging here, and switching ops being performed, I had to avoid an ATLS setup.

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The above image is a view looking north from atop the CSX bridge.

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Showing its age, this area has over a half-dozen abandoned industrial spurs that have been partially removed.

Looks good so far.

Very nice keep up the good work.

Very nice looking route I will be keeping an eye on updates here.

Not bad, maybe try finding some more realistic/HD ground textures.

Looking good, can't wait to see more.

Well done for West street crossing! I used to go over that crossing almost daily. I love INRD running through Bargersville as I live close to there.

Scored a couple of nice SD90's during the Jointed Rail weekend sale... the 9025 and maroon CEFX unit. Couldn't help but have some of the motive power pose for a photo op with the two new additions.

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I took 9025 on its inaugural run over the northern portion of the line tonight... Wanted to share a couple shots of the new power. Will post a few more route pics tomorrow.
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Here are some more shots of 9025's first trip across the line.
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I have decided to signal the route, although this isn't prototypical. During track building, they helped me determine if I had connected everything properly. I may remove them, although they do seem to help the AI trains.

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More to come!

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One of the details I pay close attention to is individual detailing of the crossings based on their real-world counterparts, being that the route passes through some fairly urban areas. Just need to adjust the flash pattern here to sync both sets of flashers.

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Nice job on the route.

Excellent work d0g, you have some good detail in there (love the truck accident).
Regards
Bob

Yeah. How did you manage to set that up?

That wrecked truck is an HP object (can't remember the exact name), I got it with their Marias Pass X Route. I just placed it right in front of the crossing signal and adjusted the "object roll" setting on the signal to make it have a lean going on. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but I placed flashing red and blue emergency light bars (available on the download station) directly on the roof of the police cruisers and the ambulance. Eventually I'm going to set a mock restricted speed zone (with invisible 15 MPH markers) through there. Originally I wanted to simulate a signal failure there, and was looking for a U.S brakeman/conductor with a red flag to flag the crossing. All I could find were green and yellow flags, so to keep it realistic, I decided to switch it up a bit and do the accident rather than a signal failure.

d0g said:

That wrecked truck is an HP object (can't remember the exact name), I got it with their Marias Pass X Route. I just placed it right in front of the crossing signal and adjusted the "object roll" setting on the signal to make it have a lean going on. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but I placed flashing red and blue emergency light bars (available on the download station) directly on the roof of the police cruisers and the ambulance. Eventually I'm going to set a mock restricted speed zone (with invisible 15 MPH markers) through there. Originally I wanted to simulate a signal failure there, and was looking for a U.S brakeman/conductor with a red flag to flag the crossing. All I could find were green and yellow flags, so to keep it realistic, I decided to switch it up a bit and do the accident rather than a signal failure.

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This is very creative work. Thanks for sharing how you did it.

In one of the screenies above you have old track without rails, then some part rail just before the bumper.
How did you do this? I thought it was well done.

The ties are a regular track spline, named "overgrown track bed" or something like that. (Interestingly enough, you could run a train on it if you wanted to.) The rusty rails are actually environmental, or "road" splines. With some careful work, I placed them directly on top of the track spline and placed a bumper right at the end, with stick rail on each side of it. There are literally dozens of old sidings like this across the line, and I modeled them all uniquely, taking into account how they look in the real world. Some have old rusty rails partially buried in dirt, and some are simply ties with maybe an old rail or two, like the one pictured here. None of these are accessible by train; even if they are still connected to the line, which some are, I have removed the switchstand(s), so the switches will not allow access.

Although I have not yet done scenery along this part of the route, I'd like to share some shots of perhaps the route's most spectacular landmark: The Richland Creek Viaduct, or better known as Tulip Trestle. Located in Greene County, Indiana, it is a 2,295-foot steel trestle sitting 157 feet above the valley below it. It was constructed in 1905-1906 by the Indianapolis Southern Railway, and was subsequently used by Illinois Central, and finally the Indiana Rail Road. It is purportedly the longest rail trestle in the United States, and the third-longest of its kind in the world.

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d0g said:

The ties are a regular track spline, named "overgrown track bed" or something like that. (Interestingly enough, you could run a train on it if you wanted to.) The rusty rails are actually environmental, or "road" splines. With some careful work, I placed them directly on top of the track spline and placed a bumper right at the end, with stick rail on each side of it. There are literally dozens of old sidings like this across the line, and I modeled them all uniquely, taking into account how they look in the real world. Some have old rusty rails partially buried in dirt, and some are simply ties with maybe an old rail or two, like the one pictured here. None of these are accessible by train; even if they are still connected to the line, which some are, I have removed the switchstand(s), so the switches will not allow access.

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Creative work. Ta very muchly for explaining.

Very nice!! I'm from Indiana... Does route will release in DLS?

nickelplateroad said:

Does route will release in DLS?

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As it stands, I'm not planning on it for a couple of different reasons. I've been working on it for several years, and there are so many different assets, I don't know how I would even begin to track them all down and see if they are legally allowed to be used in a public route and uploaded to the DLS. That, and I still have about 100+ miles of scenery to do, and I have no idea if the route will be TANE compatible. Some assets are Pre-TS12. With support ending for any version below TANE, and the very real possibility that this route may not be fully compatible with TANE, I just don't know how a DLS upload would be possible... unless I can confirm TANE compatibility and check up on the assets.

Sorry I don't have a more definite answer. Thank you for your interest though.