Advice-Coal Line

[Red_TVRM]

I am thinking of getting a route down and wanted some feed back. Below is what I have written up about it and would be looking for feedback on what adjustmants need to be made. Be kind I am new to this.

The Volunteer Line-Coal Mine, Moonshine or the Volunteer Line

Dison Yard is nestled between two mountains and wedged beside the small town of Oliver Springs, Tenn. Dison is the home of the Volunteer Railroad a coal line that is now partially owned by Norfolk Southern Railroad, who’s primary business is the rail service work to the mines littered around the Wind Rock mountain, Clinch River area of Eastern Tennessee and South East Kentucky. The Volunteer connects to the Norfolk main at Knoxville, TN and has delivery at the Clinton Power and Cleveland Power facilities.

The Volunteer operates mostly older engines with the newest being the SD-50 (I like the more classic box design locomotives). Some trains will see NS units in line, but the orange and white Volunteer engines are always leading the way.

Volunteer paint-take the CSX paint-make the yellow and gray parts orange and the blue parts white. I have logo

Dison Yard is a tired, sleepy yard that has let technology pass it by. The men who work out of this yard are hard working coal men who escaped or dodged the mine by working for the railroad. Stacked in the yard is many consists of coal cars, the occasional caboose and the companies engines. From the small gravel parking lot you have the companies small offices, break room, depot area and then the locomotives are just our side. There is a small fuel siding and also a shop siding for engine work. This yard is in the middle of town, a small run down town.

Wind Rock Mine-
From Dison yard you will enter the VL main and slowly creep through Oliver Springs before turning north up the Frost Bottom siding and up the holler along the river. Once you pass under the highway, small mine houses dot the track/road side to the right and ½ mile the road cross the line and runs to the left until it is out of site. Shortly after leaving town the grade slowly increases as you climb into the mountains toward Wind Rock#43. Occasionally you pass the sorted mountain home and cabin. The mine sites off the main, forcing the train to pass the switch and back down into the mine area, a caboose is always required for this run as the 2 mile reverse push requires eyes on the back. Down in the mine area the train can be loaded and when ready move out from the yard.

Down at the coal load out you snake by the creek and work your train into the narrow area where the mine works. As you push back the train drops a steep grade that reminds you of the Sand Patch and a good reason why there is a set of pusher engines on the siding to help you get back out of the Wind Rock Mine load out.

Once at the switch the train can go left and be carried through Lake City (small town with the rail line running through town) just before you get into Lake City you will pass the Coal Creek #2 mine siding. Around through Lake City you will parallel the highway for a few miles before you reach the Clinton Coal Power Plant. After you unload here you can be dispatched back to either of the two mines you passed or go from Clinton, through Knoxville and back to Dison Yard.

Watch out on this line, the local tourist train, an old steam engine often runs this line. Giving tourist the feel of coal railroading and the preservation of the steam era.

Coal Creek#2
Leaving the yard as above, Coal Creek #2 is situated in a slightly more urban area, with housing and business stacking up to the side of the mine. This old mine has been turning out coal for years.

Once loaded the CC run will take you back down the line through Oliver Springs and over to join the mainline at Knoxville, where you will run the NS line down to the Cleveland Coal Power Plant.

This trip will take time as you are a low priority train on Norfolk’s main line running north to south. Meeting other trains will be a common happening.

Lafollette Freight and Quarry
Lafollette is the town that coal never touched. Set in the coal hills, but having no mines it is a manufacturing area. When you leave Dison yard one switch takes you to the coal lines and the south run will take you to Lafollette. You will go down without a train and once in town you will assemble the consist by stopping at the rock quarry, manufacturing area and also the chemical company. From there you will come back up the line and take the coal siding passing the two mines, going through Lake City and over to Clinton Chemical where you will drop empties and pick up some loaded cars. From there you get on the NS main for Cleveland and do two stops there at the rock area and also the manufacturing facility. Once done you will leave Cleveland and go back to Lafollette dropping off the full chemical tanks and empty cars at the quarry and manufacturing area before going back to the yard with just the motive power you came in on.

Knoxville Tourist Railroad
The Knoxville Tourist Railroad leaves at the Knoxville depot in downtown Knoxville. The steam engine will carry several passenger coaches and has a caboose on the end. From Knoxville it heads toward Oliver Springs, passing the birth of atomic power, Oak Ridge, TN, at Oliver Springs it will go through downtown, pass Dison yard and climb the Frost Bottom Siding passing the mines and lives nestled in this area, down into Lake City, through Clinton and back to Knoxville.

Clinton is a suburb of Knoxville, passing homes and business.

Knoxville is a major city.

Oak Ridge is also a suburb of Knoxville and also a major nuclear power area where they build and dispose of nukes.

Oliver Springs is more rural and is isolated from Oak Ridge by a mountain.
Lafollette is much like Oliver Springs, but slightly large and no mountain between them. Farming country is between the two towns.

Lake City is slightly larger than Oliver Springs, the rail line goes through downtown (Lagrange, KY style), passes business, homes, restaurants, stations, ball fields, before it breaks out into the slightly more rural area until it reaches the edges of Clinton.

Cleveland is smaller than Knoxville, but larger than the other cities. Between it and Knoxville is farming, several smaller, small towns and you pass over I-75 a few times.


Distances (All from Dison Yard)
Wind Rock Mine-12 miles to siding
Coal Creek Mine-18 miles to siding
Lake City-20 miles
Clinton-10 miles from Lake City
Knoxville-5 miles from Clinton
Knoxville-20 miles from Dison Yard
Oak Ridge-10 miles
Lafollette-14 miles
Cleveland-30 miles

[mjolnir]

Originally Posted by Red_TVRM

I am thinking of getting a route down and wanted some feed back. Below is what I have written up about it and would be looking for feedback on what adjustmants need to be made. Be kind I am new to this.

I don't intend to be mean, but my advice is to start smaller. Much smaller.

I'd add a third railroad to the mix, which interchanges with your Volunteer route somewhere. This third railroad would be very short, prehaps no more than a board or two, but probably not more than a half dozen, with a single locomotive (perhaps the built in GE 44 tonner, or an SW-1), a yard consisting of two or three tracks, one of which is a runaround, and the other(s) the interchange with your Volunteer route. On this route, your volunteer route will be minimally represented at the moment by just a line of track. Start with one industry, a coal mine or coal loader. You railroad gets empties from the Volunteer road, moves them to the mine, where they are loaded, and moved the loads back to the interchange.

When you are satisfied with your level of competence with track laying, terrain building, texturing, and controlling the world effects, &c., they you can expand your Volunteer road by extending the line from the end of this route.

Your proposed volunteer route looks quite interesting, but if you're working alone, I suspect if you try to do the whole thing as your first route, there's too big a chance that you'll get frustrated, and give up.

By the way, this is exactly the approach I'm taking to learning to build a route. After I spent more time than I care to admit running routes created by others, I am working on my first serious route. It's exactly the type of situation I suggested as a first effort on your part, a big railroad, and a very small one, the purpose of the small one being to carry loads from a single shipper to an interchange with the large road; there will be a single locomotive (don't need more, it's downgrade from the shipper to the interchange), and the shipper can handle ten cars. I'm satisfied with the track layout, and I'm working on fleshing out the terrain, and thinking about the textures I'm going to want to use.

When I'm done, I can extend the big road with which my route interchanges in any of three directions, and can extend my shortline in a fourth, if I choose.

And the best part is, If I discover that I totally botched something fundamental, it won't be too much pain to abandon this one, and start over.

ns



ns

[Red_TVRM]

Thanks for the suggestion; my goal would be to add a line from Lake City into Kentucky for more coal drags.

Are you suggesting adding a yard at this end?

My idea would be to start building at the main yard, once that is done and I am happy, move the track up the Frost Bottom siding. Then on to Coal Creek and so forth. It will be a large project and take a good bit of time for sure. I’ve seen route builders here who build, been thinking of talking to one of them.

What of the distances, do they seem too short, too long or about right?

[mjolnir]

First, I have to confess that I did not read your description very thoroughly.

One thing to keep in mind is that I approach railroad simulation using TS differently than most others. TRS / TS is designed that you push your train into the mine and "live load" the train, but the way that real railroads work, and what I prefer to model, is somewhat different. I don't have my trains wait while cars are being loaded, because except for passenger trains, this is not how railroading in the real world happens. As far as adding a yard at the end, I've no opinion on that.

As to distances, have you sat down with a map (or Google (R) maps) and looked at the distances and elevations along your proposed route? If I were planning a route in a defined geographical area, the first thing I'd do is to acquaint myself with the geology and geography of the area as it really is. Then when you know the actual physical distances between the point you propose to model, you can better decide whether you want to produce those models in actual length, or whether you want to compress distances somewhat, and if so, then how much.

Then you'll want to decide how much detail to add. How many houses do you want to add, and how many non-working vehicles do you want to add to each one, and do you want to model the dog house, and the dog? It's all possible, but it all takes time, and the more detailed you choose to make the route, the more time it will take. Also, the greater the level of detail, the more demand on computing resources. Again, these are things for you to decide. You'll need to decide what textures you want to use, too. Some of the textures will reflect the geology and flora of the area you are working with than others, and it won't be easy to tell (in some cases) whether this rock texture or that one is more representative. And a grass texture that looks good in surveyor, when you get it down on the route, may not look good at all, or may need to be in a certain orientation, or a certain size.

Also, once you have laid the first board, you have determined the cardinal orientation of the route, and the base elevation, so you might want to have a plan of work so that you don't do as I did, and enter track in a wrong direction. You may also want to experiment and see what track you like best, and what roads.

If I were setting out to build the route you propose, I expect that Dison yard would be the third thing I'd do. The first would be the 2 plus mile long section between Windrock #43, and the main line. The way I'd do it is to first rough in the scenery, using the landscape tools, then lay the track, figuring out how to lay spline track (if that's what you're going to use) and where the road crossings are going to be. When you have the track and general layout of the roads, and landscape the way you want, save the route. Then start working with textures, to get the terrain and flora the way you want. By saving the route, if you get a couple of boards textured with rock, and you decide you don't like your efforts, it's easy enough to quit without saving, load a clean copy of the board, and try again.

After doing the industrial branch into Windrock #43, I'd do the line between the connection to the mine, and to Dison Yard, and the third bit I'd work on would be Dison.

As far as distances looking right, your route is quite interesting. Are you intending to attempt to create the real spatial relationships between these places? There is a real La Follette, TN, but it's North of Clinton, and if you're going there betwen Oak Creek and Cleveland, then you're doing considerable backtracking.

ns

[Red_TVRM]

The places are real as they are the area I grew up in; Lafollette can be changed to Harriman or the main yard simply moved to Lake City. Which may not be a bad idea as a section could be cut from the project and leave/return to Lake City would be done. I brain farted and added that run as a second thought and something different.

The feel I described is much like the area is in life and in my mind for this project.

I liked your idea of dropping the consist and picking on up, so the idea could be to change it to a drop, with a AI yard engine there to do the loading and then all is needed is to pick up the load after dropping the empties.

The distances aren’t near real, but my idea was to fit it in a workable session as well as to also allow for longer work when time permits.

I used Cleveland as it is south of both, gives some road time and seemed a good fit. In hind site, I could ax the NS link, switch it to CSX and go to Etowah where the consist could be dropped for CSX to move down the line.

On research (mind you I left Trainz for a time as real life has been busy) I have found some high quality CSX engines, I like low hood, with some very nice weathering. I want the worn feel to this. I want it to feel as if it has been used and well past used up, but it still keeps giving and giving, well past its point of needing major upgrades. Unless I can find a engine painter, I may have to go with the payware weather motive.

The detail-well I’ve seen some remarkable detail in some work and I would like a medium feel to it all. I am chasing more the atmosphere than anything else. Capturing the feel of a coal area isn’t always easy as they can be repressed habitats surrounded by beauty.

The relationship goes to the motto I have created for the Volunteer Line “Coal mine, moonshine or the Volunteer Line”, meaning in these areas of Appalachia choices can be limited as to what your career is if you decide to live/work locally. So as an engineer on the VL, you would know the men at #43 and #2, because they are your father, brother, high school buddy and the people you pass through OS and LC would be people from church and school. You may have been their best friend or the guy they hated, but you aren’t under ground and you didn’t move away.

To be frank, I am working this route to complete a short book I am writing about the exact subject set in the type of area I have laid out to build. I am hoping that the ability to sit and run the line would also help me get the flavor flowing to go forth and complete that project, capturing the spirit of the area and its people.

Your feed back is very valuable as it has me reworking, rethinking the lay out and idea of the project. Placing it on paper is also a huge help to me. I’ve tried just doing it, but it hasn’t worked very well.

[Red_TVRM]

If you have seen the movie October Sky, then you have seen the area. The movie was filmed in Oliver Springs and the surrounding area.

Also the logo for the project

[mjolnir]

I haven't seen the movie, and while I've been through the area, it was during the night: came down 75 from Kentucky, through Knowville, and then east through Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I do have some sense of the Southern Appalachians, though, from a bit further south from when I traveled from Gainesville, GA, to Chattanooga, picking up the interstate just south of the Georgia line.

ns

[Red_TVRM]

I got ya. We don't live too far apart.

Thanks for the feedback and if you got more keep it coming.

I have rethought the idea some and will most likely make the industry run in Lake City, that way there isn't a extra city made just for that single run. It would encompss Lake City which would already be modeled. Plus that sets it up for northern expansion.