Recent content by TSwenson

Well... they have some meaning... M is a Merchandise (regular freight), I for Intermodal, L is for Local, Y for Yard, U for Unscheduled (Extra), W for Work trains, and so forth.

The old Pan Am/Guilford symbols... all gone now and replaced with the soulless corporate CSX numbering system. Some other jobs from the end of the Pan Am time are: WAPO/POWA -- Waterville, Me to Portland (Maine). The two crews would swap trains at the mid point meet. POAY/AYPO -- Portland to...

In the US the couple/uncouple operation is fairly quick, very fast if you are switching "Off Air" (i.e. no air brakes on the cars, usually at a class yard). A on average minute is about right, the big time killer is securement, or in other words, applying/removing the hand brakes. Most cars...

"Slugsmasher" has a log dump asset on the DLS as I recall in 3' narrow-gauge, but as to the super elevation of the rail I doubt that it has been done. I believe it was generally deemed that the difficulty outweighed the rewards. The super elevation should be noticeable as it was fairly...

I love the picture location numbers on the map... fantastic, great way to "sell" the route. It reminds me of magazine articles on model railroads. What are the buildings in photo #2? The Southwest is a bit out of my normal, so I'm looking for some buildings like those for a project.

Another bit of signal lore, the MEC or Maine Central Railroad order board semaphores had only two positions (stop and clear) unlike most with three positions [Stop, slow for orders, and clear]. The MEC just put some washers in the middle position so you couldn't use it, I'll try to dig up a...

I use a spline point roughly every 15 degrees of arc to layout curves, I adjust that as needed for specific locations or geometry. I frequently use the old fixed track curves to lay out large or complex curves, a bit clunky but it works surprisingly well. [EDIT] The old "FT" curves by...

Don't take it wrong.... this issue frustrates the daylights out of me, if we can change the horizontal units, we should be able to change the vertical units! These are basic software functions and have been for the last 20+ years. My guess, and it truly is a guess, is that it wasn't put in...

Now that I've stopped laughing at the tit for tat, back and forth commentary on the inadequacies of our respective measuring systems... two things... First, rick1958, suck it up like the rest of us and do the "math" to put real measurements in to the game like the rest of us (heck, the computer...

That is Schrödinger's statement for Trainz routes... If you look at the statistics, 7 baseboards gets you just over 3 miles, figuring on 3 baseboards surrounding the line gets you 91 baseboards, while a 2 board buffer get 55. Certainly a doable project, just needing some... motivation. My...

Finding sounds can be a pain in the trackside, if it is a sound you don't want at all, try deleting it and then deleting the "missing asset" from the route (if you want the sound you can redownload it later). Drastic but effective. Finding it otherwise can be difficult, and purging sounds can...

Well, from the stories I've heard, it was more like shuffling people who screwed up to places they were less visible. It would be an interesting speculation of the "What Ifs" of the PAR sale (NS, G&W, outside investors, etc.) and the results would be... entertaining. As to the NS purchase...

Even now some of the stories from that era still circulate, and based on what I've heard of those stories, once you were in management you didn't get fired, just put where you did the least harm. It ran as a 10mph railroad because they made money no mater what, if not from the trains then from...

I would think some of it is management retention, some of it is that PAR sort of ran PSR before it was in vouge, and all that kind of makes lots of stuff feel the same. Some of it is probably CSX learning how badly PAR suckered them on the sale... and having to find out for themselves what...

I check on the AI trains periodically if I'm managing the RR, but if I'm running a loco I let them do their thing and just worry about my train and only check if there is going to be a meet or something.