When I abandon a ROW in Trainz, I imagine that the rails were pulled up due to a business reason such as the route being redundant due to a better served line nearby with better cities and bigger industries. In other cases, the older line was too round-about to do any good and difficult to drive, and worse. the AI seem to get stupid on this line and want to take the better route anyway. So rather than keep fighting the AI traffic in this location, I'll give in and rip up the route, leaving behind the tell tail signs that this was once an active, maybe not always busy, rail line.
Along the abandoned line, I'll keep some of the line side objects in place such as relay boxes and telegraph poles. I've gone as far as to leave road crossings and some of the bridges in place as well. With the tracks gone, I then "lift up" the good ballast, and leave behind the dark cinders and allow the grass and trees to grow in close. In other places, I'll put electric poles along the ROW and leave some track intact, but very rusty along with piles of cross ties as though the line was recently removed in this location.
I've had a few cases where I line was closed only to be reopened later. I did this with the Riverside Cut-off. This was actually the original line that bypassed Granby out of Parkdale. When I opened the Granby to North Granby commuter line, I had ripped up the tracks through Riverside, but I found that the grade was too steep for freight on that end. Originally this line was built to avoid the steep grade up to Granby and runs long the river as a branch off of the Greenwood to Lynnwood line. This line never saw much passenger service in the past, and serves only as the freight cut-off, which it was built for in the first place.
John
Along the abandoned line, I'll keep some of the line side objects in place such as relay boxes and telegraph poles. I've gone as far as to leave road crossings and some of the bridges in place as well. With the tracks gone, I then "lift up" the good ballast, and leave behind the dark cinders and allow the grass and trees to grow in close. In other places, I'll put electric poles along the ROW and leave some track intact, but very rusty along with piles of cross ties as though the line was recently removed in this location.
I've had a few cases where I line was closed only to be reopened later. I did this with the Riverside Cut-off. This was actually the original line that bypassed Granby out of Parkdale. When I opened the Granby to North Granby commuter line, I had ripped up the tracks through Riverside, but I found that the grade was too steep for freight on that end. Originally this line was built to avoid the steep grade up to Granby and runs long the river as a branch off of the Greenwood to Lynnwood line. This line never saw much passenger service in the past, and serves only as the freight cut-off, which it was built for in the first place.
John
