A remarkable narrow Gauge (2 ft) railroad was created to serve the mines and mills of Gilpin County in the mountains of Colorado in the 1880s and survived in service up to 1917. It served 55 major mines, 22 mills, and ran over 15 1⁄2 miles (24.9 km) covering an area of some 3 square miles with a winding, bending, rising and falling amazing network of rails. It was called the Gilpin Tram and is legendary among those who study the history of railroading and mining in Colorado. The countryside was both barren in some places and lush with dense forests, rushing rivers and streams and saw both hot summers and frigid winters, at an elevation of around 7000 ft. It was a excellent topic for a sim route and Mark Baldwin rose to the challenge and created one for Trainz 2006 and another veteran Trainz modeller and worker, Llinda Tingvik created brilliant models of many of the mines, mills and historic structures. Mark is well versed in Colorado mining history, and is also a professor at the Colorado School of Mines and knows the history and the locations of the railroad first hand. He was able to create all of the track bed of the route with all of its details and placed most of the mines, mills and towns including Central City and Blackhawk.The Gilpin Tram was 2 ft gauge but the Colorado Central ran thru the region with standard NG and there were sections of dual track, all of this are re created in the route. The Date set for the route is 1902, early 1900s. The Route lasted until the price of silver fell and other conditions caused the railway to be closed in 1917.
The project lay dormant for many years. I found about it from Linda who was a great help and mentor to me in my earlier days of learning to model Colorado historic structures and she shared the original route with me, which at that time did not run on the more modern versions of Trainz. I had the chance to work on Trainz Routes with Jango and others, and in our working team a modeling partner, Paul Gorski also a member here, was able to help update the route to run on TANE.
I had that chance working with Jango on the Rollins Pass 1910 project to see his amazing skills and artistry at work and thought to ask if he might consider helping update the landscape on the Gilpin if we could get permission from Mark to venture to update the route. Mark kindly consented and now we are working as a team to bring the Gilpin to modern life with TANE sp4. At this time we do not plan to bring it into 2019 for a number of technical reasons and limitations. The future release is not set but work is proceeding and we wanted to share the project with the community and will post updates as things develop.
Mark has posted information and pictures of the original version of the route here: including history of the route and background.. http://gilpintram.com/
and you can see examples of Linda's wonderful modelling work here on her web site on the Cripple Creek Mining District: http://www.cripplecreekrailroads.com/index.php
It is because of the efforts, and skills and vision and generous sharing of their interests that Trainz and other sims have flourished and we owe them all of those pioneers and the ones who continue this work to great wonderful content for us all a great vote of thanks.
Here are some photos of the route and its locomotives and distinctive Ore cars, and maps of the route and then we will post pictures of the development: early before and after tests by Jango and now pictures of his full on work to upgrade and enhance the route using detailed and careful study of the flora, and topography and appearance of the rocks, ground, hills, and landscape of the Actual Colorado that the sim re creates.

Chris Gerlach
Gilpin Team
The project lay dormant for many years. I found about it from Linda who was a great help and mentor to me in my earlier days of learning to model Colorado historic structures and she shared the original route with me, which at that time did not run on the more modern versions of Trainz. I had the chance to work on Trainz Routes with Jango and others, and in our working team a modeling partner, Paul Gorski also a member here, was able to help update the route to run on TANE.
I had that chance working with Jango on the Rollins Pass 1910 project to see his amazing skills and artistry at work and thought to ask if he might consider helping update the landscape on the Gilpin if we could get permission from Mark to venture to update the route. Mark kindly consented and now we are working as a team to bring the Gilpin to modern life with TANE sp4. At this time we do not plan to bring it into 2019 for a number of technical reasons and limitations. The future release is not set but work is proceeding and we wanted to share the project with the community and will post updates as things develop.
Mark has posted information and pictures of the original version of the route here: including history of the route and background.. http://gilpintram.com/
and you can see examples of Linda's wonderful modelling work here on her web site on the Cripple Creek Mining District: http://www.cripplecreekrailroads.com/index.php
It is because of the efforts, and skills and vision and generous sharing of their interests that Trainz and other sims have flourished and we owe them all of those pioneers and the ones who continue this work to great wonderful content for us all a great vote of thanks.
Here are some photos of the route and its locomotives and distinctive Ore cars, and maps of the route and then we will post pictures of the development: early before and after tests by Jango and now pictures of his full on work to upgrade and enhance the route using detailed and careful study of the flora, and topography and appearance of the rocks, ground, hills, and landscape of the Actual Colorado that the sim re creates.










Chris Gerlach
Gilpin Team
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