How true to life is the Avery-Drexel route?

JonMyrlennBailey

Well-known member
It is made by tume and comes packed with TANE. I first tried it way back in 2015 but shelved it for almost decade now.

It is the most scenic route I've played with. I love the mountains, rivers, streams, canyons and forests of the North American pacific northwest. I've just cloned my own version of it a week ago and I'm running my own rolling stock on it. I did a few custom touches like wild animals near the main line. Deer, black bear and wolves. Even a hunting scene with guys with guns with saddle horses and a deer in the background. Rifle bang sound effect too and lineside camera focused in on this scene. The Underground Boundary asset is handy for getting in-cab views automatically since there are numerous mountain tunnels.

All those 1960's/1970's Volkswagen buses drive me nuts but the logging theme, vintage Kenworth trucks, highway construction scenes, spline rivers and Caterpillar tractors are cool.

One thing I've noticed is that the speed limits set on this Milwaukee Road St. Paul Pass/Northern Pacific Lookout Pass layout between Montana and Idaho is the high-speed limits set by the author. Trains bang around tight curves like a roller coaster ride. I found that reducing speeds by about 50% makes the tight twisties much gentler to negotiate. 60 MPH zones now are 45 MPH. 45 was converted to 30. 30 was converted to 20. This makes for very scenic but very slow railroading indeed.

This route is electrified over the MLWR portion but I run diesel-electrics and my payware CN pacific-class steam locomotives only.
 
In the late 70s up until the line was foolishly abandoned, the MILW ran GP40-2s. You could run CP-Rail diesels today as if the line was never abandoned because initially the Soo Line purchased the remaining portion from Miles City east and the once CP-Rail wholly-owned subsidiary is now fully merged into the parent company.



I agree the speed limits are a bit fast in the simulation and I too have slowed them down by at least half. Given that the MILW was never big on maintenance during this period, I don't think they even ran that quickly on the line.
 
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