My Mega PA/NJ route

[rwk]

Can you guess the location? Hint, this is where three anthracite railroads met, and where one of the biggest industrial companies' home plant and world headquarters was located, they made a very hard metal for use in construction. By 1976 all the tracks here had one owner, a newly formed consolidated railroad with blue as it's principal color. The route is actually a mixture of other's routes and my own DEM data to join them together, and blank DEM from the DLS. It will be a pretty big route. At least 151 miles east-west. For now, the route will be for myself due to custom cloned objects like signs and the fact that I used other's routes in it. At least two routes by others but that I'm improving on with new track, roads, crossing signals, etc. I'm still working on it, and I'm a one man band. I might do a "retro" version representing the 1980's or even earlier.

 

[Trainmaster189]

I'm a fan of 80's and 90's era Conrail besides just 2010's era NS and I think this would be very nice!

 

[rwk]

Well, there are a bunch of Lehigh Valley, Reading, and CNJ diesels on various sites as well as Conrail, so you can see where I am going with this. The location in the screenshot is Bethlehem, PA where the Reading and Lehigh Valley Railroad met. I improved the old Reading Line by uslw with new track and stuff and added on to it to go to Bound Brook, NJ and Harrisburg, PA, plus I will have the old Lehigh Valley Railroad up to Sayre, PA as well as the CNJ through Jim Thorpe, etc. I would also like to recreate steam excursions of the past like when the Blue Mountain & Reading ran off line trips in the mid-late 1980's.

 

[Trainmaster189]

Well, there are a bunch of Lehigh Valley, Reading, and CNJ diesels on various sites as well as Conrail, so you can see where I am going with this. The location in the screenshot is Bethlehem, PA where the Reading and Lehigh Valley Railroad met. I improved the old Reading Line by uslw with new track and stuff and added on to it to go to Bound Brook, NJ and Harrisburg, PA, plus I will have the old Lehigh Valley Railroad up to Sayre, PA as well as the CNJ through Jim Thorpe, etc. I would also like to recreate steam excursions of the past like when the Blue Mountain & Reading ran off line trips in the mid-late 1980's.

Looks like I gotta go to the 70's then and just jam to Disco while cranking up the throttle in an Alco Century. :hehe:

 

[rwk]

Here is a shot of the Reading platform shelter in South Bethlehem (removed around late 1980's - commuter service to Philly ended June 30, 1981 on the Bethlehem-Quakertown section) with 3 Conrail GP30's.

 

[nathanmallard]

It's looking good so far, I particularly like the idea of a 'retro' version. Personally I'd go back to about 1979-1984ish when you still had Conrail electrics under the wires, Lackawanna MUs and GG1s working for NJDOT.

 

[rwk]

I have no plans to go as far as the electrified lines in NJ but I found a download of PRR/PC/Conrail electrics from the 70's. Not GG1's, E44's or whatever.