Bulldog1653
New member
Hello all,
For those of you who check out the screenshot of the week topics on the forum, You may have seen a shot I posted of a coal train at a power plant unloading. This shot only shows a taste of what's to come.
The locomotive seen here is the tail end of a 120 car coal train.
So far, I have an auto parts facility, a Diesel refueling station, a plastics factory, the powerplant, and a logging camp. This hasn't even started what's coming. There will of course be other industries to support the ones I have already built.
Here's the upside; for those of you who like longhauls and mountain passes, this will be the route for you. To date, I have built 13 miles worth of a nice mountain pass and plan on adding at least another 13-20 miles.
Without taking away from anyone else, I have found that most of the industries are only able to handle small trains. The powerplants are a great example of this. You can easily pull a 20 to 40 car coal train to a powerplant and they're completely full with that load.
Here in Colorado, it's not uncommon to see 100 to 120 car coal trains at our powerplants. One plant here has to have the train broken into 40 car sections to unload and the others have a HUGE loop for unloading. My point is very simple; this route will make it so that a 120 car coal train will be able to unload in one shot and have a nice longhaul back to the mine (30-60 miles give or take).
Along with the coal trains, I plan on adding major, lumber, automotive, intermodal, food, agriculture, aggregate, and oil and fuel industries, a HUGE yard and a large city that will include passenger stations serviced by either a monorail, MAGLEV, or a lightrail system.
Even though this is my first attempt at a route, I think that it will be well worth the effort when it's finished.
Keep in mind that the textures are just in the basic stages. The same goes for signage and signals. These will be done once I have the bulk of the work done.
This first shot is passing by the locomotive refueling station.
This map shows the extent of the repair and overflow yard. The west half houses 6 single stall diesel garages for repair work. The east half has a staging and storage yard for extra cars. Along with the yard, there are 2 locomotive turnaround buildings for basic maintenence like oil changes, brakes, etc. South of this yard is an autoparts manufacturer and a plastics factory. The plastics factory is set for receiving only and has room for 10 cars at a time. The Autoparts facility has 3 tracks and is set for shipping only.
This is looking north and is the start of Eagleridge Pass (Fictional name). When I started toying with the mountains and decided to do a mountain pass, I originally was going to carve out the mountain and leave it open. I tried it and wasn't happy with the result. This seemed to work a lot better. During trials (and believe me, there have been a LOT of them), I found the tunnel a lot better looking and more realistic.
This is at the entrance to the powerplant shown in my previous posting. This is only about 2 miles or so into the mountain pass. I'm drawing on personal experiences with mountain passes here in Colorado. A lot of passes will have a kind of lull where you may have some relatively flat road/track for a mile or 2 so that you can ease the strain on your vehicle (at least until you get to the next segment).
Ok Whistlehead. At your suggestion, I changed the textures by the unloading area to make it seem more realistic. Thanks for the tip, it looks a lot better (in my opinion). This powerplant has 3 boilers and powers the small town to the south and the major city I will be building in the next few days/weeks. The plant itself uses the N-S Coal unloader and can easily handle a 120 car coal train.
This is coming out of the powerplant loop and heading towards the next segment of Eagleridge pass. The tracks on the left are for the mainline traffic.
This is about 2 miles into the mountain pass. At this point, the grades are fairly tame. As you go further, there are sections that you may want to use helpers, especially if you're loaded.
A couple of final things to mention. The mountains you see in the background are done by hand. I tried using the mountains offered on the terrain function and couldn't make them work the way I wanted. This is the end result. Also, as I mentioned earlier, this doesn't start to show how far I plan to go in this layout. Personally I think that the longhauls and 100 + car trains are a lot of fun to run. The textures are in their infancy. I simply wanted to get some color on my work. I will probably add trees and other landmarks. Again, comments and suggestions are welcomed.
For those of you who check out the screenshot of the week topics on the forum, You may have seen a shot I posted of a coal train at a power plant unloading. This shot only shows a taste of what's to come.
The locomotive seen here is the tail end of a 120 car coal train.
So far, I have an auto parts facility, a Diesel refueling station, a plastics factory, the powerplant, and a logging camp. This hasn't even started what's coming. There will of course be other industries to support the ones I have already built.
Here's the upside; for those of you who like longhauls and mountain passes, this will be the route for you. To date, I have built 13 miles worth of a nice mountain pass and plan on adding at least another 13-20 miles.
Without taking away from anyone else, I have found that most of the industries are only able to handle small trains. The powerplants are a great example of this. You can easily pull a 20 to 40 car coal train to a powerplant and they're completely full with that load.
Here in Colorado, it's not uncommon to see 100 to 120 car coal trains at our powerplants. One plant here has to have the train broken into 40 car sections to unload and the others have a HUGE loop for unloading. My point is very simple; this route will make it so that a 120 car coal train will be able to unload in one shot and have a nice longhaul back to the mine (30-60 miles give or take).
Along with the coal trains, I plan on adding major, lumber, automotive, intermodal, food, agriculture, aggregate, and oil and fuel industries, a HUGE yard and a large city that will include passenger stations serviced by either a monorail, MAGLEV, or a lightrail system.
Even though this is my first attempt at a route, I think that it will be well worth the effort when it's finished.
Keep in mind that the textures are just in the basic stages. The same goes for signage and signals. These will be done once I have the bulk of the work done.
This first shot is passing by the locomotive refueling station.
This map shows the extent of the repair and overflow yard. The west half houses 6 single stall diesel garages for repair work. The east half has a staging and storage yard for extra cars. Along with the yard, there are 2 locomotive turnaround buildings for basic maintenence like oil changes, brakes, etc. South of this yard is an autoparts manufacturer and a plastics factory. The plastics factory is set for receiving only and has room for 10 cars at a time. The Autoparts facility has 3 tracks and is set for shipping only.
This is looking north and is the start of Eagleridge Pass (Fictional name). When I started toying with the mountains and decided to do a mountain pass, I originally was going to carve out the mountain and leave it open. I tried it and wasn't happy with the result. This seemed to work a lot better. During trials (and believe me, there have been a LOT of them), I found the tunnel a lot better looking and more realistic.
This is at the entrance to the powerplant shown in my previous posting. This is only about 2 miles or so into the mountain pass. I'm drawing on personal experiences with mountain passes here in Colorado. A lot of passes will have a kind of lull where you may have some relatively flat road/track for a mile or 2 so that you can ease the strain on your vehicle (at least until you get to the next segment).
Ok Whistlehead. At your suggestion, I changed the textures by the unloading area to make it seem more realistic. Thanks for the tip, it looks a lot better (in my opinion). This powerplant has 3 boilers and powers the small town to the south and the major city I will be building in the next few days/weeks. The plant itself uses the N-S Coal unloader and can easily handle a 120 car coal train.
This is coming out of the powerplant loop and heading towards the next segment of Eagleridge pass. The tracks on the left are for the mainline traffic.
This is about 2 miles into the mountain pass. At this point, the grades are fairly tame. As you go further, there are sections that you may want to use helpers, especially if you're loaded.
A couple of final things to mention. The mountains you see in the background are done by hand. I tried using the mountains offered on the terrain function and couldn't make them work the way I wanted. This is the end result. Also, as I mentioned earlier, this doesn't start to show how far I plan to go in this layout. Personally I think that the longhauls and 100 + car trains are a lot of fun to run. The textures are in their infancy. I simply wanted to get some color on my work. I will probably add trees and other landmarks. Again, comments and suggestions are welcomed.
. By the way, that Elmer Fudd signature is a trip.