Recreation Of SP Line - Port of Oakland to LA/LB

[Lonewarrior63]

Does anybody know where I can get help on recreating SP's Port of Oakland, CA to Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach run? I'm new to this and the surveyors portion of Trainz. Any Help will do. Thanks. :'(

 

[Euphod]

That's fairly ambitious to start with little experience; those urban areas will be difficult.

 

[bl4882]

You are lucky in that there is a huge pile of information on the Internet. You might want to start with these sites.

Dome o' Foam http://www.wx4.org/to/foam/a_rrcontents.html

My Espee Modelers Home Page http://espee.railfan.net/espee.html

Southern Pacific Lines Forum http://sptco.proboards.com/index.cgi

Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society http://www.sphts.org/

These sites will lead you to many others.

As far as maps and terrain are concerned, you can find track alignments from the late '70s to the mid '80s online from the US Geological Survey at MSR Maps at http://msrmaps.com/. These are printable and highly accurate. If you are thinking of an earlier era, you should also visit Univ. of Cal. at Santa Barbara's offering of historic USGS maps at http://www.sdc.ucsb.edu/holdings/caltopo.html

There were two lines that connected LA and Oakland, the Coast Line and the Valley Lines. The Coast Line carried most of the passenger traffic and the Valley Lines carried almost all of the through freight. The Espee was a very different railroad in, say 1975, from the Espee in 1985 and after, so your choice of era will make a huge difference in what and how you model. My recommendation would be to spend as much time as you can spare reading as much as you can find about the Espee in general. While you are doing this, you might take Euphod's implied suggestion to try a couple of smaller layouts to gain some experience in dealing with Surveyor.

You can find terrain only maps for Oakland and other parts of the Valley Lines on the DLS. The Coast Line is much better covered. If you do a username search for Fishlipsatwork you will find them. As far as I know there are no terrain maps for the Los Angeles Basin yet.

I've been working on this for a few years so if you have questions feel free to PM me.

Bernie

 

[vonhammer_87]

I can vouch for the above post, I too have been wanting to recreate some of SP's of Coast Line, I've started laying some of the track in San Fransisco, but haven't had much time of late because of school and work.

 

[SuperFudd]

Oakland to LA would be a monster project. Odds are you would give up. Try Oakland via the Mulford line (past my home) to San Jose or San Jose to Salinas first.

 

[Lonewarrior63]

Recreation Of Port of Oakland to Port of LA/Long Beach, CA

You are lucky in that there is a huge pile of information on the Internet. You might want to start with these sites.

Dome o' Foam http://www.wx4.org/to/foam/a_rrcontents.html

My Espee Modelers Home Page http://espee.railfan.net/espee.html

Southern Pacific Lines Forum http://sptco.proboards.com/index.cgi

Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society http://www.sphts.org/

These sites will lead you to many others.

As far as maps and terrain are concerned, you can find track alignments from the late '70s to the mid '80s online from the US Geological Survey at MSR Maps at http://msrmaps.com/. These are printable and highly accurate. If you are thinking of an earlier era, you should also visit Univ. of Cal. at Santa Barbara's offering of historic USGS maps at http://www.sdc.ucsb.edu/holdings/caltopo.html

There were two lines that connected LA and Oakland, the Coast Line and the Valley Lines. The Coast Line carried most of the passenger traffic and the Valley Lines carried almost all of the through freight. The Espee was a very different railroad in, say 1975, from the Espee in 1985 and after, so your choice of era will make a huge difference in what and how you model. My recommendation would be to spend as much time as you can spare reading as much as you can find about the Espee in general. While you are doing this, you might take Euphod's implied suggestion to try a couple of smaller layouts to gain some experience in dealing with Surveyor.

You can find terrain only maps for Oakland and other parts of the Valley Lines on the DLS. The Coast Line is much better covered. If you do a username search for Fishlipsatwork you will find them. As far as I know there are no terrain maps for the Los Angeles Basin yet.

I've been working on this for a few years so if you have questions feel free to PM me.

Bernie

Hey bl4882 (Bernie),
Thank you for the info and the help out. Checked out all the sites you sent me. They were very informative. So, now I have a game plan here. I'll start out like Euphod and SuperFudd said (Sorry SuperFudd, but I'm not giving up on this one.) and start with Oakland and then work my way outwards. I will keep you up to date on my progress and if I need some help hopefully I can call on you. You mentioned that there are terrain maps of Oakland on DLS, Is it the one that is within Trainz 2009 WBE or on the Auran DLS site? Because right now I'm having problem with that one (Auran DLS). Anyway, I'll got back to you on that. That's a bunch. Remember the SP!
Lone Warrior
USN
Somewhere in the Middle East

 

[SuperFudd]

As you go south from Oakland will you go down the Mulford line or the line nearer the hills to Niles or both? What about the parallel WP track?

 

[btvfd]

hi if you want i can send you a copy of the Southern Pacific Coast Line 1980/1982 Track chart which covers the route for Los Aneles Union Station via the Coast line to San francisco Ca.
This is a grid chart that shows all yards,sidings,bridges,detectors,stations and more.
The track plan is one that I an using to build my route from the Newhall pass down to L.A. and east from Canga Park Ca.

just email me you address and I will send it free of charge if in the USA.