@cressjl
A fellow Trainz user (steamboateng) is doing such a project for a local museum. I've been involved off and on with the project. It's quite an undertaking and very, very time consuming. He just got back with some interesting stories and had an opportunity to visit parts of the route where most people can't get to. The people from the local historical and railroad history society there have been helping with research information, supplying photos, books, and other information. The author of "A pinprick of light", Carl Byron, has been more than helpful with this project. He's a member of the B&M Historical Society which has exemplary archives located at UMASS Lowell. In the end, the project will depict the Hoosac Tunnel route at the steam, electric, diesel era which ended in 1944 once the B&M purchased it's early EMD FTs. The electrics ran from Hoosac Station (Rowe, MA) to North Adams to shuttle the steam engines through the 5-mile long tunnel, once the longest in the world. The service ran from 1910 until 1944/45. Much of the area has changed considerably, which I mentioned in another thread, so having
@Falcus,
I do a lot of proto-lancing as you called it. I use a DEM and relief maps from a region, make use of the actual ROW on the printed map, but here's the twist: I then add my own branches where no railroad ever ran. A good example is the Sandy Point branch on my own route. The Sandy Point branch is located off of the prototypical Maine Central mainline up in Bangor Maine. Where the mainline makes a sharp right up to North Maine Junction, I put a line in along the Penobscot River, which runs out past Searsport and then out to sea. This line follows the river then heads inland until it reaches Sandy Point located on the end. In order to get the track properly graded, I put myself down at eyelevel in Surveyor. I then followed the landscape and placed brightly colored billboard trees as markers. These stood out like surveyor's beacons and game me navigation points to lay the track to. As I ran the tracks, I put in crossing where the tracks crossed the real roads, and then at Sandy Point, I fit in a yard, station, and small branch down to the waterside. I have a whole story made up on this branch which I can share with you at some point if you wish.
Another line, off of the MEC mainline, after it rounds the bend, once ran up to Bangor International Airport. Sometime in the 1980s, probably during Guilford's ownership, the line was abandoned. I put the tracks back in and made this area into an industrial park, wooded area near a lake, and then a small terminus with an engine facility. This line is the South Bristol Industrial since I call Bangor Bristol on my route. Again, to fit the various features I wanted, such as the lake, houses, and industrial buildings, I had to fiddle with the topography to get some semblance of order and reasonable grades.
On the same route, up on the North Maine Junction BAR line north, I have a branch that comes off and serves an industrial and commercial area. This area has big box stores with the rail branch running along the road in front of them. There are numerous crossings an switches as the branch serves the industrial park in the same area. I recently extended the line farther down towards Bristol and connected to an close branch of the SBI line. This line is modeled similar to what I used to see in Salem, New Hampshire. The old B&M Manchester and Lawrence (M&L) branch used to follow Route 28 between the two cities. Up in Salem, one side of the road is stores and apartment complexes while the other side had big stores and smaller houses. Today, the branch is a path as the commercial property took over the area, but when I was a kid it wasn't uncommon to see an old SW900 pulling a few boxcars and hoppers as it switched the industries along the line.
The thing is all we need is a bit of Imagineering and we can do anything we want. In the more recent times, I've now included a bit of Amesbury MA. There are pictures of this area in the Surveyor's forum. The thread is called A little bit of this and a little bit of that. It's all about putting together industries from bits and pieces...
http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...this-a-little-bit-of-that-to-make-an-industry
But back to this here, I added a tunnel under Amesbury off of the original Amesbury (Salisbury Point RR) branch. This line lasted until about 1980 when it was pulled up. The railroad once served the many carriage and early trolley car manufacturers that were once located here. There was a substantial yard and even a passenger station, which saw business until 1968. Today the mills are Yuppie condos and the railroad is a trail. In my world, I put the yard back and then ran the line under one of the more substantial hills in Amesbury. This line then connects up to the rest of my route at "Amesbury Junction".
John