Snow High Valley Distr Ctr (High Resolution 950x532) Approx

[blueodessey]

Aussie Merge goes to Downtown Harbor City

Good Sunday Morning all,

Tomorrow is a busy day for me, so I thought I would get these Pics, out sooner, rather that later in the day.

Well I have been quite busy working on the Flaam Route in order to bring Freight Service, unfortunately I didn't realize I had over 5% grades in several areas, so it necessitated a complete workaround with the the Mountain Terrain. I post pictures later on to show what and how the changes that I made to accomplish necessary changes.

Now on to Aussie, recall we showed the entrance to this Scenic Canyon, take notice of all the Boulder Work the Author did to bring even more realism to the this River Rapid area........

You can see our Ex Milwaukee Power here, dragging a long heavy Freight to the Harbor ahead.

Another great view of the Canyon Rapids here as we head downwards about 30 MPH.

We get out first siding aspect here as we come into the Yard Limits, and the Colors are correct for the conditions ahead. Even though we are in deep Canyons, our Radio Communication is excellent due the mass amount of Radio Repeaters we have installed over the years......All helps us continue with Safe and on time Operations.

We pass the N West YArd Junction control point and start slowing down to 20 MPH.........

OH Baby what view of our magnificent Skyscrapers coming into view as we take our secondary yard lead here.........

We would stop for some good Grub, but we have ships coming in for the Loads we just brought, food sure smells great as we pass by...........OH well, probably order a pizza once we get tied up in the yard. And the hostlers take over shunting the Cars to the Dock area for Trans loading.

As we head this way, it looks like I missed a TRAIN QUAKE from merging this particular section of the layout. That is too say, the Highway broke up and headed into the sky....Crazy what TANE does sometimes.......I quick setting the height on Yellow dial ring, will reset it back to the Ground.........

I made a BOO BOO here, and set the Concrete Wall too close to the Tracks, lucky for me this is a virtual R.R.....The Train over hang can share the same space as the Virtual Concrete Wall.........I'll fix that too...........

They making us wait for a few minutes while they get some trains clear for the tracks we are coming into.......Nice Sky for a Sunset, no Rain, just high Cirrus Clouds passing by for now.

Rat oh Rats, looks like we have another TRain Quake ahead..........More Broken Highway to the Sky.....Egads........

At least we are passing under it,,,, that would be truly bad luck for sure.......

Got our Port Clearance to proceed now.

Looks like we Passenger Service on the right headed to the next Station.......They move a lot of Transit Volume from the Skyscrapers.

That'll do for today......Thanks for coming by.........


image host

 

[blueodessey]

OK......we are testing the new Photo Site imgur..........

A big shout out to Sir Dan Gavel with his recommendation......Thank you sir..........I was so upset last night, how I didn't start cursing up a storm, I don't know......But I was as they say,

fit to be tied!!!!!!!

I'm in the process of learning how this site works, a few hiccups LOL................ However you can teach me (an old dog) new tricks when needed........

So I need to make sure these Pics work out properly for now........I'll post the story behind these pics later today or tomorrow.......

Thank you for being patient with me.........

Update: Well it seems like everything is holding up here Ok with imgur photo hosting.......

So lets discuss these pics below, this is KCS Hilliam Sub and Riverside Railroad Co, different Authors, that I have merged into one Route with the KCS being exactly in the middle cut up of Riverside Railroad Route, Took a bit of doing, and lots of track changes, yes I'm crazy for doing it, but that's what thought I could do too have some fun with these 2 terrific Routes......

Phil S....The Riverside Railroad Company moves freight cars around the very busy but highly congested port area of Lys and the thriving downtown industrial precinct of Diaspar. Class 1 railroad companies leave and pick up freight cars at transfer yards in both cities. The Company also operates the freight and passenger serves between Lys and Diaspar.
Rail freight carried by the Company includes containers, Trailers on Flat Cars (TOFC), manufactured products, automobiles, bulk products, timber products, petrochemicals, plastics, scrap metal, aggregates and minerals.
Riverside Railroad should appeal to those who like driving locomotives in either Cab or DCC mode, those who enjoy switching operations in a relatively confined but realistically portrayed environment, those who enjoy driving on a scenic riverside route, those who like interactive industries and fright cars, or those who just want to try a new item of rolling stock.
As an additional challenge, AI trainz can be configured to operate on separated tracks at 3 minute headways. The AI routes interact with Player trains at numerous squeeze points.
Despite the high level of detail, frame rates are excellent on a mid-range P3.2 computer with a 256MB video card.
All assets required by this route are available from the Trainz Download Station and will be installed when the route is downloaded.
Maps and a readme are included in the folder containing the route.

https://www.google.com/search?q=kcs...K5awKHSccDgAQsAQINA&biw=1536&bih=708&dpr=1.25

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?41404-KCS-Hilliam-Sub-WIP

So here is what needed to be done, we had several bifurcating Rivers, which is fine, but I needed to tie them together so we would have a uniform flow of water from one point of the Route, including the Waterways of Hilliam Sub.

Below here, I have started to draw the water ways rough cut, so I don't put my new Track connections in the wrong spot...........I used long stick of Rail bed, and positioned the way I wanted then cut out the path next to the Rails I laid, as temp cutting pattern to cut the Grid lines of the new waterway. The rail is terrific guide...........

Water depth is not important here, I need the outline to work for my idea, then I'll adjust the water depth at the end, no big deal.

Phase 2, we have the cuts about what I'm looking for, and the water height is matched up now, Its still rough and the Textures need some redoing so it doesn't look like it was added on.....Takes time to get this worked out.

Here is another section of temp Rail bull work so I can get the water way design I looking for..

Do I know how it will come out, nope, not really, it's like building mountains, you just keep playing with it till it looks appealing......And that can take a month sometimes, or as little as a day.......

Every Route and aspect of change is different......That's all I can say, and there are other times you finish what you wanted, go back and look at, and say, nope this just doesn't look right or it won't work at all, rip it up, start over, and that hurts, but that's part of the process......You know when it flows, no matter what it is that your seeking, you can fool everyone else, guess what? You can't fool yourself, that inner feeling, or gut instinct tells you when something isn't right, doesn't feel right! Yes we can cheat a little here and little there, yes I do cheat on some things I'm trying make, because quite simply, that's as best as it comes out, so do what it takes to accomplish the task, now we are talking Trainz here........There's only so much that you can do, with the time allocated for a project.

Looking here, you can see some previous gray water lines, when I started, and they didn't work for me, so I leave the mess here, and once I get it right, I clean up all the mistake marks.....IF you look over at the tunnel to the left, you'll notice the first Rail line draw was more direct to the Tunnel, but it didn't flow for me, and If I recall, I dropped in a mountain on the Right of it for separation later.

You can see the Harbor way out there, and I need to bring all the focus points together here.

The far right is one of the crossover mainlines that bypasses the Hilliam Sub section. and this Mainline will get moved a few more times, till I get it where I thing it works best.

I'm laying done mainlines all over the place to see how everything hooks up, and will it work for Rail Traffic.....I actually run trains on these temp setups to see how the Signaling works, and access.....

Sure you have heard from other Route Builders etc, how they go back and recheck and then recheck again with persistence to make sure it works as designed by the Artist.

This area is pretty much finished Waterway with Small Mountain out growth in the middle of the River....It get a small Boat Lunch for Family boats to explore it as an island and add some interest and mystique here........I look for some Horses and or Billy Goats just to give a little more Wild life feel...........Now we need to Texture the bottom with 2-3 colors to give the water color some blended coloring effects too.....So the Water is not all one Shade, which is boring to me.......

From the top of a small hill, here, I use it as great vantage point, looking from all different 360 degree views, it gives me feeling of seeing something I need to change depending..

I try anyway, to check from as many angles as I can,,,,,Too make it look OK........Here at this particular spot, I'm really interested in the Radial Turn of the River, does it look OK,,,,,,Is it too abrupt,,,Etc, Etc,

I'm no artist either, some of you folks do amazing topography builds with your Routes, so I try too learn as much as i can to make my area interesting and inviting.

This is an over head Shot of Phi Skenes Riverside Railroad part of my Merge, and you can see we had another TANE Quake from the merging process,

the Texture is missing in lines, so I have to go over it with 3-4 different Texture Variants and try to match Phil's Color Scheme, and hopefully you won't see the color repairs when I get done with it.

Phil's Routes are nothing short of amazing, he is a true master of Route Building in every aspect you can think of.......!

Now look carefully? What's wrong here with the Tunnel? Well I tell you, it looks like a Rope that's been braided and twisted, if you took your train thru this Tunnel, well, the track goes one way, and Cement walls come in and out like you woudn't believe.

So we need to delete this Tunnel, and grab a new copy and stretch it out again making sure the Tunnel doesn't twist on itself. the only thing I can think of is the auto snap to Grid Action gets hung up when your stretching the Tunnel out from point to Point........It becomes unwieldy.......I had one or two of these type things in the Flaam Route too....Didn't see it till I drove my Train thru....Surprise the Tunnel is corrupted..........I make it a habit for quite some time now, to check all my Tunnels on any Route I that is new.........Just one of those Quirks in Trainz......LOL

Here is another section of the Route that'll need Texture redo.....And this is not a point of Merge here is either, weird huh.........!!!

OK.....I think this will due for tonight ......Thank you for dropping by Folks.........Take care.......

 

[blueodessey]

New Thread for my Pictures in Screenshot Forum

Good Day all,,,,,,

I had problems with this Thread for a couple of Days, with the Photo Posting site, so I created another new Thread..........You'll find me here:

"Snow High Valley Distr New (High Resolution)"

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?146315-Snow-High-Valley-Distr-New-(High-Resolution)

Sorry for the confusion........I use imgur for Photo Hosting now.......

:wave: Enjoy your day, and thanks for coming by..............


Update: I see a lot of you and possibly new Folks still come by my old Thread here, I'm very happy to see this is of interest to those who still come by and the new folks, Hopefully what I have post here over the years will help you achieve and see what can be done in Trainz, it is an amazing simulator tp play, creat and teach others how much fun Railroading can be achieved in a Virtual Theater arena.....

 

[blueodessey]

Good Day Folks,

OK..........I think I might have solved the issue.........With imgur............

The old story goes you don't know what you don't know........?

So here is the skinny, on wasting hours looking for Software that would work properly for the Forum Screenshot.......

#1 Little to my suspicion, one of the problems was Firefox, some software does not play well with certain browsers.......

And I finally figured out after Trail and error, that particular type of Photo Link would allow my pictures to display here.......

So after fooling around with about 6-8 Software programs for Image Hosting, I came back to Imgur, and it figured it doesn't like Firefox, and I needed to check the different direct Links till I found the one that did work, a process of elimination............

So here is my latest little Steamer(s) to show..........Now I just need to get used to imgur, and I think will be set.............

The first one is Steve Lerro's, K&L Train,,,,,,,,,the link below tells more about this Locomotive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Railway_722

Update of TheCowboy's Frisco 1522 for TS2009, TS2010, and TS12. Free to clone, modify, improve, reskin, and upload your own version. Original description follows.
This is an update of Euphod's Southern #1409 4-8-2 Mountain Type. I would like to thank Euphod for his permission to upload an update of his model.This is a new version, which includes a new engine spec
and enginesound. THIS VERSION IS NOT FOR USE WITH RAILDRIVER.

Just running him around on my little test track for now............Really nice looking locomotive here...........Night all.......Time to get some sleep,,,,

 

[blueodessey]

imgur Photos and Cut Paste style of merging mania

Good Saturday all,

I need to apologize here, I know I was really cranky, I didn't mean to be, but Software glitches and incompatibility got the best of me,,,,,,So I'm in a much better mood today..........


Still hard at it learning the yings and yangs of Imgur, I think it will work OK for what i need with picture processing and posting for here.

All right, most you know my fun thing todo is Merging Routes, and eventhough it can cause a lot of work because of the Math Trainz uses, and what odd pieces of height and complexity, the result can be really interesting in the results.

For example, the Flaam Route, is fascinating for me to play with, the rough side is the height of Mountains, 1500 Meters I think, and narrow canyons, of course that is the way that land area is, however in Trainz, and with my Weak GPU, and coupled with me wanting to add some freight service too the Passenger only service, I need to due some route expansion sideways......

So after some careful thinking, I needed to widen the central corridor and lower the height of the Mountain Ranges.

First part here, cut zig zag sections out the route, breaking it like a Cracker into two parts.........below is the result of my work.

The inside of the yellow lines is the blank templates inserted to stretch the whole route wider. We have a start, but there are much more alterations to make my hair brain idea work.

I have make fun of myself a little bit here to keep me in good spirits as I dig myself out of mountiain of work I just created for myself......It Theory though, my idea should work, in reality a few months from now will find out for sure......LOL

Here is a closer view of the individual height markers in meters.

You can see the route is in 2 pieces, since I deleted the center tiles, then I'll go and save this route in 2 separate half sections, deleting one side of the 1/2 completely off........

When done the 2 files each have 1/2 the Route Template, and they are saved with unique Route layer names.

Now what we do, is take one of the half's and attach new tiles to it.......Save that file........To reflect the new changes.....Then merge the other File (1/2) section together, if everything works, it comes out like the picture below.......Of course we make temp copies, and merger the unique layers together..........And I forgot to say, before merging, cutting the Route up etc, all Trains are removed off the Route.

On the KCS and Riverside Railroad Merge action, I decided I wanted to add Oil Stand alone Dock here in the waterway.......So I did a Rock fill, then dropped in some Harbor Sea Deck wall and a Oil Rig too.......However, I might move the Oil Rig out into the middle of water? With the size of the Dock here, I can take 2 Oil Tankers at a time to off load or load Oil depending.........I will probably add some Oil Storage Tanks here too.......The tracks work great as they come off a passing mainline that continues on into heavy industrial area..

Here is a closer view with SP Loco and Caboose too, he do the heavy shunting here, once the Tankers come in to port......Now in addition here, we have underground pipes for moving Oil in or out of the Portable platform as needed........

Overhead view of the and you can see the Oil Tanks I added for storage..........They're not all the same, because we will handle different Oil Commodities.

If I didn't explain something clear enough please ask, And I help with the answer.......

Thanks for coming by, and have a great weekend too.

 

[blueodessey]

Flaam Route Changes......Aussie Merge Harbor center Etc.

Good Monday Day all,

Been a busy week with upcoming School Grads, my Grand Kids are growing up so fast.......And I am so proud of them, their world holds a lot of Challenges for them to live in and conquer.........


Alright, will shift the Flaam Route for a Second:

I am very busy with it, tearing out mountains here, building new ones there over the newly Tiled areas I made......My hardest part is getting the Grades below 4% in some area, it takes long laborious checking here and there, because it so easy to run over 4%.......And due to sheer wall of the Mountains, I have to decide where and how long a Tunnel needs to be to jump the Altitude. The bright side when I do get things roughed in, I would have some really good mainline Runs, in Extreme Mountain Gorges and Cliffs, and that's right, I need to drop in Sir Dan Gavels Cliff's here and there too.....Up in the Top I will have some Lake areas too.....Actually the Author has some, I will just add some others to different parts of the Mountain Plateau areas at 800-900 Feet elevation.....

That's another thing I am trying to resolve, it looks like I need to keep no higher than 1000 Feet, but 800-900" is better range for GPU rendering...........It is fun, and has helped me learn a little better about building in Deeply Gorged areas......I'll post more pictures of the changes, now that I got imgur working OK.......Nothing wrong with imgur, it's the newbie user, your's truly here.......LOL.........

Aussie Merge Route:

A while back we drove our Train thru the Mountain Canyons, with a strong roaring river rapids below us......?Now we are coming into the main Harbor Yard area to drop our consist for Port distribution.

Below I'm running the Aerostar Trains in the inner loops to handle the Skyscraper Traffic on a Virtual Loop, with exit Tracks to Car Maintenance houses on the other side of here. We also serve Carnival Ride and amusement area too, that is favorites with all the kids.

We have lots of Storage Tracks for our Harbor Traffic, with good capacity and local Power Grid Generation on the Right.

Another view of our tall Sky Scraper which look fantastic at night, and the Amusement Center in the middle here......

On the left we have a huge Concrete, and Plastic Manufacturing Plant. In the very back you can see the mountainous area we came in thru.........

I need to develop a small freeway system in here, It had one, but I didn't care for the way it crossed over the Tracks, and I had to make a lot of changes with existing Track work too......

Our signals our getting our Route lined up in the Train puzzles ahead..........On the left I still have some Highway merge quakes left over that I need to fix, as you can see one of the Highways sticking straight up in the air,,,it happens with Roads Tracks, any of those type splines........The Track Spline is another one to the upper left corner of the picture here, sometimes I can reset the spline height, sometimes I cannot not, I just have to delete that section of spline and replace it with new section..........It basically is caused by a miscalculation of TANE when it tries to put the pieces together in a Merge process, same thing with the Texture issues, and the funny breaks at Tile meet points, TANE tries to do what it can, but I think it gets confused, and get what you get.........

We are entering into the yard sorting Throats here with a myriad of signals to guide us thru complex Track Puzzles. It works great, I like any engineer have to learn the Route....

Al red against apposing traffic for now...........As we pull in a 70 car string of loaded consist for the shipping business here, and we have lots of different transload areas to serve in this port Harbor area.

Here is high ground over view from one of Building view...........Round house is where are power is headed once we decouple and let the yard Hostlers cut the consists up and get it to the export points......A busy area for sure.......You can see a very large parking structure for the employees on the right here.......And it is not enough, our port is growing, so we need to make more of these in this area too accommodate the increasing business and employee support needs......In the middle is part of a left over highway spline, I have to figure out where I'm going to put in............

That'll due for now......enjoy your day,,,,,,and thanks for dropping by.......

 

[pagroove]

O that's sad when your old screenshots dissapaer. I am back to good old Flickr. I like the ability there that you can make albums. But good to have you back.

 

[blueodessey]

O that's sad when your old screenshots disappear. I am back to good old Flickr. I like the ability there that you can make albums. But good to have you back.

@pagroove, thanks for dropping by on the new thread, it was heart breaking for me, not to be able to fix the old thread..... And I know this has happened to several others in the forum for a variety of reasons with Image Hosting sites.

It's good to be able to post some new pics and share my ideas, challenges etc so others here can see all the different ways you can create/change how a Route looks..........

Thank you for your support..........

 

[blueodessey]

Aussie Merge Harbor center II

Good Day all,

Well it looks like Graduation day has passed with flying colors for my Grand Kids, it was so inspiring to see what they have accomplished......

So lets come back to Aussie Merge in the Harbor and see what's been going on here. Our favorite Aerostar is coming into a new signal setup and it is working Johnny on the spot with what i need to happen. The harbor has lots of interconnections going on, between Local Passenger and Harbor Freight operations with all the trains coming and going, I need to make sure the Signals will control and make control so that everything flows as need be in the Harbor......Of course like anything else, some track changes were made to orient the paths I wanted our Trains to take, and other instances, some tracks were cut, or lengthened for smoother crossover access.......I don't like Locomotive overhangs on points where 2-3 tracks come together.

Drop off and pickup here goes on without a hitch. Across the way is a very fun place to visit.

I added some pier supports here......

Because I have 2 parallel tracks, it takes a little extra work to get these Pier under supports correctly lined up..

Still lining the tracks and ground height..........

A freight station loops in the view across the way.

A nice hotel here awaits our Passengers when they stop from their airport travels today........Comforts await......

Some re adjustment of power lines and hooking up heavier cables for added growth in the future.

Curving around the Passenger loop line, we can see the tall Yard Operations Towers, and they have to be tall to see this large area here.

We have some very tall skyscrapers in our downtown city..........And in the back to the right of this picture is our Airport, not huge, but it will do...

Thanks for coming by...............

 

[blueodessey]

Good Saturday Day all,

Well it's the Men's weekend here to celebrate, a shot out to all the Fathers and new ones to be.....Enjoy your well deserved time.....

Today we head over to FLAAM Route, where I have been quite busy tearing up Mountains, Relaying a ton of Mainline Track Etc.........
So knowing what I have from past experience, I needed to make some setting changes:

Draw Distance would be cut down 50%

Texture and Asset Quality would be cut back to the minimum for the moment.

Next go back into the game and see how it worked out. Much better, but I hate sacrificing Quality and Detail in Scenic appeal.....

But I digress here. With all the Routes I download and play with, change, mess up, re fix etc, after a while, you get some experience under your belt, and focus on positive changes.....Does it work, you bet it will, most of the time...But you need to be realistic, and understand the best laid plans by men or mice have gone astray, Murphy's law is alive and well......(don't know Murphy's law, what can go wrong, will go wrong) proceeded by our friend,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

you had a great idea, it doesn't work out as anticipated.......You can fool everyone else, you cannot fool yourself, especially what your eye tells you.......And this is why, will look at something we changed, and look at it some more, it's not right, and we go back and keep changing, fixing till it looks and feels right to us, not other's, US!

But in retrospect you have to go thru the process, nothing ventured, nothing gained....As you do these changes, you have the chance to learn by doing.....Will you make mistakes, oh heck yes, will get upset to the nth degree, oh yes.......But then you need a time out to regroup and try again......!


And that's my motto, if it is worth, then by gally, go for it...Remember, you do it with a copy or clone of the original Route or Asset........And for safe practices, I keep 3 copies of my work at all times, and I use Carbonite (off site backup).....

Like anyone else that does extensive work projects, whether it be Week/Month or Years of work, you want those backups.....I can not stress this hard enough....I have read the horror stories here our Forum, and CONFESSION HERE, I lost 3 months of work, because???? I didn't realize my backup copy was out of date and the Route changes I made were lost.......So it was start from an original copy 3 months old, ouch that hurt, and I was bummed out.....


The height of the Mountains, 1300 feet or more, just isn't going to work for me, and trust me, I love the Mountains on this Route, my GPU doesn't!!!!!!!

Next I decided lets see what we cut back on........??????

So the largest Challenge was cut the height of the Mountains down? And how much do we cut, I don't know, pick a figure, there is no hard or fast rule.....So I cut off 300 feet and some other areas, I cut off 600-700 feet of Mountains, did it make a difference, oh heck ya it did, did it hurt see those towering giants cut down in magnificence, you bet it did.....The hard choice had to be made.......And I did it.......!!

The next issue was Route Grades of 5% to 11%, yes, 11% in some parts of the mountain, climbing.......Could the trains make it up, sure they could if they only had 3-4 passengers in tow, and don't even consider Freight service, you waste all the Diesel, or burn out your Electrics depending on the Route you took.Worst yet, you'd probably burn thru the Rail into the Ties, before you got going, it happens on the Real Railroads, in Trainz, you might not move at all? LOL

....So we needed to re aline all the mainline from the harbor area going up into the dizzying heights of these massive Mountain Gorges.......

Next step was to start from the Harbor at no more than 3-5% grade, I would find out later, and I knew this, but I tried to cheat here and there a little, but after 4-5 tries, I needed to keep the Grade down to 3% or less......1-2% is much better of course, but in this Mountainous area, you don't have the luxury of doing this.........It comes down to huge, long, steady winding upward Grades along the mountain sides.

And your going to see lots of this in today's pictures......The Scale of the problem really manifests itself I as work diligently to make this Grade work within the parameters........

Below and lone UP AC44 unit is headed up grade to check clearances and stuff, look out to the right, here, we are already up some 600 Feet in elevation at this point....Max elevation in some areas is 1050 feet for now.......Because I have cut and hacked and rebuilt all over the Route and added blank spacer Templates, well, the Textures are all kerfuffle....Will address that later, elevation and access is key for now.........Pardon our mess during construction.

Lots of Loops to eat up the multitude of Feet in elevation.........

Another view of upper and lower Tracks below.......As we wind up to the tops here........In cutting the mountain tops off, I have more a bluff appearance for now,,,,,What I hope to do, is raise some small peaks here and there so it is not all one height along the ridge lines.........

A view from the other side of the Gorges here, and the tiny speck of our locomotive is seen as it continue upward unabated by 3% Grade, all is well in Blue Land for now......One of my Challenges is get the smooth rolling Hills in the bottom, not so lumpy, it takes a lot of practice.............But will get there over time I hope.......And I need to mention, when you work in something like this, use Wire Mode, it is so much quicker than in this mode, much easier on your GPU too, it doesn't have to render Texture, because it is not visible.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Wire+Mode+in+Trainz&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/archive/index.php/t-85637.html

Looking across a deep, very deep valley, you see the Bluff look to the Mountains over there, the reason they are left this way, some areas will need to be cut more for Mainline access once I start laying main line over there.........

This typical of what I do when I want to gap the a huge chasm in the mountains, then I decide after getting my Grade % set, whether I want Trestle or solid land under the Tracks,,,,,Lots of Terrain to fill depending on the choices made. So this is the quick and dirty way of getting the line in for now.....I wanted you to see how I rough in some areas........Also it very easy to rove this temporary structure of Land where the Track goes across.....And I have done that many times in the past, had to change the Curve or something else which causes the Rail to move several feet off the center point here........That's just part of the process, and too see if I like this setting for Visual impact too.....Think of it as if your rough framing a house in stick form.... And your not sure about the placement of a Window, or Stairs etc, you make a temp lay up.....To see if it works, there's no Drywall or Stucco to get in your way........

We are headed around lots of Curves, but I made them gradual, so 30-50 MPH is not a problem here......I also want to due some SUPER Elevation with the Tracks, but that is later on down the road.

OK, we are almost on top here at 850 Feet or so.......Look done and see our Loco headed out to the canyon Ridge on the Right, a little hard to see, sorry.....

And he go around the mountain, and come back into the Track on the left against the Mountains...........

We are almost to the Valley Ridge here, don't worry about the spikes in the valley, that's just caused by me over reaching with my Tool on on Ridge smoothing and the Circle control cought some of the Valley floor with the Drawing tool,,,,,,,,I just have to go back and cut them off, re smooth the Valley Floor......The bluff mountain across from here will be reshaped to look like a mountain should when I get thru laying mainline over there, that's, 20-30 miles away from where we are here to there.......

So far so good as we head into another area.............Some steep sides here, and I will probably cut the incline back some, so it isn't so vertical......This is all a rough area.......There is much more to do.........If you look at the mountain to the Right, that is the way I need this one to look........Will see if I can accomplish that..........Mountain building is true art, and one of my most difficult challenges in changing a Route.......

I apologize if I was a little long winded, but I wanted you to get the feel of my thought processes, and why I do things the way I do.

Appreciate you folks coming by, and hope today's pictures gave you some ideas on what is possible in Trainz

 

[blueodessey]

TGR Fingal Tasmanian Route

Good Monday all,

Today we leave Flaam for now, as we head over to TGR Fingal Route, were using one of their Diesels to move heavy Loads from point to point, there is much to see on this route and I highly recommend you to download and try this one out....It is marvelous in all the ways it is laid out.

We are looking out from the Cab to wait for an oncoming Train from the North, due here any minute.

Over here are the Trolley like interurban, I think you call them, for moving Passengers to several points. Beats the Road Traffic for sure.

Our Route has cleared and we continue on. looks like we have lots of unhappy drivers waiting on our Consist to clear the crossing, and we don't move particularly fast on a Rail line like this........Looking at the HUD displayed here, we are 20MPH max.....Slooooooooowwwwwwwwww Speed ........LOL! But these tracks could cause a derailment too, as we are due for some Tie replacement along the whole route.......Normal wear and tear, always maintenance to due............Just a fact of life, and then their is the C apex budget, it all has to work into the Operations budget..........

Looking dwon a very long and straight mainline, coast is clear and we are on the move at, WOW!!!! 32 mph, a marked improvement from 20MPH........

A lookout over the area, lots of Gold Fields against dark Green Trees and thin high altitude clouds above, it's a balmy 95 degrees out here, so you'd better have enough Water and Beer on hand to quench your thirst.....No we don't drink while we operate our Trains............Shame on you all for thinking that, you know better........Now after Engineer Work for the day, in the late afternoon, we have a good meal with some ice cold ones......That'll work just fine, and maybe will go out dancing too..........It's all good.

We come into a wye to the Mainline with have Crates for the next Cities..........Commerce is good on our Railroad.........

Few large Scrubs here and there, very nicely done by the Author........

Little ground view shot here as another Freight with Coal and other assorted Freight cars, whizzes by us......

And we come into another city here, as Traffic is honking their horns, they want us to get to it.........Not many roads out here in the Farm belt, and the few there are, have abundant Traffic, that's for sure, than goodness for the Rail road, or it would be much worse, as we move lots of Freight everyday, including passenger and interurban Train Cars......

As we come out of heavy grove of trees in the hot day, you get to see a small Rail yard to our right here........WOW, we have a 40MPH limit here.....Now we are moving pretty well here..........

I would say the only derailments we experience our washouts from tropical Storms that rip thru here, but over all we do very well, and our MOW dept is quick to get the Storm Damage repaired as this Railroad, the only Railroad in this area, is considered a vital Line for the Commerce of this whole area.... it simply cannot be done as efficient with Trucks only, it has to be a continuing partnership with Rail and Truck Trans load connections at dedicated and specific points, when it is done right, it simply becomes a Symbiotic relationship with Trucking and the Farmers Co Op's, Etc., everyone gains a share of the income generated.......Think about Cattle, Produce, Grains, and heavy material handling for Building and other sources products, like Gravel, Sand, Cement, and Wood products, Coal, Steel, you get the idea........Logically it works, with the right managers and future vision on the horizon, it by no means is a static model, it's has to change with Time and evolving needs of the customer, or you lose market share, it's that simple, like efficient theory in markets., and finally, the Railroad has to be a good neighbor overall..............You don't bite the hand that feeds you, and I have seen this happen many times in large commercial services.........Customer should be King........

I think this will do for today, enjoy your week ahead..........

 

[blueodessey]

Good Wednesday all,

We continue on with TGR Fingal Line for now, while I continue moving, lowering, raising mountain Scapes on the Flaam Route, my mother told me there would days like this, LOL, how right she was.....

We just went thru another siding here with a meet in the Cornfields, but this one was planned, the only thing was, our train was too long for the siding ( looks like we need to stretch these sidings a bit) just another project for the bucket list.......

On the other end we have another Junk Train coming to us.......

And there we go.........Headed to the Northern Freight yards a few miles down the line.......Another usual day of Traffic on the TGR Fingal system.......

We come into AVOCA station for quick Facilities break and some hot coffee for the rest of the trip, oh heck, give me a Breakfast Burrito too.........We have a long day ahead, and much to do.......

Here is a map showing our two Freights as they head to opposites ends of the Route, and all is well, signals, locomotive power, work crews in synced, I take this one to the bank......

We got our Coffee, burrito, and bonus round, some good Pineapple Slices for treat later........Tropical Fruit is good all the time here in this warm climate......

Just a front view of the power we are using to move the Freight., and I like these models, they are simple, nothing fancy, and quite reliable,,,,,,,All the tools and power to make this Railroad run......

We pass the other freight here, the shorter consist sits in the siding with both switches set for the over length Crate loaded train.

And we get thru on the other end ok,,,,,,Passing the Gravel Hauler special........

Our Family of workers stand in the clear as we pass thru, they have a few ties to replaced today.......Some old ones are pulled out and new ones on the left will keep our Rails in good shape for another 30-35 years........Our railroad can't afford those fancy machines they have on larger railroads, so we do in the old way......Gandy Dancer way......

https://www.google.com/search?q=Gandy+Dancer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

Thanks for dropping in today.........I have some meetings to attend to today, so I decided to get these pics in a little earlier, hope you like.........

 

[blueodessey]

Flaam Harbor area and Mountainscapes

A good Friday morning to all,

We leave TGR Fingal Line for now and head over to the Flaam Harbor are.........

We our busy below, checking Curves for the Pier Trans load around the left of us here.......Elevation was a little off on that side, so I need to relevel the Tracks over there, so it will become a smoother Transition to Concrete Pads, where we get all our Chemical Loads.......

I added some new Tiles in the back of layout, which is straight back from here where you see the Vee Shape of the 2 massive Mountains coming together,,,,,,,,I needed more land back there for my Mountain Ranges too make it look right, rather than a short fall of the cliff look........

We have a lot more Pictures of this Route to show you..........

I'm working on Large Lakes up in that area from the Snow Melt Run off that the author had made and I needed to modify due to some % Grade elevation changes.......

Since I made some Mountain top changes by lowering the peaks, I have a lot of Mainline Track Milage now I didn't have before, I think from 25 miles to over 50,,not sure of the exact yet as I need to milepost this whole Route out......That's another day.......

As you can see here, we lots of nice Green turf, and very high Craggy Rocky Mountains to the right, and boy do I know it, have been doing some extreme re-sculpting of the 1500Meter Mountain Ranges to accommodate my weak GPU, it has a hard time drawing this high of Mountains, but we will prevail........A lone Locomotive is leaving the Harbor bypass Mainlines to check out the Grades which needed addressing, some of them where at 11-13% so I needed to add more cross-back mainlines to bring them into 3.25% or less of a Grade.......

We extended the River outlet here and needed to add a different Bridge to handle the Consist weight of the wider River walls for waterway drainage into the harbor area.......Were checking clearances here for future Freight traffic.......And this area will probably be electrified too, I'm not sure yet........That's Phase 2 after I get in all the mainlines where I want them and at the required Grade % limits I'm looking for. Across the Harbor you can see the other set of Mountain Gorges........

Top view here sorry it is not a bit clearer, I have to remember to do a copy and paste of the Photo to Paint, as too high of views, TANE does not do well.......You lose detail and get more fog in the picture.........Anyway, below is the fill dirt I made for the harbor yards in the center of the picture, and larger Trans loading area across from Harbor Rail Yards, over there, we have Visitors and Truck Cargo shipped into the town, also for now, our new cars come that way too, but that might change to our Harbor Pier Trans load, will see.....
the
A clearer picture here of the Harbor and surrounding lake front Town......

This is the bypass line I put in here.......For now it stops, till I see how I'll finish this out here..........Just doing a Grade and Track condition run here for now......Make sure Curves and Mountain Slope clearances are OK.

Here is one of our Vehicle and Semi Truck Trans Load and Harbor Ferry to other parts of the Country,,,,,Takes 3-4 hours to the next port of call....We get a ship every 2 hours here to handle normal Traffic and import/Export Products as well, I rebuilt the Road connection to handle the elevation changes here.........Those are lake front Hotels in the back there.

TO the left of the Ship is and Auto unload-er Ramp in Yellow.

We have checked the line to Rail Bumper need some minor Track level adjustments, but other than that we are good here.......

We brought in an Steam Locomotive in a Dead Head move to see how it does in Clearances, so far so good.......On the right side you can see the other Mainline that goes down and around to the Pier area......Look back at the first picture here, and you'll see how it curves around to Pier landing point on the other side..

One last comment here, I can Really Appreciate Sir Dan Gavel's Desert work with his Mountains, I can see how it takes forever to get things how you want them to look as far as Mountains.........I haven't even started redoing Trees, Towns, the River paths, Industry locations, most of what I'm doing now is slicing and dicing the Mountain heights, cutting in new mainlines, tearing out Tunnels, adding Tunnels in specific areas and getting the Grade %'s correct, that takes time for me to accomplish........In retrospect too see the changes and how it will work now, is very much worth all the effort..........Your Dreams can carry you a long ways, it just depends how much you want to throw your back into it to achieve that reality.

I have to give it to the Route Builders that spend Years on their the Routes, and in some instances Decades to get the look and feel of what they are creating.........And then their is there is the new Trainz Version coming up.........

That'll due for now, I bid you all a wonderful weekend, and thanks for dropping by........

 

[blueodessey]

My original Thread hit a milestone yesterday......I'm so excited!

Good Day all,

I went over to my original Screenshot blog today, just to see if folks still come for a visit, and they still do.......I am grateful, and on another happy note, that Thread hit 100,000 Views sometime in the last 24 hours, give or take.........That is something for me, I never thought when I started that Thread that it would ever reach that milestone............I know there are other threads in the millions etc.

My aim, though, is not in the View count, it really centers around, the sharing of knowledge with the many other nice folks in this forum, so if one thing I discuss, show the picture etc. helps a fellow Trainzer, then mission accomplished.......

One for all, All for one is my mantra here............Knowledge is gold, and strength comes in Numbers, we all collectively get mentally stronger in the World of Trainz........

:wave: Thank you, the many who have come to look into Blues World..........I bid you a good weekend........Cheers

 

[blueodessey]

Shopping the Winter Sale at NV3

Good Day all,

Went shopping this weekend at NV3 Studios 75% off Winter Sale, and got some great deals......

Andrushivka-Vinnitsa UZ, Route by our own favorite olegkhim.....

His notes on the Route:East European railway. The route runs along the vast expanses of the Ukraine among the picturesque fields, forests and villages. A large map which is busy with many passenger and freight trains. There are short stretches of track between local stations and long runs for high-speed passenger trains. There are small parts of the map which are not electrified and need to use diesel locomotive traction and two separate stations where the locomotives can be changed. The total route length is 180 km

I have been wanting to find a Euro Route, and I think this one might fit the bill......

Haven't had the time to check it out, just enough time to snatch it up on a terrific sale....

Got the Blue Comet Steam Train

Check out this link and the several Story lines about the Blue Comet Steam Train, with some great pictures too!

http://brickmodelrailroader.com/ind...lue-comet-the-seashores-finest-train-in-lego/

Hccrrs Car Transporter × 1, Cars...........

https://www.waggonbau-niesky.com/en.../2x2-axle-covered-car-transport-wagon-hccrrs/

https://www.google.com/search?sourc.....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.1.132....0.j7XJnheMzb0

They have lots of items on Sale, and you can't go wrong here..........


On the DLS: Check out the "ORCHARD MODULE" see description below by Author "normhart"

Orchard module route, merge with your route
Copy the trees you want and paste them to your route
and then delete the base plate of this module.
Thanks to Auran and gawpo50 for these lovely trees.

Blue's Notes, the trees look nothing short of spectacular, I hope you like them as much as I did....

Ok now we head to TGR Final Route, and take a peak into one of our Steam engines, Garret I believe,,,,really well done Cab area........

Weather is changing and I here a good rainstorm is approaching our area.....Be good for the Farms today.......

Our signals are very simple, and if I recall, they are physical manned by dedicated signal operators, I belive these are manual control Signals done by telegraph?

And here comes the Rain, will wash off all the dirt an dust on our consist.

We had to slow down a bit since visibility is not too good .......Error on the side of safety always........

Our heavy freight is still on the move, we have two stops to make and divide out the loads for each city.......

Hmmmm...That tropical rain storm is coming down good, thank goodness we have no washouts ahead of us,,,,it does happen occasionally.....

Another day, and the weather is great for Route modding in the way of Merge with another Route name North bay.......Going to work out nicely, I just need to drop some spacer tiles in between to make up for 50 or 80 Feet of Elevation change........You can see below how much the height difference is.....

Here is another picture as I marry up the 2 routes for more Track expansion..........

That'll do for today,,,,,Thanks for coming by..........

 

[blueodessey]

Good Weds all,

Awoke early this AM, got lots to do, that Honey Due list is alive and well, scary how many things, like Maintenance around the house never runs out....LOL And before I know it, Summer will have passed and Fall hopefully cooler temps will arrive......

So been busy re texturing and smoothing Mountains on the FLaam, relaying some of the waterways, and building DAMS to hold the water at higher levels of the Mountain Gorges........Smoothing Tracks, it is so easy to move the Grid lines when you smoothing large areas near the mainlines.......
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A shot out to the following folks, Railhead001, M Francs, shebashetan7,,( for his Rolling Stock Reskins etc.,) Pencil42, Fourteen and many others that create some great assets etc for us to play with..........I got some 1880 Steam locomotives this week, and their Chuff (Steam Sound) is so cool to listen and watch as they puff their way down the Track.......Thank you shebashetan7 for a job well done.....And then there is the energizer bunny, Sir Dave Snow, who just continues to make and make more assets for us.......Really like his old time Passenger Stations he made of late..........They will work on several of my Routes, and the bonus, he made Single and Double Track versions for space site considerations if your cramped. Thank you Dave for some great Assets.......

Check out this link mentioned by one of our Trainzers this week, sorry I didn't put his name down with this link, it is an interesting read on about an old RR I hadn't heard of before, and there is so many too........Cool GEM of a find.........

http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/index.html
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OK, so the pictures below, our my Aussie Merge of several Routes, and this is the Harbor Division side of the Merge. We look down here from high above the mountains surrounding the Harbor operations.......

One of the things I had to do as usual, was thin out the foliage, Trees specifically by 50-60% per cent, to ease the load on my GPU for better Frame experience.....

Looking up into the mountain Range above from our Aerostar Consist, headed to the new Car and Locomotive Maintenance operations above, I relaid all these tracks to stream line the operations here, the old ones were squeezed in and not to my liking so I ripped it all out and redid, also cut back the mountains too, for more space.......

Picking up Passengers for Downtown Skyscrapers transit.........

I'll need to add some more odds and ends here later on for interest.

A little water Pool for the Birds and other animals here........

After relaying and aligning the Trackage, I redid Bridge position for Train underpass clearance with the new Tracks..........

Shot of the other Mountains in the distance as we finish our Customer pickup here.........

We cross the new Signals I put in, and there is a view of the Ocean along our Harbor area to the left of us........

Because we have Tracks here for the Round Robbin operation (picking up customers for Downtown Skyscraper) along with several (6) Track diverges to the new Car Shop Maintenance Facility, we use a full 3 headed #8 inter-locker Signal for keeping our meets proper with several other Freight and Maintenance movements in this area.

We get good control here, but eventually I need to add Path Control from PWares enhanced Tower Units.......

Over here I redid the Waterways, and I put in some missing Cement or Wood abutements for the Crossover Rail Bridge, like I have alluded too before, I do a lot of my Work in Wire Mode, F-9 function key, and it really helps me see how I'm positioning the items....And I find items that got dropped or left by me or the Route Builders Etc.......You'd be amazed at the Assets I find buried below the Grid line that are hidden from normal view..........

That'll due for today......Hope you all found some good Sale items from the Winter Down under Sale at NV3............

Thanks for dropping by..............

 

[blueodessey]

Faulty Assets/ Working in Wire Mode/UMR 2018 Etc....

Good Morning All,

Been working hard on the upper levels of the Flaam Route, and we see some pictures of this later on. And I find I can lots of Items, like leveling land, etc in Wire Mode, and works really fast for you, because your Texture isn't being rendered by GPU, that makes changing Assets locations, heights, track level etc, a whole lots faster, if you haven't tried Wire MODE, try your F-9 key to see how you like the view and ease of Wire Mode Setting............

Took a look my Broken, Faulty assets, looks like from downloading some new Assets to my T:ANE it jumped from 279 to 476, error correcting at it's best, when I get some time, I have to go thru and see what I can fix with ASSET-X PEV Tools, a super program that fixes a lot of broken Assets........Recommend you get a copy and learn how to play with the pre made Tools that fix things like Uniform Color Errors, missing Texture.txt files etc......And you can do things mesh items too, I need to learn that, I have conquered the beast with Mess issues.......

So we head over to visit UMR2018 Route, Going thru a narrow canyon area the Sun heads low in the Sky....One of the problems I have is trying to find my Sun......It is illusive......

Take a look at this bridge, it works great, only one problem here, we have duel tracks coming from both ends of the Route, and this Bridge is single line so there is a pince point here with heavy line traffic.......

Looks like we have a Boat coming thru the River......

And voila, I added a Double lane Bridge, no more pinch point.....Now Traffic flows well thru here.

Our Operation Lifesaver train is headed west for more education and enforcement activities.....We got our electrical problems under control.......

A cool morning and some Fog in the area as we take a lone Boxcar to delivery.

Love those Clear signals........We head out of the siding here..........

614-T is got a good head of Steam, Really nice looking Steam here...........As we peer down the other Main, no traffic in site for the moment....But it's out there. We get lots of traffic from the Harbor area......

One other picture of this Bridge from the top side.........I would like to have a different color for this Bridge, so I think I'll look to see if I can find a similar 2 track Bridge that will work. but for now, will run with this one.

That'll due for today......You all have a great weekend........Thanks for visiting as always........

 

[blueodessey]

Aussie Merge and UMR 2018......for today

A blessed Sunday to all,

Monday will not be a fun day for me, I get to see the Oral Surgeon, and hopefully a Tooth can be saved.....

Now on to happier things, so over here at Aussie Merge, we come out of the Round about Circle with passengers headed to Downtown Port area, Skyscraper Village if you will......

I've decided I need to add some trees over on this side of the Tracks, and small flowers and schrub, not a lot, just some sprinkling here and there, so you can still see the Beach water......

They live in nice Community homes over here, I dont remember what these buildings where on the left, I think they were small Beach bum Condos?

I put in all new signalling on this part of the line and it works perfectly too.

Back on the left you see a small regional airport, towards the middle, you see some of our very tall skyscrapers........

Nice parking structure here for the locals, and they can walk or Bike ride to the Train Station too, on our train, we have limited Train space for the bikes, for the more adventurous customers.

Over at UMR 2018, we our Coal to Ship export operations in full swing, we do millions of tons of Coal to other Countries who don't have the natural Resources they need, so they have to import Etc.

Looks like 614-T Safety Train is headed out.

The two engineers between each train had a conversation, of whose Train was faster, will leave it at that, but I have the feeling the answer would surprise you.

Our Train heads out the Coast Route....Great view here and no oncoming traffic for now......

Another picture of showing the really large Freighters that come in to load, I think it takes about 6 hrs to load this massive behemoth.......

Looks like we get a summer shower for a while, and that's good....we need the moisture to keep our natural fires down, that we get every year.....

That'll do for today...........

See you in a few days.........

 

[blueodessey]

Good Tuesday all,

Yesterday was a fun but necessary day with the Oral Surgeon, a brand new one at that. Fortunately I got in early enough I didn't lose a tooth....When your older, you need all the teeth you can get to chew......And I sure as heck don't want dentures........

Alright, today is a better day, not as much pain......

So lets get to something fun and painless........LOL

So I have been working diligently on Flaam Route, as noted, the extremely high mountains were a strain on the ole GPU, but the work around was to cut them by 1/3 height, and that really made a difference......

Then we needed to added some blank Tiles to widen the valleys due to extreme vertical Grade Climbs of 11-13% witch did not work for me, short of having massive tunnels, and lots of loops to get up the upper elevations from 30 feet to 1500 feet, now that is some elevation change......So we put in the tiles, and did some serious mountain moving, I mean serious......

Then I got what you writers cramp in the Texture Dept, I couldn't figure out what colors would co exist with the Colorado Rocky Texture in use.....Then one day, I spent about 8 hours working in a upper elevation area, and I made some elevation changes, found some colors I liked, and it has been smooth sailing from there.........

I also had to remove all the Electrical lines for now, while I do the changes in Tracks, elevation, texture and a host of other things, even though you see them here, in later pictures you probably won't. As there are so many track changes due to the elevation and added Tiles.......The MAD Dr FrankenTRAINZ at work here, but I promise you it will and does work...........

So below is the Harbor Passenger Station where I first started working on the Route to make changes in elevation, you'll see one of the tricks here if you will. I needed to find the base level of lowest elevation to start, then incrementally start the elevation going up, that meant too, there would be a long winding route to the top, that would have lots of twist and turns to knock out the extreme height differences from the Harbor to the very top of the peaks.

In this picture I'm running a locomotive around checking Grades and sighting for clearances as changes are made. sorry about the FOG, I very much Dislike the Fog in Trainz over TS-12, but I suppose one day, I'll get a handle on this Fog issue.........

It hard to see here, but I am Terra mapping the area so it's a big mess these two colors comprise a lot of the Route, and will do so with my changes, but I will add several areas with gentler colors where I can. To brighten up some the landscape.

Over here is the port line for Trans loading Oil and other items from Ships, we have lots of Propane Gas and Oil from the upper slopes that needs to be developed over time.

You can see the high mountains in the back here, and they were brought down about 1/3 or 350-500 feet, before you couldn't see the tops at all, and in many cases, the computer, relative to distance shots were cut off..........Now at least the full mountain renders OK.

Here is the Harbor area with expanded Rail yard for Car maintenance etc. This lake area will be expanded later with more tiles......Pretty cool part if you look in just right of middle, you see the curving valley with the grand Canyon where both mountain Gorges come together..........This is a very majestic valley area.

So over here, we are in the extreme north end of the Route testing out the first mainline to go even higher in the back areas here, I'm running a rogue UP engine to check my curves and Gradients, this area is all torn up for now, and later on the right, I find I have to add blank tiles to make the mountains look OK, and not chopped off on the Route.........Our Grade is 4-5% after rolling thru, and I find I need to cut the Grade down some more, to keep it between 2.75 and 3.50% max, because I will have heavy Wood Forest Timber, Oil Trains, etc rolling thru here, once all is said and down, please excuse our mess during construction!

If you look straight ahead, you see the mountain is literately chopped off, that all needs to be blended in here for the corner.. That of course is the cosmetic part here, what I have to do is get the Rails, Routing in place with proper % of Grade, then blend in the mountain later........Now that is the way I do it everyone has there way that works for them, and lots of Trainzers are much better at this than I am, I could barely draw a stick figure in School, this Graphics work is a whole nother animal for sure, and then you add the Artist Coloring component here, oh my brain hurts as I learn to mix and blend colors together making it somewhat palatable to the eye.........And like others have mentioned, you might add 5-6 colors together in collage of sorts to get the desired effect. One of the Drawbacks in texture I see when you use it, it has too many repeating patterns, so I have to use the "[" "]" keys to distort into a non repeating texture where I can, and that is the kicker..........You mix in Granular size as well, smaller is better, but with Rocks and things, larger is better, depending on what your trying to accomplish here.

Down back at the harbor we are running Diesel Power, checking things out here for completion. This is extreme south end of the Route and you can see where the high elevation peaks end out here....

I'm starting to work on the edges here, and I found working in Wire MODE really is much faster when you make elevation changes, it really slows the GPU down, when you make those changes in this mode..........Huge advantage for Wire mode, now when your doing the color, you can't use Wire Mode, since you need to see where your painting the color change.........

We are leaving the Harbor area here and heading up grade, around a curve, just looking out the back unit's window here checking the Grade, and I needed to change it several times to get the correct grade of 1-1.5% increase here, due to the fact I still in the city, and the Rail street crossings have to match up OK.

I had just laid the new track here, so it is not straight, but I needed to make sure my 180 degree Curve works OK, and isn't too sharp for the Rolling Stock, it passed with flying colors, with just a few minor tweaks on the Curve........

I hope everyone got something on the DOWN UNDER Winter Sale.....I got a lot of Diesels, and one European Route, some Rolling Stock that I had wanted for German and Polish Routes too.......Pretty good savings all in all......

Time to run folks, I hope what put here today made some sense on what I'm trying to accomplish, I think when you see the newer pictures of our changes, it will make more sense, as Rough Construction is really messy to start, then it all comes together.

Have a great day.......

 

[blueodessey]

Backing up your Computer? Transfer Caboose history, and other miscellany items...

Good morning all,

Hope it was a great 4th of July, and we remember our fallen hero's.......I lost a good friend to Cancer this week, never easy to deal with. Had known him for over 30 yrs, but I know he is in a better place now.

So I was busy doing some housekeeping yesterday in the Trainz Dir, and did a major backup on my Laptop.....

Question here for all of you, when did you do your last backup?

And what type of backups do you do?

What files can you afford to lose if your Hard Drive crashed, or worse yet, your Motherboard

I use Carbonite every day, and I keep a External Drive with additional copy of all my files, or what you would call a full image of my files, I don't care about the programs your going to install the latest versions of those anyway if you lost your Hard Drive Etc.....And the most important are your Photos, most of us have Electronic Copies not hard copies like the old days, yes I'm older and dating myself,,,,

Think about, how we have evolved, maybe some pictures on the wall or in your wallet etc, but all those 1000's of ones, are electronic if you lose them, well, you know what'll happen.......Just something to think about.......

I add I also use multiple Cloud Storage too, think of Google for part of that, Microsoft One Drive and many others.......

Just remember, always consider what you can lose, and what you shouldn't ever lose, like your baby pictures of first child etc, or favorite place you visited a long time ago.......It's easy to forget about these things in our day to day life, and Oh, then there is Trainz Routes, like the ones you have worked on for 5-10 yrs.....Tragic if that comes to pass, and I know someone right now that has lost lots of work over a corrupted Route, and I really feel bad for them as they are bummed out on how much work it will take to restore the lost updated version they were working on.......I don't want to belabor the point, but just give some food for thought.......

Now lets talk about JR Trains,

They just posted up there 12 days of Xmas, and I didn't realize how many Items I missed last year, because I was away at Campground with MR BEAR and friends,,,,LOL

So got them, and one of them was this Transfer Caboose, and I love Transfer Cabooses, cute as a bugs ear, but never understood what the history was, so yesterday, I looked it up, and Voila, did I learn a few things about them.......Hope you enjoy the discussion below........

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?3,2912779

A transfer caboose was a car that was mostly used in large cities such as Chicago. The caboose was not fully furnished such as a road caboose, which would have had bunks for crews to sleep in as well as toilet facilities. It would be used for trains (transfer jobs) that deliver interchange traffic between different railroad yards. This caboose was also used regularly on jobs that serve industries or in areas where lenghty back-up moves existed---again, such as Chicago.......

https://www.google.com/search?q=tranfer+caboose&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

I did a lot of work on the Flaam Route yesterday, and it came out pretty good, but you know, it was a small area, and there is much more to do,,,,,definitely a 2 year project from what I see now, and that's probably conservative.......But it is starting to take shape of how I want it to look, easy to get lost in those mountain canyons with all the turns and twists...

Below will flip back to the Aussie Merge, we are still in the harbor area here, this is our downtown view of some large Skyscrapers.......Lots of Red lights in the yards here, we need to fill them up with Freight for tomorrow, and there's a lot coming down from the mountains.........You name it, it is coming.........

A more distant view here of the late afternoon sky, looks like some Rain is on the horizon.

Here's my friend the Aerostar, making his usual run to downtown with the afternoon rush of passengers headed home from a long day of work,,We might have some opposing traffic ahead or we our following another passenger train ahead, need to check with dispatch.

On the far left of here is our outside Passenger station that handles passengers from the Airport near the pier.

I am thinking, that, I change some of this green for different Texture color, there is too much of the same color here for my tastes. That is an easy change.....Might add some more plants and trees too, a bit sparse here..

I see why we got the yellow, there is a freight up on the hill across from us, he is headed to the Port with a heavy load of industrial items.......And some Hoppers too.

Oh we have a McDonald's across from us....But don't have the time to stop here, Passengers are tired and want to get home, so they come first, that is why I have job, a good reason to remember that........

Oh no this isn't good, he broke a Coupler.......15 min delay at least, well maybe we will go over to Micky D's and grab some Coffee real quick,, Just did an announcement over the speaker telling the passengers will experience a 15-25 min delay due to mechanical problems, you see , we don't have dual main lines in the mountains yet, just sidings in selected places.....Grrr...Comes to bite sometimes...........Can't say I didn't tell mgt, but they tell me it's on the drawing board, and I say, in which decade our you going to make the improvements, and they say, well you know it takes lots of money, and I say, doesn't everything these days, isn't that all relative.....LOL

I thinking about removing this Block wall in some spots........It seems a bit intrusive to the view to me......Have to think about it or put in a lower wall maybe........Well see, always something to do around here.......I'm never satisfied.........

Looks like our local Frieght line to the airport is clear for us to cross at the junction, that's cool, we need to make up our lost time on the other train's broken Knuckle....Will see how we due, put the peddle to the Metal Charlie, and don't slow down, except for station stops, High BALL it..........!!!

Ok......I got to get going, Holiday is over and it's back to the Grind, lots of stuff to do,,,,,,,enjoy your day folks, and thanks for dropping in.........Best