The Alabama & Southeastern RR WIP Thread (Large Screenies)

[Southern1581]

Alright, got the missing content thing sorted out, all my stuff is back and deps are downloading.

So while we're waiting for A&SE V6 to come back, can someone give me some pointers on how to tame the tane? I've noticed that the game uses post processing and I've heard you can fiddle with that to get different effects. Generally I just want my screenshots to look as good as I can make them once I get the A&SE back up and running again. Can someone give me some pointers on stuff like what time of day I should be using, different settings I can use to get better results, etc?

 

[Southern1581]

70 DLS assets to go until A&SE power is back on home rails! (and a horrifying number of 3rd party content that I should probably consider getting to work on)

 

[Southern1581]

Getting there...slowly. Some of the DLS assets simply refuse to install and at this point I've just accepted defeat and acknowledged that I'm gonna have to replace a good chunk of the old assets. A lot of old 3rd party stuff will not make it as well, beyond the JR content and a few other sites I won't be chasing down much else. Also, most of the old pofig speedtrees won't work for me in TANE and I don't know how to update them or if they can even be updated. So the A&SE will get a of a new look in TANE, some familiar scenes might look a bit different once I get it back up. In the mean time, I'm trying to get all the JR rolling stock back. I'm only through page 2 of their rolling stock so far and my poor pc is already struggling lol. I'll stop here in a bit with my JR rolling stock spam and pop into the A&SE to start getting it presentable again. With the museum hosting an OLS event today and tomorrow as well as normal operations Saturday and operating a booth on Sunday, I'll have my hands full coming up so screenshots may be a while in coming. I'll do my best though.

 

[Southern1581]

A&SE is back on home rails!

The home rails still need a lot of work though. I couldn't get the JR dark grey ballast ground texture to download on TANE for some unknown reason (it's just TANE and it needs no excuses), so instead I mass swapped the dark grey track for light grey (something I was meaning to do anyway), however I am going to have to manually redo all the ballast on the line, and at this point the A&SE has something close to I believe 40 miles of track, although obviously most of it does not have scenery. I am trying to get some of the existing textures updated as well, and I'm also manually laying down massive fields of cotton along the line. When the splines only are 3 rows a piece, it can take over a hour to do one field, especially with the framerates TANE gives me. I also am going to have to replace a freaking load of trees. In TS12, all the speed trees were made by pofig, however save a select few they don't seem to work in TANE. The pofig trees that do work I have made less scattered and moved closer to the rails to make room for better performing billboards in the background (performance is going to be a major key for me from here on when building this route). Honestly what I really need is someone with better TANE performance to help me out here but for now I am on my own. Anyways, about those screenshots...

The Autumnville Hershey Plant was actually the first scene I created for the A&SE when I started building this route way back when. I felt it fitting that it should be the site of the first screenshots of the route as it enters a new chapter in TANE.

The first mainline train to grace the route in TANE is G542, a northbound grain train which trundles triumphantly back home into Autumnville with SD60 5987 and SD42-3 7147 for power. Working the Hershey Plant is local train L220, powered by SD39M 3848 operating long hood forward.

G542 also features a brand new skin for the A&SE. For the first time in years I created a piece of rolling stock for my railroad. The A&SE now has Evans covered hoppers. We have them in 3 colors, light blue (seen here), maroon, and white. I unfortunately forgot to change the grating color on the other two before the screenshot session, so they will be featured another day. The hoppers also feature a new slogan for the railroad. Here's a profile shot of one of the hoppers for a better look:

 

[Southern1581]

Today I was working on my last A&SE project to be started in TS12. North of Autumnville, there is a branch coming off the mainline. This is the A&SE Maplesville branch, and today I gave one of its scenes a little love.

Today's 2nd train to hit the line, M304, heads west towards Maplesville. The line is pretty steadily uphill. Not too terribly far into the branch, the line passes a rock cut where the route was carved out, and shortly thereafter crosses a trestle over Copper Creek. The Copper Creek trestle is remnant of the line's Southern heritage, originally built in 1931. The bridge was repaired heavily by the A&SE when it was purchased and remains in service today, seeing up to 5 trains daily.




And this shot doesn't really belong with the others, as the scene is not finished and doesn't even contain the train, but I'm bloody proud of this freaking waterfall and I wanted to show it off. This waterfall comes off of Copper Creek just out of frame above.

 

[Southern1581]

Been a while, been kinda busy I suppose, mostly sleeping, and dealing with horrible spotty internet which doesn't let me do much, especially as far as bandwidth intense activities go. Most of my recent efforts have been concentrated on a new lumber mill that I'm putting in on the branch. Between the texturing headache it's giving me and redoing the gradients and the surrounding hills, etc, that one's still a work in progress. Aside from that, a lot of the remaining work has gone into reconditioning what was already done of the route, reapplying missing balance textures, replacing missing buildings, and especially the shrubbery, which thus far I am finding the most depressing to work on. I had just finished the tree work on the west side of Autumnville prior to TS12 conking out, and in TANE, most of those areas are now totally barren, which really sucks. And trying to get much of anything done with the fps I get in tane is enough to drive a man to drink just about.

Anyways, senseless complaining aside, I do have a few quick shots of some of the work I pulled off just to let you guys know that I am more or less not dead.

First up, a few shots from a basically unseen part of the A&SE, the CSX branch line that runs through northern Autumnville. This area got a few trees recently so I snapped some shots. I really want to get the crossover scenicked up so I can shoot trains roaring through there, as well as the Autumnville West Yard where the A&SE and CSX interchange. West Yard itself needs to be expanded, right now it is far far too small even for simple interchange work. Scenery has also started in that area but it's nowhere near presentable yet. Anyways, here's CSX Q520-14 rolling through Northeast Autumnville:

And also another shot from right around a week ago when Autumnville was getting pounded by thunderstorms. Southbound C569 hit the uphill grade to Maplesville during the storm, heading for the Crownhart loadout around 10 miles down the line. The train had two SD46-3's up front for power with no helpers, and by the time the train reached Copper Creek, wheelslip was so bad that the train stalled out. The train was stuck for 35 minutes while helpers were dispatched from the Autumnville pool to shove the train to Crownhart. Eventually help arrived in the form of A&SE 7172, 8011, and 3657, which allowed the train to finish the trip, but before they showed up I snapped this shot of the train stalled out just barely on the trestle.

Hope you guys enjoy!

 

[Southern1581]

Chased southbound empty coal drag C580 through Brierfield and Oak Grove today. Just some fun, quick shots. C580 was lead by SD29-3 2692, SD40-2 8536, and SD47-2 4906. SD42-3 7172 and SD40-2 8514 brought up the rear.

 

[rr325]

Keep up the fantastic work! I'm really enjoying watching this thread!

 

[Southern1581]

Keep up the fantastic work! I'm really enjoying watching this thread!

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it!

Work is slowly moving along again. I've gotten a bit more work done with the lumber mill, still not close to completion but at least it's moving along. I've also successfully installed a paper mill next to the Autumnville West Yard. Due to the mill lying on the CSX portion of the trackage, it's CSX's switching territory, however it is not uncommon to see an A&SE unit doing their work for them. I've also finished expanding the West Yard. It still has the same meager 5 tracks, but the tracks are now longer and capable of holding small trains. I've started adding a bit of scenery in the area, not a whole lot but it's a good start, got a McDonald's among other things. Also slowly getting touch up work done in Autumnville, replacing missing textures, etc. I've almost finished putting the A&SE shops back into full operating order, just got a bit more ballast and weeds to add, and also I have to fix a shop. I am missing the track asset for the JR 7 stall shop, <kuid2:45324:38199:1>. I would appreciate it if someone could point me towards where I can download it (bearing in mind that I've already scoured the JR website and thus far found nothing).

Anyways, on to toady's shots. The morning local, L219, is working in a slight drizzle on the dilapidated tracks of the small warehouse sandwiched between east and south yards. L219 is not one of the Autumnville locals, although it does do switching in Autumnville. The Autumnville locals are L220 and L221, which run in the morning and evening respectively. L219 works Knudsen Industries, an industrial complex north of Autumnville, then runs south. On some days it switches CSX's paper plant, today being one of them. It then runs to the North Autumnville Milk Processing plant where it does further switching. After that it runs to the Nestle Plant in Autumnville, where some of the loads from the milk plant are dropped off. Then it runs as far south as Oak Grove to switch there, and then crosses over and switches the Brierfield corn silo, before returning to South Yard to switch the warehouse, which is the last stop before the local ties down in the Eastern Class Yard for yard switcher Y125 to sort out later. Today's L219 was run by a lone SW1500, 1652.



As L219 switches out the loads in the warehouse, southbound tank train T334 rolls into Autumnville and approaches the South Yard, where it will stop, change crews, and layover until it has clearance to proceed later today. The tanks train is powered by B40-8W's 420 and 428 with SD29T-3 2507 trailing.



The trains meet, and T334 rolls on to park itself, while L219 finishes its switching duties for the day.



That's all for today, hope you enjoy the shots!

 

[Southern1581]

Got some good news today, I finally got myself a laptop. The best/worst part is, it is more powerful than every pc in my house. I'm thinking about transferring my trainz operations to this laptop, as it is more powerful and I can do way more with it than I can with my definitely aging HP Pavilion desktop. Just a question of figuring out how to get it all onto this thing, and actually doing it, and getting everything installed, etc. I also have to track down my old GIMP build, because I use GIMP 2.6 and I never really liked the newer versions much. If I can it'll do worlds for this project, because this thing has something in the region of 10 more GB of RAM than the desktop, with the same hard drive space, and it's vastly newer, so I can actually get stuff done and show off the results in much higher quality. Good luck to me I guess, think I'm gonna go for it.

 

[Southern1581]

Hello! I got TANE onto my laptop a few weeks ago, and this morning I finally succeeded in transferring my stuff over from my desktop (everything except the SD45-2 reskins for whatever reason, which I am gonna have to go back for). The DLS was being cranky with me earlier but I finally got that running now, so all of the A&SE DLS deps should be ready by the time I wake up tomorrow. In the mean time, I went ahead and took some shots on the route anyway because I was excited to try it out with the more powerful laptop, and man what a difference it makes. It runs silky smooth even on vastly higher graphics settings, which makes me very happy indeed.

It was another yucky, rainy day here in Autumnville, with rain for parts of the day and suffocating Alabama humidity for the rest of it. Northbound coal drag C579 pushed through one of the lighter storms, with 4 SD40-2's powering it, including FURX patch job 6899. The power was 8546, 8500, 6899, and 8527.



Hope you guys enjoy! Feedback welcome.

 

[MeowRailroad]

I'd hardly call that "yucky," looks like a nice, rainy, foggy day that I wish happened more. That's is a really good rain effect, I forgot about the good and bad weather fogs in addition to the rain.

 

[Saieditor]

"suffocating Alabama humidity" ... I never hear of this. What's it like?

Are the loco's air conditioned?

 

[Southern1581]

I'd hardly call that "yucky," looks like a nice, rainy, foggy day that I wish happened more. That's is a really good rain effect, I forgot about the good and bad weather fogs in addition to the rain.

Well, it's not yucky until it stops raining. Then the heat kicks back in and everything sucks. Thanks for the kind words!

"suffocating Alabama humidity" ... I never hear of this. What's it like?

Are the loco's air conditioned?

It can be pretty awful, especially if you're like me and you spend a lot of time indoors, and then suddenly, for whatever reason, I decide to venture outside. It's not always horrible, just usually horrible, and always ten times worse once it stops raining.

As for the air conditioning on the locomotives, that's something we've been working on for a while. We've managed to get AC on the full fleet of SD42-3's, our B40-8W's came to us with air conditioning, our SD29T-3's and SD49's both have them, and that's pretty much it. Everything else, including all 4 SD40-2's pictured here, have a pair of mounted fans instead for the crew's use. Someday we'll get the whole fleet equipped, but that'll be a long time coming (i.e. whenever I decide to build myself an AC unit to put on them).

 

[Southern1581]

Down to 8 missing dependencies until I can start work again. Then I will need to start raiding the JR rolling stock section if I want to ever run anything other than coal through my route.

 

[Southern1581]

Update: Reinstalled, now it is pulling up fine again, problem solved.

 

[Southern1581]

A few quickies before I call it a night. Some shots from earlier of northbound autorack train A644 as it passed through Autumnville.

I actually did do a little work. I have started fixing the Oak Grove area, replacing missing assets and getting it looking good again. I also updated the A&SE headquarters in Autumnville a bit. The old Pofig bushes which are no longer there have been replaced with some colorful trees, and the old and awful looking A&SE caboose has been replaced with a streamlined Southern coach, paying homage to our original line's heritage.

Anyways the shots. First up is a shot showing the updated headquarters.



And then a trio of shots showing A644 as it rolled into Autumnville behind SD42-3 4274 and SD44-2 8492, with A&SE SD42-3 7172 dead in tow. Expect to not see a lot from 7172 for a while, we tried to send her back south to home rails on the Gulf Shores High Line after spending a lot of time on the Alabama Division, however she blew her turbo a little north of Mobile on train F413. She was put in the dead line at the Mobile Shops, where the two lines meet, for a week, however with the shops there already handling wreck repairs to 3 SD42-3's, an SD60, an SD40-2, a SD33-3, and a CSX GP40 after they were involved in a wreck near Pensacola, in addition to regular maintenance work, it was decided to send 7172 back north to the main shops at Autumnville which had the capacity to spare to do the work. She went north two days after the decision on train E802, and was dropped off at Verbena where much of the train was then transferred to Norfolk Southern, before finally being tacked on to A644 during a crew change to bring the train to Autumnville. I didn't shoot the drop off because a lot of Autumnville still needs considerable work, but I did snap 3 shots as the train rolled in:



Hope you guys enjoy! Feedback always welcome.

 

[Southern1581]

Just gonna have to go ahead and tell you guys, this is the happiest I've been running the A&SE in a long time, and the happiest I've been with a set of screenshots pretty much ever. Hopefully you'll enjoy them as much as I do.

So what did I do today? Well I put in a little work around western Autumnville, slowly building the town up around that area. Still not enough to be worth showing off yet, but soon. After that, I started working some more on the Maplesville Branch just north of Autumnville. I added scenery to a respectable piece of the line today, and it's the first time I've really had enough scenery down to do some really long distance shots. The area I worked on starts just a little beyond the Copper Creek trestle which I have already shown you. The train goes into a pretty sizable cut, and when it comes out, it immediately crosses two massive trestles, one about 69 feet high and the other around 92 feet high. These are the majestic trestles 2 and 3, and they cross the valley that the train emerges into. When the A&SE purchased this line and started to recondition it, trestle 3, the biggest the line has to offer, also unfortunately happened to be in the worst shape. You wouldn't be able to tell today though, as it looks quite nice now that it is rebuilt. Emerging the cut, to the train's south is a pretty sizable hill, and to its north the hill recedes into the valley. This is the area I finished today, and I'm extremely happy to show it off.

Today's train is westbound M494, led by SD42-3 7185, SD42-3 7136, with CSX SD40-2 8851 bringing up the rear. We caught them very early this morning, just a bit after 7. The empty centerbeams you see just behind the locomotives are bound for the lumber yard, which I have started but I still have to finish (I have to fix some texture errors then finish the texture and detail work). We first catch them crossing over Copper Creek, but afterwards everything is in the new scene. Enjoy!



Hope you guys like it! Feedback welcome!

 

[cascaderailroad]

Dang ... that RR must be rollin' in the dough ... huge daylight cuts ... monsterous trestles ... that kind of wide, extensive ROW takes allot of money, and allot of revenue ... like a million gold mines up in the hills

Must be fun to run though

 

[Southern1581]

I'd prefer not to disclose the source of our funding. But yeah we do have it pretty good. I'll fix those cuts eventually, they're just a product of my making the giant hills first. Trestles are non negotiable though, I do love my trestles. Though I may eventually make them a lot shorter.