The end is in sight!

[rickf77]

Well, not quite, but I'm down to my last 5 or 6 miles of track side scenery! The last couple of weeks have been just awful. What a boring time. 8 hour days of just planting bushes, trees and grass. I should be finished with the scenery in a couple of days. The last project will be laying the tracks in the main yard. I've got to read up on how to do this. The yard at the end of the line was fairly easy. After that I will have to go begging for a couple of stations, or repaints of a couple that will work well. I have a fella who offered to help with this. Also, another fella who may be doing up some rolling stock and the Dartmouth station for me, he just started a new job, so he may be busy impressing the boss! I had some CNR steam locos done up for me by a pro, but I've found other locos that would look much better with a "reskin". There is nothing wrong with the guy's work, but some of the Baldwin locos on the site will be even better. The CNR got many Baldwin locos from the Grand Trunk.The thing for me is, I just hate to ask for things. I really like to be able to repay folks that do work for me. After all, it takes time and skill to do this. How does a fella with very limited skills repay a person for their work? I would love to be able to send them money, but I guess that's not allowed in most cases.

I am so happy to finally move on to something else! I think the track side scenery has taken me a good 5 or 6 months of 8 hour days. I can never imagine building another one! It will never be worthy of uploading, but I may get up the nerve to post some screen shots.

Cheers......Rick

Thanks to everyone for tips, great items at the DLS, and helping me out so many times.

 

[amtrak2041864]

No route is a bad one, they all have their week points. Someone out here may like your route, just give it a chance.

 

[cascaderailroad]

A route is never done, unlike a painting, it is never finished.

The joy of this hobby is giving someone a WIP route, then you further update the route, with more changes.

I rarely texture a route at all ... to me textures, twees, and buildings are just filler (fluff) to cover up the inadequacies of a route

 

[rickf77]

Heh, heh. I did indeed try to cover up many things, and still am looking for a way to cover more. I may have spent many hours doing this. Lots of mistakes. The part of the line I am doing is long gone, but has been turned into a "rail to trails". I could only see the trail on one of the maps I was using with TransDem. I think this led to me being a little off in a few areas. I cannot remember how I did the work with the maps, it seems like that was years ago. I ended up with an auto overpass where none existed in real life. I have a few miles where the line crosses salt marshes. I had to "raise the land up" in these areas and wound up with lots of "jaggies". It's also about twice as wide as it should be. What I was hoping to be an exact replica has turned into a semi prototype route.

I started reading the forums before TS12 showed up in the mailbox. I started to see that building my dream route was going to take a lot of time. When TS12 showed up, I ordered TranDem and just went at it. I have not even finished the driving tuts. I ordered the Murchison route, tried it for a couple of days and decided I wanted to get on with building my route. At first I had no idea of how to use any of the tools, I still don't know what many of the "buttons" do. I'm sure if I ever decided to do it over again, it would be much better. That's not going to happen! The only thing that makes me feel I came close to copying the route is when the wife looks over my shoulder and says, "Hey, that looks just like the salt marsh trail". Bless that woman, even if she's lying!

Cheers.....Rick

Phew, it's over! I was beginning to think I'd never get this part over with. I'm having a few days of R and R. Well, I got a lot of chores to catch up on. Then, I have to tackle the Dartmouth yard. After that, I will have to pretty up a few areas. I took a little tour in a diesel, found a dip in the tracks. Strange, never noticed that before. It's great to be done with that darn 75 to 80 miles of bush, I was starting to believe the black flies were going to eat me alive!