The Illinois Railway Museum Route

[Matt3985]

Alright time for a bit of an update. Correct the mainline now runs from Belvedere IL to Elgin IL. Now the mainline is long enough to run mainline excursions and decent size freight trains with the Illinois Railway Museum right in the middle of it. Why extended it? Well I originally planed to have just a small section of mainline but after talking to a few friends of mine who said the reason why we don't see any railway museum routes in Trainz is because they rather prefer running trains on mainlines over museums. That got me thinking, What if I extended the mainline so it can be used for both museum running and mainline running as well. So I started looking for the nearest yard I could find which was in Belvedere IL (With tons of industries, a locomotive refueling area, and a wye) so its a perfect town to start on the mainline runs. Here are some google map images of the yard, wye, and its largest industry.

With all this new stuff to the mainline I can expect my route to be a very busy one when its finished. Next I will show you the towns along the route. I already have completed the new mainline track work from end to end and I will also post some shots of that too (once I add in the secondary track work)

 

[Matt3985]

Here are the towns included on the mainline.

Garden Prairie

Marengo

Union

Huntley

Gilberts

Elgin

Now just looking around Elgin, a little south is South Elgin and I found this place The Fox River Trolley Museum.

Im thinking on weather or not to extend the mainline to South Elgin or not. (Have 2 railroad museums in one route) might be a great idea but It will be a bit of a challenge for me to build such a big populated area of Elgin (which is why I did not extended the mainline past Belvedere IL to Rockford IL) is because of two things. One is that its a big town (Ive been to Rockford more than once) and second it has no run around track. so I may or may not go on to extend the line to South Elgin but if I do, then I will try to do the Fox River Trolley Museum (which Ive also been there too) I will let you guys know if I will make the FRTM on the same route or not but that small trolley museum has a nice little scenic portion of line and would look good in Trainz.

What do you guys think? Should I extended the mainline to South Elgin and included the Fox River Trolley Museum or should I make that into a separate route? I would like to here the community's thoughts on this.

 

[chickenjoe]

It would surely be nice to have to have two museums in one route - I like that idea. Also a yard, industrial areas, a wye and two rail museums offer very much activities.

 

[Matt3985]

I just contacted the guy who gave me these wonderful DEM's if he agrees, I will do both museums. but this will be the last extension of the mainline because the next nearest railroad museum after that in Illinois is way down south in Monticello IL and thats too for for me to go.

 

[Matt3985]

Its been confirmed folks, Its more track work for me now as I got the go ahead to included the final extension. Now this is no longer a route of just the Illinois Railway Museum, but is now also going to be about the UP (Ex C&NW) Mainline from Belvedere IL to South Elgin, where there will also have the chance to operate the Fox River Trolley Museum as well as a short section of the Former Illinois Central (now CN) Line over the Fox River, as well as an extension of the Metra line to include two new stops. This route will definitely now have plenty of options to run trains both Modern and Historic now.

 

[Matt3985]

A screenshot of the new Extension

 

[Matt3985]

The track work for the Fox River Trolley Museum has been completed (Note) the only non current track work I will be adding to this museum is the old Illinois Central freight Interchange track (which is now somewhat some what ripped up but most of it is still there) to the museum track to give it a rail connection. Everything else will be all current track work.

Why was their a freight interchange there? Well according to the museum website just after the passenger traffic died down this section of line was used for freight traffic only. Here is a little history on the freight traffic with the Illinois Central.

As you can see, not all of the track was torn up. A short 3.5 mile segment was retained from the interchange with the Illinois Central at Coleman north along present day Route 31 to the State Mental Hospital in Elgin. Two home made flatcar motors were retained to handle the freight only business which was chiefly coal and other supplies for the hospital and a few other customers along the route. Carload freight tonnage was high, the overhead low and the AE&FRE (Aurora, Elgin and Fox River Electric Company) dieselized in 1946.
Things were going well for the freight operator until the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the hospital in 1971 that they would have to stop using coal (from Southern Illinois) for its power plant because of pollution. This was the railroad's last and only customer and the loss of it would force the AE&FRE out of the freight business.

The old IC Interchange Track

This area just below the IC Bridge over the Fox River is the most scenic spot on the line. Cant wait to get this area built into Trainz.

 

[Matt3985]

Sorry guys there has not been an update lately but right now TANE is acting up and I'm trying to find out why it is acting up (I'm using the new test build hot fix for Mac beta) and until I can find out the problem no progress will be doing until then. I apologize for this delay.

 

[springtransit]

Now if only someone would model Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton no. 16 for it...

 

[Matt3985]

Im Trying my best to find people to model some of the engines and rolling stock at both museums and For electrics Ive request TUME to possibly do all of the PCC in both museums making a totally of 6 PCC's. For diesels I got word from SimulatorTrain that he is doing a couple of the of pieces of Rolling Stock and a few Diesels in the IRM collection like the new C&NW RS Alco (that IRM obtained this year) and possibly CloakedGhost275 is going to do the FP45 and possibly the Centenial. For Steam engines I'm not having that much luck, Steve Lerro is pretty backed until 2017, Ive negotiation with Paulz Trainz, and he has agreed to do nearly all of the locomotives in the museum collection (But only if I can find drawings or blue prints of all of the locomotives) which is hard to come by and then I have to discuss about the price for each engine, Im trying my best to contact Ben Niel about his Russian Decapod project but Im getting no response.

Also For Passenger Cars Im trying my best to contact Whitepass to get him to do some of the coaches and freight and Caboose in the museum collection but Ive been getting no response from him. Plus the other reason why Ive been lacking in terms of Engines and rolling stock to commission is because Im on a strict budget until I can pay up my car payments for my new Mazda 3 2011 that I got last year so I can only spend up to about $150 or less which means unless the commission price is within that range, I don't have the funds to commission anything until my budget is lifted.

and I think I found the problem with why TANE is force quitting itself. Its because CM is not responding. if I can get CM to respond then TANE will work, its just how will I get it to respond. Because I can get TANE into the the main menu alright but if I click on any route it force quits. But when CM is working I don't get this problem so hopefully CM will start working soon (I hope)

 

[Matt3985]

I got some news, Im in the process of taking one step closer to getting back to work on this project thanks for the help of Shane and JCitron (They both are very helpful and extremely knowledgeable) (If I could give them a medal I would) when it comes to help troubleshoot issues with Trainz and TANE. Hopefully they help will get TANE running again for me soon.

 

[TweetsieDude]

Now if only someone would model Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton no. 16 for it...

That's actually an engine on my list.

Rock On!
~Dusten

 

[Matt3985]

Thats good Dustin. That would make a great contribute to my project. Do you plan on making the IC 2-4-4T #201? I don't know if you like Rogers Locomotive Works engines?

 

[Matt3985]

Good news Everyone Thanks to my new member of my team "ChickenJoe" We have done our first IRM Passenger cars Reskins. Here they are taken by him. I will try to contact the cars creator "Colorado71" to see if he gives the okay to release these.

Also all data transfers to my USB have just finished so now I can move one step closer to getting back to work on this project.

 

[Matt3985]

Another Skin done by Joe. This time its the current state of C&NW Pullman Floyd River.

I will also contact Whitepass since most of the skins will be off his Pullmans to get confirmation to release them.

 

[Matt3985]

Good news everyone. TANE is working again.... Im so glad to be back in business and to celebrate I decided to give my display route some activity this evening....

Shots are dedicated to Shane, JCitron, and Pguy for helping me so much to get TANE back up and running for me.

 

[JCitron]

You're welcome!

John

 

[Matt3985]

No problem JCitron, Anyway More stuff my good friend Joe.

The New York Central "Dover Strait"

CB&Q RPO #1923

And we got our first IRM Electrics finished which are reskins of Pwieser NH Electrics MU's into the Illinois Central.

IC Moter unit #1198

IC MU Trailer #1380.

I will contact PWieser to see if he will let us release these skins as well as for the RPO which is also from him.

 

[jacksonbarno]

Just so ya know, that font is completely off on the NYC car. I don't know of one you can get without paying for it, so what you could do is just mod it. Shouldn't be too hard. Same for the CB&Q car too, especially because it doesn't use a serif font. The windows are completely off on it too, so I'd recommend using Magicland's RPO and then movign the windows around on it. It also appears that it's floating. Might wanna mod the trucks on that.

Cool job on the IC electrics, although again, the NH details kinda throw it off... A lot... What I did when I did IC electrics (waaay back when I was a wee noob at modding stuff), was take Whitepass's N&W coach and mod the heck out of it by adding a bunch of custom detail meshes. I think that I have it around here somewhere, maybe I'll finish it some time (with my new skin kit, of course). They were 70ft long (the length of a regular coach), so it would fit nicely.

 

[Matt3985]

More new skins from Joe.

L&N Diner Galt House #2726 (this one if for you Generalman)

IC Coach #2804