Hello everyone!
Although I'm not new to Trainz, I am new to posting on the forum, so I apologize in advance if I accidently post something the wrong way or click on the wrong thing, :hehe:.
I have been looking at this thread for a while, and I wanted to say how awesome everyone's creations are! You all have inspired me to share some screenshots of some creations of my own!
I'm currently working on a fictional shortline railroad called the Maryland, Grafton, and Appalachia Railroad, (MGAR), which takes place in modern day in the mountainous areas of western Maryland, southwest Pennsylvania, and a little of West Virginia and Virginia. I'll get into more detail as I post more screenshots, but that's the basic concept.
The following screenshots are of MGAR train BWMG, (some town names are subject to change), which is a loaded coal train that is taken mostly upgrade to the Northwestern end of the route ultimately to a coke coal facility where the crew will drop off the loaded cars, take the loads of coke coal ultimately to the MGAR yard in Grafton (where they will be taken further for the steel mills), and then return back south with empties. This train is led by five SD40-2s, with the 1st 2nd and 4th units being of the MGAR and the 3rd and 5th being leased locomotives, along with 4 other locomotives with another crew working as mid-train helpers. I honestly forgot how many hoppers I put on this train, but remember it being over 110 of them, :hehe:.
This screenshot shows the train passing by an Apple Orchard and a park, where the grade dips down a little bit right before getting more intense.
Here, we see the CSX power that the MGAR is using as the 4 mid-train-helpers, which I believe are (in order from front to back) an SD50, an SD70MAC, an SD70m, and another SD70MAC.
Here is where the grade starts to become a bit over 1.5%, and soon after there is a curve coming into the final flat stretch of the passing siding that is a little over 2.2%. By the time this screenshot was taken, the locomotives are already in Notch 8!
In this one, the locomotives are still in Notch 8 and have just made it to the end of the passing siding where the stretch of track is flat for a bit, but by now the train is crawling at 18mph at most. As the grade continues on, BWMG will have to slow down to about 15mph so that the three helpers waiting on the 3rd track can couple to its rear, (on-the-fly so that no momentum is lost), and further help it for when the grade exceeds 3% for certain stretches of track. However, uh... I don't think this is done that often with helpers in real life, especially in modern day, but uh... it seemed to work really well when I operated BWMG. (Also, sorry for any grid in the background,
. This route in still being built.)
I'll post more screenshots of this operation later, since I don't want to overwhelm this post with too many images just in case.
Also, fun fact about this route: Every mountain or terrain editing so far is done from scratch. You'll see more intricate terrain work later, yay!
Thanks and enjoy!
- Sean D.