nikitka1988
Virtual Railroad Tycoon
East Maple Ave, Atwood Jct
USA Pics
- Thread starter Dermmy
- Start date
trainzlova8989
i like trains and bugs
"In the last 10,000 years they have gone on with a sort of decadent kicked-in-the-head civilization that contains automobiles, business suits, fedora hats, telephones, spaceships—a civilization which looks almost an exact duplicate but is worse off than the current US civilization."
-L. Ron Hubbard
(Map is P&B, reskins are personal use only)
-L. Ron Hubbard
(Map is P&B, reskins are personal use only)
Before it went to the Sangamon Valley, the ole 1795 detoured on the SLRR a little... Well, if you disregard all the timeline breaking lack of overhead wire in these shots, but, details, details. Laying catenary is a pain, that takes a very distant backseat!
SLRR K801-803-201 (or K801, for short) moves a bit of everything. This intra-divisional manifest hauls manifest freight between the yards in Boaz and Dickinson in West Virginia, moving anything from logs, chemicals, empty hoppers/centerbeams/tankers, and anything else in between. This train performs no work on-route unless special orders are given (occasionally, just collecting a local that died). Its counterpart, K803-801, will often bring back the exact opposites - logs become lumber, empty tankers come back with chemicals, and the occasional short string of coal cars, usually from the very low capacity Quarrier mine. Both trains run two or three times a week, as needed.
1795 commands our train, with two SD40-2s and two GP38-2s bringing up the rear. Even though the Geeps are destined to supplant power already in Dickinson Yard, they'll be used to the fullest on their way down south. Every drop of horsepower counts on these trains through the heart of the state.
Meanwhile, back in the midwest, the railroads shops were rather busy. During the late 70s throughout the 1990s, the Bloomington shops (and occasionally Brewster - even Boaz briefly) churned out numerous rebuilt EMDs for the railroad as part of the R-class Modernization Project. The goal was to take aging motive power and bring it into the modern era - and it was certainly a success. The first rebuilds took care of the plethora of 1st gen EMDs, such as the SD20R. These motors were rebuilt from battle-worn SD9 cores, where the shops chopped down the old hi-nose, replaced the entire cab with a 2nd gen EMD standard cab, added Dash Two electronics, rebuilt the 567 prime movers and upgraded them with 645 power packs, and other handy modernizations for the period - of course including a new coat of paint. The SD20R (and its sister, the SD10R made from SD7s) came out as excellent motors that worked well as slightly more heavy duty local power - it could do what a GP38-2 could, but the extra axles gave it some nice extra grip on the rails. The SD10R came out identical, except it had one of its fuel tanks cast off to reduce weight, making it the de-facto branchline unit.
A pair of fresh new SD20Rs here tackle a short grain train on the SLRR Champaign Sub. At Pontiac, they depart from the Alton Sub and join the Champaign Sub with their grainers in tow.
US&S R2 signals guide trains up and down the sub, and many others as well. The R2 (and previously R and Type L) signals are the default Silver Lines signal with just a few limited exceptions - namely, the West Virginia Division and its PRR Position Lights, the former Duluth & Aurora and its H5 Searchlights, and a few semaphores still survive on the chunks of Monon the railroad acquired decades ago.
The SD20R (and 10R) certainly has an odd look about it. The 1st gen nose and 2nd gen cab, all on the already very high SD9 frame make for quite the odd pairing! The height difference between the hood and cab is fairly extreme, but the hump from the Dash Two cabinet helps make that transition a bit more natural. These units survive into the present day, but in more limited numbers as a fair few have been sold to grain elevators and shortlines over the years, though the fleet remained intact until the turn of the century. By the end of 1981, 50 out of the 60 SD9s on the SLRR had been rebuilt to SD20Rs and all 20 of the SD7s had become SD10Rs. Five of the untouched SD9s survived on the iron range initially, with just three surviving as yard and plant switchers today. The other five were stripped for parts and sold for scrap - though one did make it to a shortline in barely operable condition.
As usual, another fine model done by Mr. Audie (amm4425) at JointedRail. Always grateful for the excellent work!
Cheers,
SM
SLRR K801-803-201 (or K801, for short) moves a bit of everything. This intra-divisional manifest hauls manifest freight between the yards in Boaz and Dickinson in West Virginia, moving anything from logs, chemicals, empty hoppers/centerbeams/tankers, and anything else in between. This train performs no work on-route unless special orders are given (occasionally, just collecting a local that died). Its counterpart, K803-801, will often bring back the exact opposites - logs become lumber, empty tankers come back with chemicals, and the occasional short string of coal cars, usually from the very low capacity Quarrier mine. Both trains run two or three times a week, as needed.
1795 commands our train, with two SD40-2s and two GP38-2s bringing up the rear. Even though the Geeps are destined to supplant power already in Dickinson Yard, they'll be used to the fullest on their way down south. Every drop of horsepower counts on these trains through the heart of the state.
Meanwhile, back in the midwest, the railroads shops were rather busy. During the late 70s throughout the 1990s, the Bloomington shops (and occasionally Brewster - even Boaz briefly) churned out numerous rebuilt EMDs for the railroad as part of the R-class Modernization Project. The goal was to take aging motive power and bring it into the modern era - and it was certainly a success. The first rebuilds took care of the plethora of 1st gen EMDs, such as the SD20R. These motors were rebuilt from battle-worn SD9 cores, where the shops chopped down the old hi-nose, replaced the entire cab with a 2nd gen EMD standard cab, added Dash Two electronics, rebuilt the 567 prime movers and upgraded them with 645 power packs, and other handy modernizations for the period - of course including a new coat of paint. The SD20R (and its sister, the SD10R made from SD7s) came out as excellent motors that worked well as slightly more heavy duty local power - it could do what a GP38-2 could, but the extra axles gave it some nice extra grip on the rails. The SD10R came out identical, except it had one of its fuel tanks cast off to reduce weight, making it the de-facto branchline unit.
A pair of fresh new SD20Rs here tackle a short grain train on the SLRR Champaign Sub. At Pontiac, they depart from the Alton Sub and join the Champaign Sub with their grainers in tow.
US&S R2 signals guide trains up and down the sub, and many others as well. The R2 (and previously R and Type L) signals are the default Silver Lines signal with just a few limited exceptions - namely, the West Virginia Division and its PRR Position Lights, the former Duluth & Aurora and its H5 Searchlights, and a few semaphores still survive on the chunks of Monon the railroad acquired decades ago.
The SD20R (and 10R) certainly has an odd look about it. The 1st gen nose and 2nd gen cab, all on the already very high SD9 frame make for quite the odd pairing! The height difference between the hood and cab is fairly extreme, but the hump from the Dash Two cabinet helps make that transition a bit more natural. These units survive into the present day, but in more limited numbers as a fair few have been sold to grain elevators and shortlines over the years, though the fleet remained intact until the turn of the century. By the end of 1981, 50 out of the 60 SD9s on the SLRR had been rebuilt to SD20Rs and all 20 of the SD7s had become SD10Rs. Five of the untouched SD9s survived on the iron range initially, with just three surviving as yard and plant switchers today. The other five were stripped for parts and sold for scrap - though one did make it to a shortline in barely operable condition.
As usual, another fine model done by Mr. Audie (amm4425) at JointedRail. Always grateful for the excellent work!
Cheers,
SM
Thank you! The write-ups are the most fun part for me, backstory and research and the like is always a treat. I tend to use Trainz mostly as a visual aid for the writing stuff I do.
Gotta love the R2s! Vintage signals are my obsession in recent years, love fitting them in anywhere I can. One of these days I'll learn how to re-arrange these things and make some custom signal setups/aspects for SLRR. Lots of fun little ideas in that realm.
-
R808 is the designation for the Pleasants Switcher. SLRR train symbols can be easily decoded - if one has a list of all the location numbers! R-trains are switchers and yard jobs, sometimes working the occasional very short local industry, while 8 designates the origin point - West Virginia. 08 denotes the terminal, yard, city, or other location of origin - in this case Willow Island, home to Pleasants Power Station and several chemical plants. R808 is one of the jobs that was always left to diesels, as putting together overhead wire for the whole small yard and the spurs was troublesome, especially with some clearance issues in certain spots. Mainline coal trains will drop off large cuts of coal-filled hoppers in the Pleasants railyard, which R808 is in charge of breaking up and delivering to the plants unloader. Why not have the mainline train do the unloading? Space constraints. The power station has plenty of room for piles of coal, but space between the plant and the start of the steep St. Marys grade was rather limited, and full unloading coal trains would block the main and road crossing for way too long to be feasible. Coming off of a steep downhill made that even more of a potential liability. Thus, the switcher was born. Coal isn't its only job anyway!
SD20Rs 4691 and 4695 spend plenty of time cutting up coal trains and setting out cuts of empties to be hauled back to Boaz Yard later, but also has other work to perform. Allnex and Solvay have large chemical plants just west of the power plant that are served by R808. L801, the Boaz-Grantsville local, make setouts of various tankers for R808 to bring to the chemical plants, and later will come back and pick up those tankers after the plants have filled or drained them, as needed. They also handle the filling of hoppers with fly ash from the power plant. On occasion, R808 has also taken care of L801s plastic hoppers that are meant to go to nearby SimEx Vinyl Extrusions - a short jaunt, just a few miles. Other days, other freight winds up in the Pleasants Yard where it isn't really meant to be. L801 doesn't run every day, so when R808 has free time, they take the 13-mile journey to the yard at Boaz to let them deal with the cars. In the case of 4691/4695 today, they've got a few empty plastic hoppers and some boxcars full of furniture that are bound for the midwest - not exactly meant to be in the power plant! Happily, with the power stations coal reserves full up, R808 gets to stretch its legs a little and head down to the main to get them to Boaz. M801-402, a manifest from Boaz to Dayton, Ohio, will get those cars headed in the right direction. The Pennsy signals make a stark reminder that this whole line wasn't always SLRRs.
We'll just conveniently disregard that this section of track irl was B&O, anyway!
In reality those cars are here due to iPortal shenanigans... constantly changing operations in a multi-month long ops session have cars winding up in strange places, certainly. More on that another time, anyway.
Cheers,
SM
fant_autentico
Well-known member
nikkigirl1
Building "The Cutoff"
The times, they are a'changin'...
The switch tower looks great. Your own work ?
jadebullet
might be back?
S-390 parallels Rt 61 as it hauls a heavy iron ore train up grade through Paxinos, PA on its way to hand off its train to the Lehigh Valley at Mount Carmel. The Reading's Mahanoy and Shamokin Branch sits on the embankment behind the train.
A pair of I1 decapods bring up the rear for the shove up the torturous grade through hard coal country.
A pair of I1 decapods bring up the rear for the shove up the torturous grade through hard coal country.
RetroRails12
Well-known member
On ESCD84's NS Sandusky District Stage 2 Route!
hiawathamr
DLC developer for Trainz
Cheers
Thanks Piere, I am using the environmental settings shown below:
The sky texture is my own custom one, but I think you could get a similar look with a comparable partly cloudy sky texture.
Cheers,
Eric
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