USA Pics

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[sureshot28]

Nice warm day !!!

 

[netjam99]

Rio Grande Railroad. 'the ACTION railroad'
West bound through Price Canyon. Two percent grade from here to Soldier Summit!

 

[deadpoolmx55]

 

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[netjam99]

Looks like the Utah Belt has trackage rights on the Rio Grande's Soldier Summit route! A long train of empty hoppers coasts down the two percent grade to Helper, Utah. USA.

Eric Brooman is the Goat of model railroading. Go look at pay sites or the download station, more locomotives, freight cars and coal hoppers are available on Trainz than a lot of famous real life railroads.

 

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[hiawathamr]

UP local

Cheers

 

[deadpoolmx55]

 

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[lego207]

Awesome pics! What JR route are those Pennsy signals from?

Thanks! The PRR signals originally come from JRs Monongahela & Western route, though only a couple are assembled from the library. A buddy of mine took that library and assembled basically a full suite of them, handy stuff!

-

A 6-pack of SLRR power tackles the steep grade at Independence, WV. Traffic on K803 was sizable, including lots of paper products, furniture, lumber, plastic pellets, woodchips, and empty chemical tankers. The K-trains vary in length and tonnage dramatically, and this one was on the longer side. Independence is the home of the steepest grade on the WV division and the entire railroad, exceeding 3%! This grade was one of the larger driving factors to electrifying the the division, though todays K-train is all-diesel. Trains out of Dickinson Yard often lacked electrics, as few were regularly stationed there thanks to its district being wholly flat.

Leaser power headed to another railroad was tacked onto the back of K803, some funky little rebuilds of SD70s. The SLRR was not, and is not, above borrowing power in-transit to other destinations when it's needed, and this was no exception!

Now, on the topic of borrowed power... SD40s #5 and #6 are not your typical power on a typically rather grey-and-black railroad. They're also sort of homeless at the moment. I had some inspiration for an ugly mining railroad scheme and wanted to toy with the idea a bit, hence 5 and 6 here. Bright lime locomotives are rarely regarded as pretty, and these two are no exception, but I like them! They're meant to be bright and hi-contrast in otherwise dingy and coal-dusted mining country, hence the loud orange highlights and blinding lime. I went into throwing these together without any idea where they were meant to go - no home turf, not even a company name. Just a paint scheme and a job, which is in the coal mines. I've thought about having them move up to take over the now-dead NS Captina Secondary, but I'm still not quite sold on it. There's other motive power I want to throw into the scheme and company, but the SD40s made a good first test bed.

Either way, 5 and 6 were plonked down on the route for a test run as I tweaked skins - up until last night both wore different schemes, with 5 lacking the black striping on the long hood, and some minor detail changes - and just never left. So, the "green machines" as I simply call them now have been roaming around the 230 miles of route here and helping out where needed. Usually on the K-trains, but today, they got to take the Clonch local, L803. This local originates from Dickinson Yard and switches Clonch Industries in Dixie, WV, delivering logs and taking loaded woodchip gondolas and centerbeams out. Here, 6 takes the lead just past CP Dixie, where they will reverse into the Clonch spur.

Clonch Industries is a rare moment on this route where I actually got to implement a real industry in. In real life, Clonch exists here in Dixie, but only served by trucks, and a bit smaller. However, opening them up to the railroad allows for some size upgrades, and makes for a neat little industry to switch. The scene here has been around since I built through Dixie in TANE, and I've only recently started to replace some assets and clean up the area a bit more. Trying PBR textures again, though I'm definitely still not quite sold on them yet. Maybe HD terrain would make them friendlier to use. Anyway, 5 and 6 here grab the empty bulkheads after they've been unloaded, and start to reassemble their train.

With woodchip and lumber loads in tow, a much heavier L803 can now return home to Dickinson with its unusual power set. After running around their train in the recently extended siding, L803 rolls back through CP Dixie southbound this time. These cars, both loads and empties, are iPortal-bound - in fact the overwhelming majority of stuff on this route comes in or ships out via iPortal to other players. We have built up a network, where my section of the SLRR here is central to what I call the "West Virginia iPortal supercluster." Traffic comes in from four different iPortals in four regions of this 230 mile route, and it all goes out a different way. In the case of the Clonch local, all of these cars originated from another user who sent them to my iPortal in Parkersburg. That train was broken down at Boaz Yard, reassembled into other trains, such as K801 which brought these cars and plenty more from Boaz to Dickinson Yard. Many of its cars were put on L806, the local that handles interchange with another user, but other cars were put onto todays L803. These cars, and more as trains come in from Charleston and Beckley iPortals, will be assembled into the next K803 and sent to Boaz, where the pattern of breaking cars into locals and interchange trains continues. If it sounds like work, it is - but it's actually enjoyable, and gives running trains in this game a sense of purpose rather than being just a screenshot simulator. It makes a huge difference, believe you me.

CP Belva makes for the southern end of the Dixie-Belva siding. After a much needed extension, this siding now reaches 13,530ft long, making it capable of stacking trains if Independence and the Lizemores Pass are occupied. CP Belva is also home to the Zela Mine Branch and the Greendale Mine Branch. It's not uncommon to see spare power, usually some old boxcab GE Motors, sitting ready on the mine branch track for helper service over the Pass. Zela and Greendale don't move quite as much coal as Clear Creek or Mammoth, so the space is often up-for-grabs. Eventually, dedicated helper tracks would be either rebuilt or freshly installed across the subdivision, but for over a decade, actual helper pockets were a rarity and a luxury.

The green machines had no trouble with their short local - usually it rates merely a pair of Geeps if diesel-operated, or if electric, an EF-1 or an E44 - and getting back to Dickinson. The yard here is in sharp contrast to Boaz up north - where Boaz is long and somewhat skinny, Dickinson is short but thick. Lots of tracks, but not tons of space on any of them. It also meant that room for overhead wire was severely limited, so Dickinson to Charleston was the last area to be electrified on the division. Like Boaz, the yard itself sees no wires, but an inbound/outbound ready track, plus the mainline, did receive wire. 5 and 6 have done their job and will be parked back in the fuel pad as the sun begins to cast its first hints of gold light down, though ex-DT&I 9114 and SLRR 3563, the usual Geep pair on L803, have some work to do before that can happen. The 5 and 6 will eventually get a home, name and reporting marks, and then be whisked away, but for now, the duo have a temporary home in this part of West Virginia. They're oddballs, and to most, not the prettiest motive power, but they're fun to have around. I look forward to finding them a suitable home and really putting them to work - and then dirtying them up!

Cheers,
SM

 

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[DARTrider]

Random screenshots.

 

[deadpoolmx55]

 

[hiawathamr]

Cheers

 

[Mothebunny]

Gone today, but so they say, tomorrow he'll be back.

 

[nikitka1988]