Western Allegheny RR

[Fierogt87]

The major obstacle to modelling the Western Allegheny RR is the fact that about 8 miles of right-of-way and 2 stations lie about 30 feet below the shimmering surface of Lake Arthur. So I made this "Proof of concept" route to see what could be done about it, since any DEM i would find of the area would have the flat surface of the lake instead of the desired topology that was flooded in 1970. I managed to geo-ref a topo map from before the lake was created and superimposed it on the DEM during import, and was able to terraform the lake surface using the topological information as a reference.

First photo is the route map in the vicinity of the lake.

Second is the imported DEM with Geo-Ref'ed Raster map, and about 500mm water layer over the surface of the lake in the DEM. Its not perfect, but I feel its close enough. The average elevation of Lake Arthur is ~1188 Feet.

Third photo is terraformed lake bed.

Fourth photo is the lake refilled, just for show.

Fifth photo is entire route that I plan to model.

 

[blueodessey]

Very impressive work Sir....Thank you for sharing....

 

[JCitron]

Awesome! This is what's so great about TransDEM and Trainz. I know of no other programs that can do this kind of thing so easily.

I did a similar thing for the NY and Greenwood Lake, Pompton Jct. to Greenwood Lake section. The route was submerged above Haskel when the Monksville Dam was created on a section of the Wanaque River in the late 1920s. Using the current DEM with superimposed ca. 1943-44 GeoPDFs, I was able to see where the route followed the river valley up to Hewitt and Awosting on its way to Cooper and then Greenwood Lake. Like you I had to dig out the water to recreate the river valley the best I could. There's still a lot of refining and a lot more obstacles to overcome because of the lack of ROW in the area with some apparent hints of it in some locations. Looking at the various Google Earth images, the route is traceable until hits the dam where it disappears. In other locations, it's been replaced by a two-lane highway, and in other locations, it has become parking lots and housing developments.

Using some artist's license, I plan to bring the route alive again but recreate it in modern times instead of going back to the early part of the 20th century.

What inspired me to work on this project was a friend of mine's grandfather and uncle worked for the railroad and later the Erie who owned the line in the end.