Just to continue what he said above, because I am a talkative person (sometimes) and I would like to add to his points. First and foremost, thank goodness for Flusi and his talents for DEM making, the DEM all told covers over 200 miles of trackage, plus about 6 baseboards to either side of the tracks. He knocked it out in about 2 and a half hours like it was nothing. The DEM also caused Jayden and I to rethink our track coverage. Initially, we were going to take the line, which now terminates at Farmington, down through Wilton and Dixfield, Maine and into Rumford. Farmington also would have featured the Rangeley Secondary, heading north out of Farmington, through Strong and up to Rangeley, before coming to its end at Flagstaff Yard in Eustis. Rumford would previously been the site of the CBVR's passenger car shops and storage, as well as our primary Pan-American Railways interchange point.
The rearranged track plan saw much change to the system, reducing the overall track length while also somehow adding more to do on it. We moved our primary interchange with Pan-Am from Rumford to Newport, Maine. This way, there is actually less added track in the grand scheme of things, plus, interchanging at Newport means that our traffic is then on a straight shot into Bangor on Pan-Am, so our interchange opportunities are much better. So, what was previously the Skowhegan Branch was extended, now as a main line, to Newport. We still interchange with Pan-Am on the Rumford end, however, this is now done at Farmington, with Pan-Am coming in on what we had previously had planned as our line to Rumford, now cut off on the DEM at Wilton. The interchange operations at Farmington are much smaller than those at Newport. The Rangeley Secondary was removed from our plans altogether. Its primary purpose was mainly forwarding Pan Am interchange traffic from Rumford to Flagstaff, in addition to adding a few station stops for our passenger services. Removing the major interchange at Rumford, coupled with the fact that it just wasn't a great idea to start with, meant that it was no longer viable, and thus we trimmed it as 55 miles of fluff. A small part of the Secondary into Farmington will remain, as Farmington received new trackage going north and then east into North Anson. The old Dead River mine will be relocated to somewhere along this stretch of track, and will be renamed to match its new location. There will also be several agricultural stops along the way.
Farmington and North Anson both have become vastly more key than they were even before. Farmington, while no longer a huge interchange as it was when the interchange was in Rumford, is still an interchange none-the-less, and it will be kept busy with Pan-Am traffic. Farmington also will become the center of operations for passenger operations, in particular our Pine Liner commuter trains. Amtrak will be coming in from directly south along its own line, and will meet us in a Union Station of sorts. The station at Farmington will undoubted be the largest in the system, and will also feature an attached bus station, which is particularly designed for the college students commuting in and out of town. North Anson is currently shaping up to be the heart of the Carrabassett. The way the new map has shaped up, North Anson sits almost perfectly in the center of it all, with most Farmington traffic coming from the west (relative to town), traffic from Lac Mégantic coming from the north, and traffic from Newport and all points in between coming from the south. The main engine shops will be based here, along with what will most likely be our largest yard, and it will likely be the home for our new passenger car shops. Lac Mégantic yard, as proud as I was of its previous iteration, will be made vastly smaller. The last version was simply massive for the use it would have received.
After all of that system revision, and we got Flusi to work a little magic for us, we inspected the DEM we received, and started plotting how we would conquer the Maine mountains. We discovered that we were going to have some pretty brutal grades, and our previous roster would have been stretched incredibly thin in order to tackle these grades, if it was even sufficient to do so at all in the first place, so upgrades were in order. We wound up culling the GP15's. While they were nice, we've had a lot of issues with them operating even short trains on our previous grades, and these grades now we'll be even harder and will go on for longer, and we simply don't have room in the roster for that. So we ditched them, and all told added about 100 units to the roster, 25 of which were passenger units for the Pine Liner service, which we were going to need to add anyway, and most of the rest being higher horsepower engines to tackle either main line or helper service, as well as filling in some higher horsepower road switchers for more local jobs, plus a few that, quite simply, I just wanted to see. The final result is what you see above, and I think it will suit our needs nicely, though it can always be adjusted as needed.
Does create a good bit of work for me, since there aren't many reskinable models available for the new additions, I'm having to model most of them myself, however, I do luckily have some guidance from Chance, on top of being able to build a lot of it based off of a few of Austin's existing models. I'll also of course have to make a good bit of new skin work on top of having lost some skin work to A) moving websites (thus any skins I did under NARM on HP-Trainz content I can no longer release), and B) removing certain units from the roster (thus culling my now 13 GP15 skins). However, the net skin work needed actually goes down, since I can equip the models I'm making with ARN, removing the need to individually number basically all of the skins I make. I'll still do a skin changer to give some variety, but I sure as hell am not individually painting 250-odd locomotives. My sanity and everyone else's hard drives wouldn't be able to handle it.
Anyhow, sorry for putting you guys through that wall of text, just wanted to over-explain literally everything. To compensate, here's a shot I cobbled together on the new DEM when I was busy pathfinding a route from Kingfield to Embden, while Jayden was busy starting on what is now the official version we'll be pass back & forth. This would be southbound NA-32F, passing through Embden Pond.