Thanks Matt, the first thing I do when I'm looking at a new (to me) route is figure out what kind of rolling stock would be appropriate and begin collecting stuff for it. With this route, that has three different gauges, collecting was more fun than usual. Not only was there all Prowler901's DRG stuff, both 36NG and standard gauge, there were a few other DRG SG locomotives to throw into the mix. But my first pass flying over the route in Surveyor to evaluate how well it had survived the transition to TANE revealed that there were many collapsed trestles on the 36NG section and that I was going to need to do some studying on the dual gauge operations so I took a look at the 30NG line which was fine and decided to focus on that section of the route first.
Dustin, there is a method to my madness. I always collect all my rolling stock in the biggest yard available on the route and you should be glad that I spare you all the screenies that I take of the locomotives and especially all the rolling stock. Imagine all the miles and miles of box cars.
I had not paid much attention to the 30ng US steam era rolling stock but this route gave me an excuse. If you look closely at the locomotive collection you will find many duplicates most by bdaneal and cloned by philskene but several others as well. The first thing I did was compare how well they performed in TANE and eliminated those that were not so good. I still had more locomotives than could comfortably fit in the two main yards on the route so I broke them down by fuel. I had already determined that the primary fuel was apparently Oil since there were oil fuel tanks at both ends but only one coaling facility at one end. I had also determined that there were only two main industries on the 30NG line, a coal mine and a logging operation. Now it has always made sense to me that logging operations would use wood fired engines and, after testing, I had four wood fired locomotives available so I transferred them to the Thomas Lumber siding. Yes I know that doesn't explain screenies of locomotive collections Dustin. Well here are my reasons for posting those, first because I can, second because I'm proud of my collections, and third because it may give other users ideas. They may say wow norm where did you get this or that locomotive or they may say hey norm what about this or that locomotive that you don't have. Both ways we win even if the occasional screenshot irritates you.
Matt, once I determined the locomotives for the logging operation I took a look at what the route expected me to do with the logs. Not only is there the Thomas Lumber siding there was a Dry Sort Yard at one end of the 30NG line that allowed me to transfer the logs to the 36ng line. All right with that I had the first revenue operation and I set up a consist of empty flat cars with caboose and one of the three 2-6-6-2 Mallets available. At the logging site I set up a consist of empty bulkhead cars (who knew someone made those? Thanks david111767!) with a 0-4-2T. I told the Mallet engineer to drive to the Thomas Siding while I hopped into the tank engine to load logs on to the bulkhead cars. That went fairly well with the Mallet arriving not long after I'd completed loading. Then I realized there were problems; while I could get the tank engine out of the way and drop the empties on the siding and pick up the loaded cars from the spur, all the futzing around with the caboose would cause the mainline to be blocked for a considerable time. Unacceptable! Furthermore the Mallet would have to go all the way to Redtop to get turned around to get back to the dry sort yard. By this time I had decided that I liked the route well enough to spend some serious time on it so... I added one of pencil42's 30NG turntables at Thomas' and converted the 30NG track to pencil42's 70lb Brown Milled and confirmed that tunnels and trestles all looked OK. This had the added benefit of giving me somewhere to store all four woodburners. I re-ran the scenario and while getting the locomotive and caboose turned around was time consuming the mainline was open for much longer. That is where the "action" screenie came from. :hehe:
Ben as to my fuel costs, this route has a coal mine, a logging operation, and oil wells. They pay for themselves. :hehe:
Edit: Dustin, if I hadn't posted those screenshots of my collection of bdaneal's 36ng locomotives I might not have found out about the Timber Ridge Line route.
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