Rollins Pass and 2004 - 2006

This is great news, those models look VERy impressive. !!!b I've been playing around with both the early route , which has a lot of terrain and other inaccuracies and the trainz italia route in both 2010 and 2012 for about a year now, i am no 3d modeller, so it has been mostly researching the correct tree species ,replacing the mistakes regarding correct tree species etc , finding the correct rock and cutting features and track alignment . Not being in the states, i've had to rely on the internet and the excellent " rails that climb" book which i actually found a pristine copy of here in adelaide of all places. i have lot of images that i have found that you might not have , just let me know if you want to use them and i'll put them up on a file share . I've found the Denver public library files really useful but also youtube video taken by trail bikers and 4wd drivers who have pretty much taken video of the entire route. . good luck with the project , it makes me feel less guilty for not going further with my version.
i hope there are plans to build one of the wonderful 2-6-6-0's- that would be a dream come true . heres some of the rollins landscaping i did , based on original images from the route before the moffat tunnel was built, a lot being early days, but i doubt if the river meanderings changed much- its very different now, all these scenes are incomplete as was modifying it constantly as i found new info , eventually i stopped work to see if a new version would come out for TANE as i didn't want to waste my time on such a large layout until a more accurate version was available.
https://drive.google.com/folderview...t4Tk90Wkk4blhydElhemtHdjd5RFcxNHc&usp=sharing

Hi Dangavel and wow wonderful to hear about your work we will welcome any sharing you can and want to do and I will share with you all of our historical research as well I am in Colorado and have had wonderful help from the Denver Salt Lake RR Historical Society they have walked me thru all of the details on the rolling stock and we now have accurate models of al of the early passenger stock, and the main freight car types, we have a speialist making one of the 300 series 10 wheelers and another expert who is i think going to make the Mallets for us, I would love to see what you have done,

I started working on this with a team, including one member who had the route and some route making skills but he turned out sadly to be unable to work in our team with our standards and I had to continue with the other members. So for now my focus is on research and getting details on the towns and the history of the route and buildings the assets hopefully for a chance to add them to an expanded version updated by the original team from Italy who made the route. I just finished the yard buildings for the yard at Tabernash, some of them and plan to do the 10 stall engine house next. The research takes a lot of time to get it right and then making the models takes even more












this rare photo is one of the few that shows both the yard and the town of Tabernash, this is from the top of the engine house looking acrsss to the main part of town.

Our goal is rivet counting accuracy whenever possible on both rolling stock, and RR structures and towns along the Right of Way. It is not possible to get it all for time has not been kind to either the towns or the records. There was a disaterous fire that took some records in the 1950s but fortunately Pullman and Alco both have good records as does the Smithsonian but at a price. We proceed as we can doing what we can and hope to achieve success within reasonable bounds in a couple of years.

I hate to be a killjoy but Rollins Pass 1915 is a payware product of TrainzItalia. If you intend to continue development of your version, which appears to be based on Trainzitalia's route you need to contact

Pendolino - http://forums.auran.com/trainz/member.php?39593-Pendolino

Jango - http://forums.auran.com/trainz/member.php?27230-jango

TrainzItalia also released the payware Rollins Pass Winter, and a shareware version Rollins Pass NG36

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?107591-ROLLINS-PASS-NG36-FREEWARE&highlight=rollins
http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...ase-Rollins-Pass-NG-36-quot&highlight=rollins

TrainzItalia also produced:

West from Denver payware,

Sherman Hill payware, later shareware http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?95675-SHERMAN-HILL-vers-2-0-FREEWARE

Their last payware project was Donner Pass and Donner Pass Winter. http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?51886-DONNER-PASS-is-quot-up-quot

And their current shareware project is White Pass and Yukon http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...-YUKON-RR-International-collaboration-project

Sorry guys but if you are basing your project on TrainzItalia products you are going to have to get permission.

Edit: BTW TranizItalia has stated that they intend to move most if not all their products to TANE

Hello Normhart and thanks for your concern and your post ...they are reasonable concerns but in our case and in the case of this route work if you had read thru the start of the thread you would have seen we have every intention of offering our work if it succeeds to the makers and yes of course i am fully aware and respectful of it being payware. I am myself a 63 year old 40 year veteran as a professional creative profession, and have worked as a Rights Editor for a publisher, and am the owner and Director of an international coalition of game and sim and 3D world content makers and users. I am also a long time maker of mods and assets for various sims and have always followed the honour code as anyone who knows me in various game communities can atest.

Our work has been research and proof of concept. Nothing has been shared or will be that involved the original route all of the models you see have been make in the MSTS format for we are making a full route ourselves for Train Sim and Open Rails as well as developing a version for Trainz if and when it is considered useful by the original makers or they give their permission for it to be encorporated or released as a package add on. Otherwise we may make assets that can be used for any route but which are historically accurate for the Denver Northwestern & Pacific. Same for rolling stock. None of that affects the Route itself and only offers people a chance to enhance it if they already own it or purchase any new releases. We would never share any assets of the original route or alter them without permission in any way apart from research into the possibility of extending and correcting the route as it is now. And I also note that we are working on the 2004 version of the route, as it was originally released, as the Standard Gauge line that it was in actuality. We have accurate topo maps, plats and assistance from the historical societies involved and access to resources that the makers of the route do not have, and it is hope to honor and to enhance what they created. That lies in the future, for now the work continues to research, build assets and test the possiblities of extending the route as it was in 1915 as accurately as is humanly possible.

The original route was very good but lacked accuracy in a number of ways. that is NOT a criticism, only an observation. I am a nut for accuracy around history. It would have been very hard for Jango and the team to know the details of teh towns along the route fully as it has taken us months and months of dedicated digging to find the info and UI would be happy to share the 4 GB of photos, data and facts and photos with them at any time. It is our and my hope to hep enhance the route and tell the story of a remarkable chapter in railroad history. I live in Colorado, am a trained historical researcher and archivist and have been working for almost a year now digging for facts and information and working to develop the knowledge to attempt this. So it is a historical project as much as anything.

So there is no need for concern. In time if we are successful and manage to significantly develop accurate and working resources we will offer then free of any cost to the makers of the route if they want to use them. Beyond that any other alternatives depend on their wishes. I hope to contact and get to know them once we have something to show for our efforts other than screenshots and hopes. thanks again for your concern.

Thanks so much for clarifying your project for me Crisger. As the person responsible for introducing the wild inaccuracy of converting the original route to narrow gauge I am very glad to see the introduction of genuine standard gage rolling stock and locomotives of the DN-W&P and, hopefully,the D&SL. One of the reasons I converted the route was the lack of equipment for those railroads, the other was the plethora of narrow gauge equipment without a really great route to run them on. I am also very glad to see the extension of the route, I introduced quite a bit of non-historical track at both ends of the original line to simulate the existence of the yards I knew must be further down the line.

Good luck with your endeavors.

Cheers,
Norm

Edit: OBTW I am pretty sure if you requested it Pendolino or Jango could provide you with a copy of Rollins Pass NG36 which wouldn't help with your track work but would offer you many updated assets as well as giving you some idea of how interactive industries were incorporated into the route. (you should ask about a copy of R.P. Winter too. Pretty awesome)

Hi Norm whew good glad you understand.

I have the greatest respect for Pendolino and Jango and their work the route is truly one of the most beautiful and well made i have seen in any rail sim and any sim for that matter, the textures and the model work and the assets are superb and truly works of art. I have looked forward to the chance if our work tuns out to be accurate and successful to approaching them with something worthy of their work to share if they wish and to enhance the route in any future possibilities. As we all know this work when done right takes a LOT of time, for me it has taken years to learn the skills to start to approach the accuracy I want to see, and Larry who is doing the track work and is the person who told me about the route is a far more skilled modeller and very very determined like me to do only what is accurate and reallly there.

The Moffat road and the Denver Northwestern & Pacific went thru a huge upheaval after David Moffat died and went thru the reoganization, the DSL had just started taking over things by 1915 and making needed improvements and changes, the Yard at Tabernash was in full swing but the second water tower and the lower ash tracks had not yet been installed nor the sand tower and coal tower, but the town had grown fast, in fact a number of the significant structures from Fraser were moved to Tabernash when the section HQ was moved over in 1913. We have to research carefully each town, each section, each mill, camp, siding, water tank, trestle, tunnel, and RR service structure. So step by step we hope to achieve what can be done, and are finding team members to help as they can and their skills allow and who work to the same high standard we insist on. the new assets look wonderful and I will look forward to buying all of what has been done, and becoming a gold member of the site now that they have cleared out the spammers and reopened the site. For now, tomorrow, I must make the yard shed for the Wrecker and then move on to making more structures for Fraser, as well as keep researching as needed. thanks again for your posts and your understanding. Your NG route looks very nice too.

the winter pass route will be wonderful to see, we have extended the snow sheds in Corona to cover the entire Y as they were...that took a lot of research as well... and the snow isssue was a huge part of the challenge of the route. I have made the "Red Devil" steam rotary snow plow and we even found an accurate sound file for it. Will be wonderful to be able to to activities for the snow clearing and other aspects and the interactive industries is a wondeful part of how trainz works. The RR had a lot of trade they carried from ranches, lumber mills and the mines at the western end when they reached Craig and the coal fields. We hope to add the NG branch lines that connected the RR to some of the local limber mills and I am about to make the Mill at Irving that Billy Woods owned for that location. step by step.

we found a photo of the mill first...



US Forest service had that, they owned most of the land the RR went thru over the pass, and had a big impact on the route, for instance they forbade the drinking of alcohol on Forest Service land which made it hard for the bar owners in Arrow so Arrow incorporated in 1904 to get free of the Forest Serivce regulattors ...)

then we found the plat of the siding..



and just today i got the info that there was in fact a water tank built at the Irving siding..which i didnt know until today...




courtesy of the Corona Telegraph

so it goes, step by step.



thanks.

Chris

Would love to have this in Tane.

Jenny Lake in winter.

That looks wonderful Norm, love the textures and the icicles on the water tank. The Water tanks had a frost box that they used to keep them from freezing, the TrainzItalia RR structures are excellent, very well done. We have a few paint chips from various locations, many of them were painted the same railroad red as the box cars but that weathered in time very fast so i think the wood textures used is very good.

great screens shot they did a wonderful job on the winter version..and that was such an important part of the Moffat Road's history over the pass. It took up to 60 percent of the annual profits to keep the pass open they often had six snow removal units parked at Corona including the various rotary blowers and other equipment and often used two engines to move them, one to push and one to pull them out if they got stuck.

You mean like this?





This is actually based on an old photo I found from the early days of the Central Pacific.

I hope you'll be able to find more data than I was able to on the small communities that grew and died along this route, places like Pearson, Irving, and Antelope.

Hi Norm wow nice snow plow looks just like the "Red Devil" that worked on the Pass all those years, very nice indeed well done!

here are the yard buildings I just finished for Tabernash around 1915.











Photo courtesy of Corona Telegraph (c) copyright 2015 All right Reserved.

will take time but it is a worthy effort.

Got 2 of our buildings converted to trainz format thanks to the very kind efforts of CaptaiKMan a memer here and a very generous person who converted 2 of them, the Fraser Depot and the Cozens lemmon Stor to Trainz format for the 2004 version KUID and I will get them into the library here soon

Chris

Nice looking buildings there. Keep up the good work. Anything Colorado Railroading related is excellent in book.

My personal version of Rollins Pass has been very modified, and most areas are still W.I.P. I have modified all four towns and recently added the Tabernash yard. Also two gold mines and a silver mine. The two gold mines have dirt roads that connect them into the road complex. They can all be accessed in player mod. Also a moonshine camp.
Corona had to be completely changed to match the period map. The snow shed depot was located within the Y. Also there was a massive snow shed complex. Arrow has mostly temp building that in time will be replaced. I have been modeling for years so it's just a matter of time. There is no way I could post all the pictures needed to show all the towns and other changes, so I will just post a few now and more at another time. I made most changes because of pictures and maps I received from Chris, so thanks to him

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Tabernash 1.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Tabernash 2.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Corona 1.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Corona 2.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Corona 3.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Corona 4.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Arrow 1.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Arrow 2_1.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Arrow 3.jpg


The old Corona map showed that there was an access door and gravel path leading to the restaurant and hunting lodge

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Snow shed door.jpg

I view of Tolland, the Tolland ice house and a view of Tolland from The Early Bird gold mine.

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Tolland.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Tolland Ice House.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Early Bird Gold Mine.jpg

Fraser, I lowered and leveled the ground on both sides of the tracks and removed the Y. The town was starting to expand to the West side of the tracks in 1915.

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Fraser 3.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Fraser 1.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Fraser 4.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Fraser 2.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Fraser 5.jpg

The Fraser Justice Department

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Fraser Justice Department.jpg

Arrow update picture

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/Arrow Update 8-30-15.jpg

Just finished building the Tabernash engine house.

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/4.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/2.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/1.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/6.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/5.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad343/Larry_M/3.jpg

Still working on this now passing what we can convert to Trainz format over to Jango for the updates to the route, it is looking wonderful in pictures that Jango has posted, I am very excited about the future of Rollins Pass and working with various other team members off and on, have achieved a lot and hope to see this keep growing as this is truly a remarkable part of Railroad history.

Any updates?

BraselC5048 said:

Any updates?

Click to expand...

Rollins Pass Winter 1910 was released in December 2017 unfortunately for you it is TANE only. I have not found the release thread in the freeware section but it is there somewhere.

The Rollins Pass Winter release thread is at https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?142849-Rollins-Pass-Winter-vers-3