Snow High Valley Distr Ctr (High Resolution 950x532) Approx

Evening Southern 1581,

:D I warned you I was clueless on Locomotives and other stuff, Yes it did clear it up with the good info you provided.

Now I've been Slug Educated, :hehe: totally forgot about the Prime Mover not being present......Makes sense on the Color Contrast difference on the War Bonnets......

Was playing in the Aurora Harbor tonight, and made some more Changes...........Lets see what the Group thinks about it tomorrow when I post the Pictures...........

Thanks for coming to the Rescue.....Take care ole friend !
 
New Ore Facility/ New Farm Silo for Farmers


Good morning all,

Well I had something on my mind about trans loading ORE here at the Pier, you know me, :hehe:I just have to jump in and make it happen.....

So I went over to my Harbor Master Division (Phil Skene's Creation, Awesome) and realized I could make some change here on this scale.

I dropped in A wood wall Deck, and I see something here I need to fix,oops.....

Anyway, Put in some small Dock Cranes, and brought in a ORE ship, we now have a pure trans load facility, not to large, and our Yard in the way I have Tracks setup, it will work fine.......Because in my Yard, I have enough Tracks spread out over a fair area, nothing should bottle neck, they all dump into a double main line too. We are unloading Iron Ore here.

This is a view from the other side, we take two rows ORE cars and each Crane will fill 4 at a time as they slowly get pushed back. Doesn't take long, and we have the power to Shunt, that was one of reasons I brought in that amount of Locos, Big Boy will pull the consists out once they are stringed together. And will probably put Helper Service on the back for keeping Knuckle breakage out of the picture.....I think this will work well?

Now in this picture, you see the new Cranes, but also notice my Pulp Mill tracks and Engine Service lead out of the yard by Separate Main between the 2 large industrial buildings.

Now there is a point at the end of the Yard where all three (3) Tracks converge into one before it hits the Double (2) mainlines, But I also have a backup plan if that does not work, I have a long Spur coming out around the Yard Limit Approach Curves, and I could just cut One (1) of those (3) leads to (2) tracks and run the other one along the Double main much further out around the mountain in the back?

And I may have to do that, so the next thing I'll do is finish the Spur connections on both sides and throw in some Switches so if traffic is too busy coming out of the Yard it's available to use.....Just thinking ahead, and if we don't use it as bypass for Traffic, I have plenty of empty Cars we can throw in there and use it as extra Storage, as I don't have a lot of Storage in this yard, but my other Larger Yard is not too far away from this yard.

I'll pop another Picture in of the area I'm referring too for more Clarity.

Looking at this picture, Red Arrows, you see the new instillation and we have the ORE CARS loaded and ready for Shunting. Crews for Big Boy and Helper Service Job Briefings have been notified at 05:00 AM this morning.....The Crew has just reported to the Yard and are picking up their paperwork now for JOB....

Look at Yellow Boxcar, and just to the Right is where all the Tracks come together...That is one of the spots I will make some relief Track improvements for more fluidity of Car movement out of the yard, little tweak here and there....

We are in the Process of shunting these loaded Boxcars into the Local Industries here with a trio of SP SD240-2 Units my old reliable's.

And we have a new Item courtesy of DAVE SNOW, master builder, saw this on his Thread with many other items he is making, and thought OH HECK YA!!!!

I need this on my Farm Field to move the Grain out of this area, and make it easier for the Farmers to get their Grain to and From the Markets, so we dropped in a Feed Supply and Grain Silo assortment, and the Farmers helped pay, for the installation and everyone gains on this project, now a single Spur Stop had two (2) businesses on it, and the Railroad gets more work, plus will have a small dedicated Switcher to move stuff around, we might add a little more track depending on Business here, have to wait and see, Farmers will let me know at our annual meeting. Everybody is happy as this works for the Community and the Rail Industry.

Yellow Arrow was new industry recently, now we have Trans load Feed Grainery and Supply Store for Seed and Stuff, Farmers won't have to Travel as far for supplies........Now the store up front sells Seed too, but they sell a lot of other items too, so it will be compatible for both, as we have a lot of Farms in this area......Plenty of brisk business for all.....Plus the Farmers agree, they like this arrangement, one place will not be too crowded for access.

Looking at it from this vantage point I'll need a good size dirt road from the back highway for access to both however I might just Pave a Road in to both places.....Have to play with that idea?

All Good!

The local is sitting here for a bit, as will pick up some loads from the new Grain Mill in back, Local Switch Power will bring it up and will break Steam engine from train for min to have Switcher Drop it in for us........Very minimal delay, plus we have the power in this Steam to add the Cars to our load.

I dropped in a quick BNSF switcher for now, I might change it out for something else later......This fit in so well in this field, it was easy to do.......

Thank you SIR Dave Snow for your wonderful Creations.......

I had plenty of room in the Field, so just needed to see where it might fit the best, so I chose the spot closer to highway in the back, I need to put in small road for access by Farmers and other Deliveries needed for Operations.......

Another thing I'm happy about I'm trying to maintain an open area look here, so I think this addition keeps with my general plan......
 
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Aurora to Montana Rail Trip with the UP Turbines!

Evening all, we left Aurora Harbor area to catch up with our Tanker Train.

And she is looking good, pulling strong, love the 85oo HP per Unit.......We are headed out the back of Farm Country here.

We are 1/2 way to Montana Rail Division, passing thru a very small yard in back and Wood Mill facility and Coal Drop off point. Speed Limit is 40 MPH....

OOPs we missed one of our switch legs to Montana, 1/2 our train got passed, but will shove back and ask for the switch to be set, I guess the Dispatcher was a little busy at the Helm....LOL


Pushing back here and almost where we need to be,,,,,,You can see we have a good of smoke from the front.


Well we were notified it will be about 5 mins and our path will be set.....One problem, some dummy put the speed limit post in the middle of the Street, SAY WHAT, OK it's a practical joke.......HMMMMMM! I think someone better get there hinny out here and fix the problem PRONTO!

We r headed out to the North........
 
Aurora to Montana Rail Trip with the UP Turbines! II

We r in Montana Folks, going thru Columbia Delta Region, and 35 miles more to go to our destination. Making good speed.
We r wizzing by at 45 MPH......

Headed thru some side yards here lots of signals too for the complex switches ahead.

Ok, now I want you to look closely, see the tracks up in the air? What happened here?

Well I can tell you this is what can happen when you merge Routes together and Trainz gets an upset stomach and messes things up, because the Merge Point was not here!!!!Nope, it was several Boards away. But I've done a lot of Merging of routes, this layout Route has at Least 5 Merges in it.

So what I have to do is reset the Heights again ....Bear in mind that tracks are also below the Grids too.

We see more twisted and turned tracks awaiting for repair.

And more,,,,,,Lots of work for me to do here. Repair Work Orders are in the Que!

When I get back will pick up with the Train again and head North on our Venture.

I have to work tomorrow, so I won't be posting anything for next day or two, I have lots of Prep to do.........

Thanks for dropping by folks.........
 
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Aurora to Columbia Falls Montana

Evening all, very busy day at work, so now I had a little time to do some more Driving on Montana Trip.

We are coming into Columbia Falls here and will meet this fine looking NYC Steamer coming into the passenger station off Single Main Track.

As we slowly creep forward past the Station, we see the lights of NYC up ahead a mile, Engineer saw us too and said he would be clearing the switch soon as he prepares to stop at the Station for more Passengers headed south. Our Yard is to the right, but we are just passing thru, no drop offs for them today.

Medium Clear Signal in this block restricting Yellow in next block ahead followed by a Red till we finish our meet with a NYC coming in around the curves ahead.

And here we are waiting for our path to clear, just about a 10 min or less delay.

I know the engineer on this train, he says weather north is OK , but higher in the mountains where we are going tomorrow, expect Rain and Possible SNOW showers......Nothing we can't handle. But it's better to be informed than catch a surprise in the Mountains......

We r stopped now after creeping up on the Red. My friend will give us a good Roll by hopefully, I don't show any HOT BOXES yet on my consist. I'll do the same for him too......

A close view as he passes me at slow speed, Station is less than a mile away....

That's all for tonight..........Thanks for visiting........
 
Aurora to Montana Rail Trip with the UP Turbines! III

Evening all, been busy taking care of sick Pooch, ear infection and arthritis in the hips,, while by family is away for a week. we got some good meds to help him feel better.

So we are headed north into the high mountains.....And the Turbine Helper on the back is working great so we have good slack control on the consist. Everthing is lush green over here with the Rain they had last few weeks. As you can see we have lots of curves in this trip, so we have to slow in some spots to keep control and not derail. I have a ton of Power up front with the Turbines pulling and Slug to boot.

Picture of us climbing thru the canyon walls here as we head northward.

Taking a little descent as we come out of curve.....

This is a shot from across the Valley, our Train looks so small from here,,,,,,he is pulling 61Full Tanker loads.

This is what I think we call an inside Curve, so we have to watch our draw bar tension and tork, don't want to pull the cars off the rail on double S Curves on each end........

That's all for tonight, got a slew of Book work I need to catch up on.

Thanks for dropping in........Comments and Questions always welcome here.
 
Aurora to Montana Rail Trip with the UP Turbines! IIII

Continued first part of these pictures, next message down is the rest......We just getting started after Crew Change out, it's been 12hrs and the engineer needs some rest. We have crew points as we go along our trip.....

Leaving another Wood and Apartment house area here. You can see a stream of Smoke out of the Helper in the back as we leave the siding here.

So far so good, will meet another Train along the way, as we head into a single main line ahead......We have plenty of sidings so the impact is minimal here. Passenger trains of course have the Priority over us........Cost of doing business.

He is really putting on the throttle here, probably in RUN 6.........
 
:D Thank you Southern 1581, but I have to confess, this part of the route was not created by me, its one of the Merges, and I'm am glad you like.....

Thanks for the info on Hi Lo resolution on texture use, I will check that out, I do have issues with my Built in Video card,:eek: similar to the IPAD, it can't keep up well with the Video demands, it drops stuff, like mountains out of the foreground on me.

My memory is 16 megs and I run 1 TB SSD which made a big difference on Disk Read n Right issues I had, but the VDU sucks.....:'( I hate built in video in Laptops, they just don't make them strong enough but in hind site it probably would be too much drain on Battery if your not plugged in?

I definitely need to port this to one of my other Desktops I have to see the difference, I also need to find out what the best wins platform is for running TS-12, as I have WIN XP thru Win10......
 
It's Raining in Georgia ....LOL

Evening all, well as you can see it's night time and we hit the Rain here in the beautiful Montana Mountains.....And we could hit Snow once we get higher elevation. lots of twists and turns, and our Engineer has a hot thermos for of Coffee tonight to keep us warm and awake for the trip ahead.

Sky is really dark and ominous hear, lots of Lightening going on. These Tankers you see here are going to be dropped off in the next Yard coming up.....Will still have 45 Oil Tankers to drag up to where we are headed.

Coming round the bend will have a short stretch of high speed for a bit......Then slow as we approach the next yard. We have a meet with an empty Coal Train headed to Aurora Harbor.

Ok, Dispatcher had our switch off the main lined up for us to take. Will pull partly in, break the Train on the Main, and then finish shunting the Special Tankers Exotic Gases and such the rest of way up, spot and then unhook, take the next switch off to the Main, back out and down and rexconnect with our OIL TANKERS and then head up to Main Switch and wait for the meet with Empty Coal Train, he's approaching about 5 miles out from the yard, I just talked to him to confirm our meet location here.

Dropped off Tankers in Yard and our Power is come to Main#2 and reverse move to pick up rest of our train.

Rain has abated for now, nice star lit sky.....Couldn't ask for much more, and Engineer just poured me some nice hot Coffee......

We have out Train hooked up at bottom of yard and were headed to top Main #2 to wait for meet.

Thanks for dropping in Folks, enjoy your weekend.
 
Aurora to Montana Rail Trip with the UP Turbines! V "Coram City Stop"

Goods Saturday morning all,

We have night clear night for now, and as you can see we dropped off our special Tankers, Gases and anything else you could imagine, we have a lot of different manufacturing industries that use these,,

Local power will come and distribute these to where they need to go within a 3 mile radius of this yard. we are backing down Main#2 to re hookup our Oil Tankers (45 Approx) and get moving North.

Here we just made a Joint (no I'm not talking Marijuana) it's Rail Speak for connecting two coupler's together. Checking our Air Pressure (90-120) LBS is what we need before we move, plus a Brake Check.....Make sure we are 100% safe and fit as we have some heavy Grades later on.

We are pulling up to Main#1 and #2 switch, I see a lot of folks waiting for Passenger Train, as we will wait for the Empty Coal Drag coming south on Main #1.....

:)I might entertain doing some more double track on this route later on....I'm not all that keen on waiting for south bound Freights all the time or the other way around if I'm having to wait on North bounders! Yes I'm aware maintenance wise it costs more, but the point is what is more costly, Dwell Time or Maintenance...Need to talk to the number cruncher's here?


Ok. Brakes and Air good, we are moving up to Main #1 switch.

Upper end of Yards are located on the Right of Tracks here, so both North and South Tracks can access Yards on their Proprietary side of Main#1 and #2 thus it relieves the congestion of crossing over and blocking either of the main tracks...

;) Granted some Cars will need to be moved for Industries on other side of Main #2 and vice versa, but we handle that with Local Shunt Power...There is more than enough Industries to keep the Crews busy with Industries and Thru Freights business.

The folks that built this Route had good knowledge on Yard Congestion issues and Track bifurcation....It works very well.

Will follow this Trip on Tomorrow and see what the Weather brings to us?

Have a great day and thanks for dropping in!
 

Thanks MeowRailroad for the kind words, and to Southern 1581,, Glad you folks are enjoying my night Trip...


It's amazing how things look so different at night.......As I take theses shots, I look at each one, and say, yup, need to change this, fix that, Question is, do I remember it all the Next day, there are so many things to do, then on the Flip side, I'm really enjoying taken some time off of Building and Fixing.

Now it's time to ask the Engineer is if he has a little more Java, If not I'll have to stop at one of those all night Dinners if there is any on our way, and buy some for both of us.....It's all good......

Have a blessed Sunday all...........
 
Good Sunday Evening all,

We continue our Trip north now, having passed the Coal Train.

Man does she look good with the puff of steam in all her glory, I love Steam and Diesel equally, so I fully expect to have both running on our Railroad.

We just gave him a good Roll By, meaning we didn't see anything wrong with his consist, like an overheated Wheel Set, or something worse like a stuck brake set. We received a clear our side as well.

A picture showing us passing by the Caboose of Coal Train.

We've just cleared the City, and now you can see the wonderful River below as we transverse north, and it is starting to get light now.

Doesn't take long before we hit a curve here.......And will see a lots of curves like these as we snake our way thru the mountain valleys.

I'm doing some other things for the moment that needed my attention, so I have stopped route building for bit......I'm also pursuing looking at trying Tane on this computer just to see if it runs any better than TS-12 on this one does...........I'll let you know how that works out......I have to do another full back up of all TS-12 stuff to make sure, in case my Laptop Crashes.........Better to be safe than sorry.

Wishing you a good Monday, week ahead.

Thanks for dropping by.
 
Aurora to Montana Rail Trip with the UP Turbines! VI

Good Monday Morning all, I can't believe it, but we finally caught some rain after many months, it wasn't too heavy which is good for all our burn areas we have.

So my Grand Kids our coming in from Mexico this afternoon with Mr's Blue, I figured I better get these pictures in now rather than later, they'll be excited to come home? After a week having fun.......

Ok, Now to rail road Biz, Look at the Stars, I would say, a new day is approaching, starting to get light. We are headed thru a beautiful area here, lots of Flora and Fauna to look at with graceful climb, it is so peaceful in here........I love the Country over big City any day.

Our Consist is moving in sync with no mechanical issues.

The is large area we are passing thru is called Belton and then we have a ways to go, next is Coal Creek, but before we get there, will pass thru an interesting area.....I did a little bit of work long ago when i first merged this route, ( which is huge) later on when I get my Desktop and Tane going, I hope to put the other half of this route back in, I think it's called Montana Rail Link, and is 100 miles if I recall correctly, this laptop couldn't handle the route by itself, Frame Stutter was terrible, so I cut it either in 1/2 or this part is 1/3 of it, I forget....I've changed a lot of things on this one to bring Frame Rate back up.......

Passing thru the Station here and we see early morning commuters lining up for their Amtrak Train which is due in another 20 mins, so we are breezing thru quickly here....

We are coming up to Merge point of Main #1 and our#2 track.......I forgot to say, that Amtrak is behind us, so we are OK......

A view of the beautiful Valley here, I really like it......Their are is lots of Industry's on the left.

I couldn't get this picture in Last nights run, but I wanted to include it here, I think this is Coram area.........I like Cabooses and really miss them on the modern trains, it's one thing I'll never really get used, guess I'm nostalgic in that regard. Trains look so funny without a Caboose, it bugs me........What can I say......

Thanks for visiting you all........And I'm praying for more Rain over here, God knows we need it this year with all the Fires we've had including the Santa Cruz a couple of weeks ago........
 
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