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

Good Weds afternoon all,

Been busy working on busted water pipes and Tree Roots getting into my outside Drain Pipes, lucky for me, no rain in sight for now, but lots more digging to due to effect more repairs.....

And I have been doing more remodeling and changing things, between the yard Ethanol Tanks below, I put in some much needed Storage Tracks for the excess cars will be carrying here.

Now I have to spank myself good here, somehow on the Cement Building to the left here, I faced the Concrete Chute facing the Tracks, and I guess the ground was not level, so when I leveled for the tracks, somehow this building was left up in the air, I have corrected all that now...

UP Switcher us bringing in Chemical Cars for the East Branch Oil and Propane Comapny's Etc. If you look over to the Far right, I have a new Microwave Tower and Dispatcher's building installed. It will help improve our operations.

Compressed Gases being delivered to our Customers. This old 2story dispatch building will be removed from service and donated to somebody to use. We

We continue our shunt to the other end of this Branch and will see saw over to another Track on our Left.

On the right will also pick up the empty Oil Tankers from Oil Company.

Old reliable Southern Pacific #1001 and #1000, 660 Models, are shunting out the Pipe and Steel Loads for a waiting Train Consist passing thru to pick our loads.....And drop off some more empty's for us too.

North Western Chem Tankers staged and headed over to East Chemical Branch.......Our Little SP Switcher's are standing over at the Alcohol Co Siding, as I have a ton of new leased Alco's coming in from the end of the North Chemical Spur in the back corner her, they'll be moved out to some of other yards for testing.

Back in Mountain Country, our Silver Meteor Express is headed uphill on his scheduled run as Manifest with some very happy customers.

inside the Cab we are lined up for a Scheduled Stop into the new passenger Station in town after I redid all these Tracks and Crossings.....I think everything is flowing OK now here. Just need a few more runs and meets to see how the Safetran Signal aspects are working.

I think that is it for now, if I remember anything else, then I add to this summary....

Thank you all for coming and visiting my Thread., I hope the pictures and overview help to get out the message about how much Trainz can be to play with from someone who has been around Trains most of there life, and I think they are fantastic Mode of Travel..........Like all other things in life, nothing is or will be perfect, so what you put in, is what you get out of it.

Take care and have a good week.

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway

Good morning all,

Been busy fixing those leaky water pipes, and removing some tree roots.

So I thought we would take a brake from Mega Merger Route and pop over to Himalaya for a bit. I downloaded this route about 6 months back or so, and it fascinating to ride up narrow gauge such as this route does. The route does what it needs to, by moving a fair amount of people from the lowlands to the high mountains and a little bit of Freight as a bonus.

I here some folks are going to retool this route for T:ANE that'll be really nice when it comes about. Someday when I get a chance, I might change a few things on it for my own interests?

Darjeeling Himalayan Railway
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, also known as the DHR or "Toy Train", is a 2 ft (610 mm) narrow-gauge railway that runs between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling in the Indian state of West Bengal, India. Built between 1879 and 1881, the railway is about 88 km (55 mi) long. Its elevation level varies from about 100 m (328 ft) at New Jalpaiguri to about 2,200 m (7,218 ft) at Darjeeling. Four modern diesel locomotives handle most of the scheduled services; however, the daily Kurseong–Darjeeling return service and the daily tourist trains from Darjeeling to Ghum (India's highest railway station) are handled by the vintage British-built B Class steam locomotives. The headquarters of the railway is located in Kurseong.
On 2 December 1999, UNESCO declared DHR as a World Heritage site.[SUP][1][/SUP] Later two more railway lines were added and the site then became to be known as Mountain railways of India.



The drive up the Canyon is really nice with all the cool Foliage on both sides of the Tracks. We can only pull about 3-4 cars as the Grades are very steep, If I recall up to 8-9% in some spots.

Coming around the mountain about 15 MPH as we head up 5% grade or more here. The foliage is perfectly placed by the Authors.

Deep and inviting Canyons below as we lumber our way up ever higher and higher.

Now you really can see how tight these grades and curves come together, thru potentially treacherous canyons, took a lot of work to put in these rail lines, probably with sweat, blood, picks and shovels, with a pinch of Dynamite? Lord only knows how long it took to complete this job, I would suspect over years, not months.

We come into a small clearing here and If I recall this spot is one of our steepest grades, 11 1/2%...

This is our 2nd Passenger Station very simple design but works as intended. Will drop off some passengers and head on upward in the next canyons. You can see some folks bringing there products to sell while the train is here for a few minutes.


As you can see, the road has just enough room for traffic to pass each other, and not run into a very slow moving train. Looks like we have a tasty Fruit and Vegetable stand across the Street too.

Some nice bananas here and passion fruit, I think will stop for minute and get some fresh fruit. This is called RONGTONG...

Gots some refreshment and nice fruit, passengers all loaded up we prepare to head up the grade before night fall sets in.

Few houses set on the side of the canyon, looks like one is setup on Stilts to handle the Rain Runoff.

I think this will do for today, have good weekend and thanks for dropping in.....

Night all.

Riverside area Bluff City Yard

Good Morning all,

Been a quick weekend, did some Shunting in Wishram area, where I have been rebuilding the Yards and Utilities Etc, made some more subtle changes, which I show later. I think I finally have the tracks and everything the way I want them situated now.

Below this is Riverside area and we have a Train just out of eye shot approaching, the Signals have activated to let us know he is just around the curve on approach.

And here he is our Silver Meteor Express no scheduled stop here, he is hot shot, fully loaded with customers. I re-spaced all the tracks and crossings in this area, now things flow thru perfectly for me. Bridges too had to be reset, and I changed some of the City Streets as well. The one thing I have to come back to do is re change the plants on the River's edge, they hang to far into the water and don't look right to me, simply because these type plants wouldn't be found this way in Nature, it would be Water Lillie's and other types. It'll take some time to redo, but that is for another day.

We are headed up to the higher altitudes here with our passengers, you can see the Snow Capped Mountains in the back.

Heading up 2.5% grade here, with A+B+B+A power arrangement, these passenger cars are heavy, and some of our grades are at 3% so I don't want to have any power per axle issues going up a Mountain Grade, I've been thinking like in the Sierra Mountains and other high mountain ranges, I need to have some dedicated Pushers setup and ready in spots on short Stub Tracks when needed, I already had a problem coming out of the Port City with very heavy Pipe and Boxcar consist! I didn't have enough DMU's on the back of the Train, and had to have some pushers come up to get us over the rise, lost precious time on arrival in the next city, cost me money too.....All not good when customers are expecting on time delivery, except for Weather issues, which we had a sunny day....... It goes directly to the Yard Manager for under powering! 2 More 6 axle units made the difference on weight and Grade issue. Lesson learned the hard way.

Crossing the river into a 2 Mile Tunnel here to get over a tall range of Mountains. This is just one of several Tunnels we use to get thru.

Guess we have had a few Trains going thru this tunnel, pitch black and Smoky walls, but I see the exit light coming soon, wouldn't ever want to walk in this tunnel, there's no room between you and the Train, guess what, some folks do it for the dare! Crazy, and sometimes they don't make it thru the tunnel! Trains only in these tunnels.

Alright we made it thru the Smoky dark Tunnel, now we are out coming thru newly raised Snow Sheds, for some reason, they were set 3 feet to short, why I don't know, but some of my Locos etc where almost scraping the ceiling, so we dropped the Road bed down, now are clearance is spot on. Realigned the Tracks center wise, which is normal on the Railroad, snow and ice with expansion and contraction from Freeze Thaw cycles will have that effect on things over time......That nasty word called Maintenance comes in to play every year, and cumulatively if you ignore Mr Maintenance, he has a habit of catching up at the most in opportune times and extra cost, called unexpected derailments. I don't want any of that if I can help it. So we really try around here to keep things up according to pre defined maintenance schedule.

Which reminds me, we have changed a lot of Tracks in Wishram area, I need to get MOW Track leveler Machines out to do some Tamping and level specs and make sure we have everything on par.......

Going thru a lot of Rail overpasses in the deep canyon, I believe will be going over one of them when we round the next mountain grade.

Here's a higher view to give more perspective of the altitude changes we experience, and why it's so important to have enough horses pulling your consists up a stiff grade. As you can see, they moved a lot of Hill in here to get these Rails in place, they did a darn fine job of doing it........


And this one of our Yards I rebuilt, I thought I show one of the pictures, an older one, because there has been lots more changes to it. But this one specifically, because I used the Tape measure utility in T:ANE to get my very outside track curve right. I didn't want any kinks in the Curve, and with the hills and pulling long consists thru here at times when the yard is busy, I wanted the best curve I could get, so I started in the Corner first then worked my way into the center of the yard, so with the corner set right, all the inner tracks as I build them don't get squished and out of ARC, allows me to run the Big Boy and other large articulated Locos ans special Freight Cars with no clearance issues. On left side of yard, those 2 tracks are the Mainline bypass for thru Freight and Passenger Trains just going to next city, so we have 2 avenues of coming in/out of this yard and a large turn thru curve.

Not seen here, but upper middle left area, by that tree patch, a large Round Table for Loco Storage is added later.

That'll do it for today, thanks for coming by today..........

Psgr Service in Dark Mountain passes of Alps

Good Day all,

Been so buy with Meetings and leaking pipe repairs around the house, I didn't realize 3 days had passed, and I haven't been here to post some new stuff. Time flies by and you don't realize still get off the merry go round and and check status.......

Below is information about this Route:

"Flaamsbana (The Flåm railway) was started in 1924 after plans for the line being drawn up back to 1871. The line climbs from Flåm at sea level to Myrdal station at 867 meters above sea level. The climb has an average gradient of 1 in 18 over 20 kilometers.

This is version 2 (final) following the Beta version in March 2007. I have made some improvements to the track laying, alignment and gradients and added some fences and signals.

TransDEM generated map. I took some years to get this far but you are welcome to edit it for your own pleasure providing you give credit All assets should be on DLS. Details of Flåm at hhttps://www.visitflam.com/en/se-og-gjore1/aktiviteter/flamsbana/ . "

So we are up on the ("The Flåm railway") where we pick up our train headed up the huge Canyon walls light in the evening and other than the stars it's pitch black out here.

We have as you can see some pretty steep curves and Grades, which I plan on adjusting just a bit less, when I get around to it. Fortunately for us we have get Train Headlamps.

We are just entering into Farm area here and it looks like Daylight is starting to approach as we continue our overnight Trip in the Alps.....When there is a Snow Storm, you have complete white out conditions as the Clouds get socked in here with huge Altitude of the Alps.....Amazing, beautiful and deadly if you out in it and don't know what your doing in that type of Winter conditions, the locals are well versed, but Travelers from other areas, will get a rude awakening if not prepared for quick weather changes!

Should be coming up to a small passenger Station soon to drop off a few passengers.

looks like it says Blomheller, or something similar.......

Dropped off a few passengers and we are on are way into a very dark tunnel, but not too long one.

Picking up speed fairly well, this locomotive I believe is 3000HP and does well pulling our consist up medium upgrade.

We just came out of the tunnel on the other side and will have several curves along the mountain side as we gain elevation, as you can see this mountain is quite tall on the left.

Looks like we hit another Tunnel and our outlet brings us into Snow Shed protection due to Avalanches in the Winter and heavy Snow Fall.

Here is a really good look at the Canyon, and probably one of the highest Dams in the world, this Water comes from Snow melt and Rain Storms and keeps the lower Valleys from being flooded out! Excellent planning and execution when it comes to erosion and flood control issues..

Look carefully in the lower middle of the picture and you can barely see our train against the huge mountain area, gives some pause of the enormous Mountain Ranges known as the Alps.

I have to reiterate the Author that made this route did a terrific job, and it's so cool to run trains in this route.

Thank you for coming by for peek here.

I bid you all a Blessed Friday, and our prayers continue for the Las Vegas situation that occurred this week......Very sad situation and life altering for the survivors.

Wishram and Bluff City Yard Operations Etc

Good evening all, Writing from Jacksonhole, Wyoming, and having a great time with some cool Snow Flurries added to the majestic looking TETON Mountain Range!
Tomorrow will be a cools 20 Degrees in the morning as we eat some great tasting Western Breakfast on the Prairies.

So I'm still in Wishram East Yard and Chemical Branch testing out Curves, so far so good, had to add a crossover connection for Grain and Cement plant linkups, was short and easy, now when I bring in Junk Trains, I can separate the loads more easy and stop long pull outs from the industry.

Below is the bluff City Yard, and we are doing our first mixed Freight in here, and more tracks have to built for different Maintenance items. We are playing with UP9000's Steam Locomotives, Strong and very reliable Engines.

Backing in here to grab our consist and put it together with the other consist on the Right.

Meanwhile in the nearby mountains, our Milwaukee Freight is coming thru high Bridge overpasses to the next Mountain Ridge

Pretty Strong bridge here, and certainly lives up to its duty for getting our heavy Trains across safely, however every so often we find someone trying to fish off this bridge, unfortunately for some they don't walk home and we have Train Delays, while we wait for Police and Coroner to handle the aftermath..........

Lost of open area to see here as we take a high view to watch our Trains passing from afar. My Signals and Track curves are good here, no changes at the moment. One thing I do plan to do later due to my weak GPU is too thin out some of the Tree Foliage, as my GPU has frame stutter in some areas.

East side of Bluff City, this our southern entry points to the yard. Lots of Dirt Roads for access.

If you look up the left side you can see our UP 9000 pulling part of it's of consist out the yard.


Our Milwaukee Train has made it to the Yard, and will maintenance the engines and parse out the Freight Consist for their next destinations. Crossing protection is working OK so far.

Will divert to the left main entrance branch as shown by one Green on the signals.

And our UP9000 is pulling out the southern Route headed to English Highlands Route with Construction Pipes for upcoming changes on that route. We are lined up for several Green lights ahead, looks like some clouds coming in, so we might have some weather to contend with, will see?

X9000 is pulling along showing some lively Steam as she pulls up the Grade.

That's about it for now, I bid you all a good week ahead.

Night now.

Crossing Canyon Gorges

Good Evening all,

Still out in the Prairies on our Trip see a much different part of our country, and eating some real down home cooking.So below we follow our UP 9000 as she continues thru the Mountain country headed to the ports with lots of different items. Grade is 1.50% thru 2.5% as we head up the hill.

Another view from way above as you see our consist snake thru the canyons.

We are headed thru Snow Sheds and some great looking River falls rapids coming down from higher elevation.

Back thru the tunnel we have a bit of Steam pushing thru so our headlight is bit obscured. Slow and careful is the name of the game along this path.

Here is a look inside of our UP 9000 Steam Engine, very impressive I think! The author spent a lot of time making this.

out the tunnel and we cross another River on the other side of this mountain range as we head thru Riverside area.

Cross another bridge as cut thru valleys and gorges. Below we pass a tranquil part of the river here.

Round the mountain we go as we head down in elevation here. Rails, Curves and Signal aspects are working very well now, since I got the Tracks and Switches all reworked.

Lots of bridges hold intersecting and connecting lines as we see UP 9000 running by.

Looking form above you see lots of heavy Tree Foliage here, and the many main lines that come together on this busy railroad mountain pass.

That's about it for tonight folks....I didn't have any time to work on my route today as we had lots of interesting places to see, however I did see over 100 CAR BNSF Trains passing by on some of the highways we traveled.

I won't be home for another 3 days, so I don't expect to do much of anything on the route. But I do have more pictures to share. If internet is stable I post some more in a couple of days.

Good nite all and have a good day tomorrow.

Thank you for coming by.

UP n SP Steam on the move today

Good morning all from the Badlands of South Dakota,

We had a wonderful Trip and got to see a lot of interesting things from Wyoming to South Dakota, much different than California, we had Rain, Snow and winds, the Country is nice here and the people our very hospitable. On our way to the airport, so I thought I would drop some pics in before I we go.

Looks like we've had some very bad fires in Wine Country! will pray for those missing folks.......

Below our UP 9000 continues thru back country here over tall bridges.

We are descending down a 2% or more grade here at 50MPH......

Back at Bluff City Yard, we are Fueling and watering SP Steamer here for Freight Service this morning, clouds are dark, and we may have some moisture in the day?

She is taking out Bunker Oil here.

We have our consist, with SP Caboose if I recall correctly. Backing our way out the yards.

It's fall, as you can see the weather is getting colder each day, soon Snow will come upon us and frozen switches too., lots of preparatory work for MOW. Want to keep the switches warm enough so they don't freeze shut on us....Got to run, I might post more pictures on my layover today.

Thanks for visiting..........

Shunting Moves on the Chemical Branch

Good Sunday evening,

A blessing is called for the people in Fire areas of Central and Northern Ca, as this has been a ruff year for many parts of the US. There are still people missing and the hope is some will be founded.

https://www.google.com/search?sourc.....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.2.259....0.H9MCFpH2XNM

So let's see what is going on here on the Wishram District, Chemical Branch, looks like we have lots of Empties brought in for the Ethanol Plant. Our Plant Switcher is dropping them into place now for Filling.

All the tracks leads and crossovers look about right, so now we can get on with necessary Shunting and deliveries now.

LP and special Compressed Industrial Gas containers are being set out to the various industries for customer needs.

Our Concrete and other Masonry loads are being hauled into the next team tracks. One of the things I need to do now, is schedule better delivery times so we don't get so clogged up on the East side of Chemical Branch, one of the issues we had, which is on me, I should have pulled the 20 car empty Flat cars n Gons consist over to the Steel and Scrap yard terminal leads. That was a big mistake and clogged my turnaround loop, slowing the pull out Ethanol consist and this one you see. I had to make several smaller moves, and it took twice the allocated time for shunting, I also fouled one of them main lines coming thru with a consist that could cross switches due to 61 car consist I pulled in and stopped several times here.

Bottom line I need to learn my new yard and allocate my storage points and keep the main better cleared for other freight and passenger traffic that passes thru.

Luckily for me, this out in the corner, so not all route Traffic comes thru here or I would be in even more trouble than I am now!

I have to say, playing this Rail Simulator and the way you make your route learn how to not do it wrong, but think ahead like a chess game, so you know several moves ahead what your going to do, and have a "B" plan in place.

Concrete Powder, very heavy cars, are coming into the Batch load Cement Mixer Plant. These Switchers work so good for me, I really like there performance, only thing I want to do is tweak the Smoke output a little, that'll come later when I don't have so much route build changes.

High view here for Track layout, we have better than 12 different leads here for many compact industrial companies we serve here. The biggest concern is getting thing in organized and not haphazard, so i have to learn the lay of the land.

Cement Powder is provided by different suppliers, as you see not containers are the same, depending on Specs needed.

Things are starting to look much better as get the loads sorted.

Over here we get Wood Chips and Mineral Loads to go out. I think I mentioned we use a portable Trans loader for different Trucked in loads, we can also offload from Rail Cars to Trucks, so it goes both ways, we anticipate getting a second Trans loader, for more capacity and to backup in case one goes out of order.

Oh and I for got to mention, if you need a cheap room to sleep over, while in town, Motel 8 is here to serve your needs. Everyone has gone to work, but wait till later tonight, all the spots will be filled up.

That'll do for now. I bid you all a good week ahead, and hopefully cooler days here, it was 96 degrees today in So Cal, in the middle of Fall, Yuck, and they wonder why we have such bad fires.

Night all........

New CN 7700 Switcher and more Train Quakes on Montana Merge Rte Detected.

Good Tuesday all,

It is a very Tough Fire Season in Central and Northern California

https://www.google.com/search?q=Calfornia+Fires&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Our prayers continue out as they do for other parts of the Country and world, Hurricane damage. Locally where I live, I was watching the news, and they had finally put out the Anaheim Hills, not to far from my area, after 2 weeks of effort by the brave Firefighters. We are hoping for much needed rain this week, after a very hot several days, my thermometer showed 102 degrees when I was out getting some pipe supplies for my sprinkler repairs, I couldn't believe this was Fall and we are still having Summer Heat......

OK, let's get back to Trainz stuff, I digress, Mr Whitepass made a fine looking CN 7700 from the early 1900's, just downloaded this model, and it runs fantastic,

Specs from Mr Whitepass,
400hp, 70ton, and 40mph

Doesn't get any better than that. So we are out for a spin on the Mainline headed for some yards to try out Shunting Talents in tight Radius situations.

While going thru my Montana Route, I found some Trainz Quakes, leading down to 50-100 feet, several miles, and some broken Tracks in other areas, must have added a small merge somewhere last year, since that is the last time I looked and checked this Merger Route over? So it's time to repair and re-texture the affected areas. It's not hard just takes some time and patience.

You take a small section at a time and set your height to this area and the use the leveling tool in your fly out, and get it more or less level for now, you touch up more later on, because there are small rolling hills or mountain cliffs affected in some areas too.

I also had to replace a tunnel and do a Dig hole installation, then cover with Plants and Boulders, this is not quite finished, I have more to do.

This is what it looked liked when I put in double Dig Hole to get tunnel tracks clear. Weird looking when you start, but several adjustments are needed to make this work....

I'm positioning boulders in here to cover the wall up and hide the hole.

Back at Bluff Yard, I am trying out this SP Bay Window Caboose #1644, and no errors or any other issues. SP Steam is pulling the consist out of Yard Tracks headed to Points West.

Cool Winter Morning as we pull out Loaded Oil Products in Tankers. Believe or not, I haven't finished this yard yet as far as other Tracks needed, and additional Trees and Shrubbery. I don't won't to put in Plants and detail ahead and then need to move them out or around again when I add Tracks for additional services in Bluff yards.

Here's the beautiful Lady all dressed to the Hilt, SP 9000, and she runs perfectly, I recall this is Cowboys work! She is a keeper for sure. She purrs and runs smooth as silk, just need to Oil, and Fuel as needed.

Front view of our consist as she powers up. Now this is not heavy load for the Lady, will most likely pick up more as we head out to points West.

Currently I'm working on my Montana Rail/Harbor Master (Philskene) taking a break from Snow Country merger.

That's it for now.

Good Weds Eve all,

Tomorrow is a busy day for me, so I figured I would post some thoughts and pictures tonight.

When I started in Trainz a few years ago, I decided that I would like to merge some routes together to enjoy a route that encompassed different areas of the world. The Route below which has been upgraded to T:ANE standards, was originally built for TS-12 which was what I ran when after starting with Trains Driver 2 for IPAD.

This route is larger than the original, and I wouldn't have been able to run it in TS-12, as it wouldn't handle large routes on this Laptop.

Now with T:ANE all be it, I don't have a strong GPU for now, eventually when I shift to a Desktop with some serious GPU power, things will be much better.

Here is the information on this route:

The route 'Rocky Mountains Montana Track' imagines the landscapes 'Glacier Park' in the state Montana of the US. The map is mostly single tracked like the origin.

The track design and the layout are based on the use of main track-paths in the execution of the defined business-plans.
The workplaces, the industries and the yards are accessed trough the use of portals and are delimited with shunt track-marks.

Turntable activity in the yards is monitored by the use of an HTML-asset.

Perform shunting operations in yards, workplaces and industries with the command 'Drive to …'
The navigation commands to the different workplaces, yard-portals, industry-portals must be done with the command 'Drive to …' to obtain the best performance.

Bring your train across the wild mountainous regions or work on a busy yard to have the economic cycle running. Deliver goods to the various customers and industries along the route.

Two demo sessions are available demonstrating the performance of the route.

All will run automatically as long as there are no more than two consists which are accessing simultaneous.


Now this picture is the TS-12 Route annotated with several Route Mergers, Aurora, Loops, Harbor Masters and some other Routes I added. I always find it interesting how an original Route Changes over time as different Folks make changes. The picture above shows the Route has been lengthened on both ends of the original Route which looks to me like a 50% area of increase.

As well I found some more information on the WEB pertaining to the expanse this route is a part of (relating to the Montana portion only)

http://traveltips.usatoday.com/scenic-train-routes-rocky-mountains-58255.html

Some day part of my Bucket list includes riding thru the Rocky Mountains on a Scenic Route like this one.

What started all of this was the fact I keep a copy of all the routes I download in a bk up Folder, and on USB drive, and using Carbonite, so Lord forbid, my Laptop suddenly dies, I have a good backup to restore my work!

When I checked my Route backups, I thought I had a backup of the original Montana Route, come to find out, I only had a different Canadian Route copy not this one. Then going onto the DSL I found out this Route had been updated to T:ANE, so to my surprise it was even better to get a newer copy, all works out in the end mysteriously.

Please make sure you have multiple backups of your Routes, so you don't lose valuable work, I've read the heart retching stories in this forum of members losing years of irreplaceable work and Routes, Personal Trainz Assets created etc. We live in the electronic age, and it does come along with hefty responsibilities that sometimes we forget about.

I bid you a good week and thanks for coming to visit here.

Drovers Caboose and other things on display

Good Friday Evening all,

UP 9000 is headed thru the Canyons and we meet other Main Lines as we go thru the back Country this late afternoon.

Crossing under some massive overpasses, we have many intersecting lines, traffic is low,,so were getting some great Signals with no delays as pass thru this area.

We will Pass Dantes Mine Switch which is a Coal Facility, but that is another Train for that Company. Our Switch is selected for right direction.

Nice head of Steam here, and everything is running to perfection as we continue Westward Bound!

Looks like we have some small River Bridges ahead to cross over, since there is ample rain in this area, the Rivers never run dry, and during Snow Melt Season, late Spring, we have some dramatic waterfalls in the Canyons.

Oh! and here we go, beautiful Rapids on the /Right, no, you better not be Rafting in this area, you'll never survive the 100foot drop on the other side of the falls, I can assure some have tried and not made to talk about it. So put the word out, this is not an area to swim or white water raft! Now while we are at it, take a look at the Drovers Caboose behind the locomotive?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caboose

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the United Kingdom equivalent, see Brake van. For other uses, see Caboose (disambiguation).


A Burlington Northern Railroad extended-vision caboose at the end of a train in 1993

A caboose is a manned North American railroad car coupled at the end of a freight train. Cabooses provide shelter for crew at the end of a train, who were long required for switching and shunting, and to keep a lookout for load shifting, damage to equipment and cargo, and overheating axles.
Originally flatcars fitted with cabins or modified box cars, they later became purpose-built with projections above or to the sides of the car to allow crew to observe the train from shelter. The caboose also served as the conductor's office, and on long routes included accommodation and cooking facilities.
A similar railroad car design, the brake van, was used on British and Commonwealth railways. These provided the additional function of serving as a supplemental braking system for trains not fitted with a continuous braking system, and keeping chain couplings taut.
Cabooses were used on every freight train until the 1980s, when safety laws requiring the presence of cabooses and full crews were relaxed. Developments in monitoring and safety technology such as lineside defect detectors and End of Train Device resulted in crew reductions and the phasing out of caboose cars. Nowadays, they are generally only used on rail maintenance or hazardous materials trains, or on heritage and tourist railroads.

There is always something to learn about Railroad History........

Headed up a canyon wall will ascend a 2.5% grade as we cross more Mountain Gorges.

Recall I said we have great waterfalls, and behind us is one now, pouring over the cliffs from above.

Another cool spot, is our Wig Wag Crossing, a bit aged, but it works as perfectly as the first day it was installed.

Have a good weekend all, and thanks for coming by to visit.

NS SD MAC 80 and new Columbia Cowlitz

Good Sunday to all,

Dropped in for a minute to post some pictures, I in the middle of repairing broken pipes, always fun.

Ok...break time for Lunch, and now will type the rest of the Story,

I downloaded CLC Switchers (Columbia and Cowlitz) and NS SD80 this week and took them out for a spin on 'Rocky Mountains Montana Track New Era', and they work great, did some shunting too. Now we are coming into Columbia Delta area of the route.

Taking some small Plywood load and Gravel to one of our customers.

Pushing thru some nice forest here.

Turning the curve and headed to a new area called Whitefish Lake, it's been added on to the original route.

(The route 'Rocky Mountains Montana Track New Era' imagines the landscapes 'Glacier Park' in the state Montana of the US. The map is mostly single tracked like the origin.

The track design and the layout are based on the use of main track-paths in the execution of the defined business-plans.
The workplaces, the industries and the yards are accessed trough the use of portals and are delimited with shunt track-marks.

Turntable activity in the yards is monitored by the use of an HTML-asset.

Perform shunting operations in yards, workplaces and industries with the command 'Drive to …'
The navigation commands to the different workplaces, yard-portals, industry-portals must be done with the command 'Drive to …' to obtain the best performance.

Bring your train across the wild mountainous regions or work on a busy yard to have the economic cycle running. Deliver goods to the various customers and industries along the route.

Two demo sessions are available demonstrating the performance of the route.

All will run automatically as long as there are no more than two consists which are accessing simultaneously the same industry.)

From the Cab view of NS SD MAC 80, we pass some outbound traffic at 3 way Switch as we head towards Whitefish Lake area, about 10-15 miles from here.

This area splits South and East into diverging Tiles at 90 Degrees aspect, so will take the right leg and head Southerly. Aspects look ok so far.

Passing by here, everything running good.

Testing out the new Signal Gantry I installed to give me better look ahead aspects.

Oops, I forgot Halfmoon comes before Whitefish Lake, I'm completely new to this area.

Looks like we some a Grade up, little bit of smoke as we Throttle up into the Sunset. Slow and steady in this area, it's new Route to learn and I think it will be lots of fun too.

Later on, I merge some of the new parts on this Route with the old original I have. But that'll be for later on............Kudos to the Author, he did a very nice job on adding onto the Route.

Got to run now, wish you all a good week ahead.........Thanks for dropping by.

Good Tues Evening on this hot Fall Day, Yuck and Yuck, can't wait for winter, and oh yah, 2 earthquakes in California, one in Sacramento and the other Southern Ca Coastline line near one of our small islands. Too much Hot and cool days, Mother Earth doesn't like this roller Coaster weather.

So I decided to play with one of my other Routes I downloaded some time ago, called the:

The Charleston & Western Carolina Railway Port Royal Branch

THIS IS AN UNFINISHED VERSION... 98% complete. This will be updated as it is completed.

C&WC Port Royal Branch from Yemassee to Port Royal, SC. This route includes MCAS Beaufort and its trackage from my personal memories and photos.

This was part of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, then Seaboard Coast Line up until SCL was merged into the Seaboard Systems and then CSX.

This line is now abandoned and the Port Royal Railroad CO was the last to operate it. It ceased operations in mid 2000s. Custom rolling stock and content for the routs is on the DLS for Port Royal Railroad and CW&C. ACL, SCL, SBD, Amtrak, and CSX operated on this route.

This represents an accurate and detailed route from SCL /ACL track charts from the 1960s, 1970s, and from Google Earth. No DEM was used. All elevations and track locations were done accurately with GE and topographic maps.

This original route for the C&WC ran from Augusta to Port Royal, SC. It was an important shipping artery for getting goods to port in South Carolina. It's demise was a declining industry base, better ports elsewhere, and poor economic times for a short line with little or no traffic with in its 25 miles.

I have added several other free lanced industry that were not on this route to add traffic to it:
Gravel Pit
Power Plant
Lumber Yard
Freight Houses
Factories
Cotton Gin
Fertilizer Co.

Hope you enjoy it.
You will need all of Jointed Rail's freeware route dependencies, Pofig trees, SARXT signals, JR track from their site, and many other DLS content.

Support will be available on the Auran Trainz Forums.

Thanks to all the many content creators who made this route possible and a few beta testers too. With out the content this route would be nothing.

Dan (End Route authors notes.

This is a cool Route, unfortunately it is pre-T:ANE so I need to update Trees and Signals, Switch-points and a few other misc items.

Please excuse my first pictures, they have those Show Missing Assets Orange Wire Crates showing, but I decided to delete all the missing assets. So the next set will be clear for us to view.

So we have stranded train on the Main Line with Engine issues, will call the marine base here, and have them send their reliable switcher out to drag this consist in and make some of the deliveries for us.

This Marine Loco is on his way out from the base, with the good wishes of the Base Commander!

Look how clean it inside this locomotive, like brand new. those boys really keep their equipment in great condition!

We r headed down the main to help the stalled train, about 2 miles or so down line. I guess you can see we have some missing Tree Assets here, as noted by the Orange Wire Constructs.

OK we found our stalled Train and will do a quick lash up and check our Brake Lines to make sure we have control of the Train.

OK we are pulling and these engines are smoking pretty bad, but will get thru it and get them towed to the nearest Mechanical Shop.

Brakes are working OK hope we can get down the track for the first drop off of the LPG loads in the back of the consist. Our Gons in the middle are empty so we can drop them off anywhere there's a siding.

We stopped for a min to make sure we don't have any engine fires with all the smoke emitting out of them........

That's it for now, check out the layout, it is moderate size has a lot of running space and should keep your interest if you like long runs, and or enjoy Shunting.

:wave: We r off and running, I need to fix those missing assets and stuff.

Thanks for dropping in to see us.

The Charleston & Western Carolina Railway Port Royal Branch WIP

Good Friday all,

So as you know I took a break from my Merged Routes, downloaded this Route and some other NG Routes.

This is a really nicely done Route, and it is good size with lots of Shunting action for those you like to Shunt, as well as good mainline runs to, whatever your flavor is?

I just customizing it for my needs and interest.

The area in yellow is the spot I'm working on by adjusting/adding some more Mainline and return loops at the end on Harbor area........

A closer look at the area of interest, if you look carefully on the outside edges, you can see small thin blue line circling on the some of Grey Squares, and then on lower part, it comes down along the bottom and heads West into the Central Valley area way over to the left. Now this area is fairly level no hills or mountains per se that I see. My intention is to put some low lying hills in around the edges so I can hide the drop off Tile areas when I'm driving the Trains, I also will add some more curves into the main line too, I just have to see how it works out, and this is WIP and everything was Ruff drop in to see how it would look. I did a lot of Signal and Switch work too, but that is not shown here in these pics, I'll show it later on when I clip some more Pics.

Closer View of the Bay areas. I need to do a lot of Texturing as I added more Tiles on the Edges to mask the Drop off areas nearby, you know when you go thru and change things it almost works out you end up change/adjusting lots of other nearby things too.

In this pic, you can see the Harbor area in more detail, the Water Depth is fairly Shallow, so I plan on deepening the Terrain below it to 10 feet or more deeper to see how the coloring works. I will need to add several Bridges where I cross water areas as well. And since I have a good amount of Water, I might cut the water back a bit in some areas?

This is the end of the Route Harbor Rail Yard, and shows it before I made changes, there are some spots here in blue lines that are not track, but what appears to be missing Fence lines and possibly a trolley line that went into a Street? I have to figure that part out..........Plenty to fool around with, and I still have some missing assets to replace or delete (6) depending on what I figure they might be....Lot of it was previous looked like unsupported Trees along or nearby the Main Line.....The Author did a beautiful job with the way the Trees are laid out in Random fashion........Much better than I could have done. He is very talented person.

Here is some annotated Pictures of what I did last night.

Here is a really good picture of the End of the Route Harbor Rail Yard, there is 2 Boat facilities here, one for large Boats, and the other for pleasure and small fishing boats with supply Warehouses.

You can really see how nice the Author did the Trees and Texturing here, I have a few missing streets to fix and connect up, no big deal.

Closer view, now if you follow back of Rail Yard Throat, it raps around the last building on the left side and ends right at the Circle Bay. The land sculpting in the Water inlet areas is really nice too.

Now this area has a lot of water as I mentioned, and I will probably change some of the Coastline a little bit around the edges for the Main Line (return loop) that goes thru on other side of Bay. The coloring of this water area is amazing how it worked it, it really looks terrific. Gives it a Lagoon like appearance I think?

Now you can see the changes I made, I didn't want to add to many tracks, just enough to make it too run trains in the back tiles. Also in several areas, I maintained the original Trees, where the Mainlines and Spurs go, and just cut out or tried to move the trees just to clear the Main Line access. So these lines in a lot of sections will be well hidden out of sight to preserve the original open area effect.

That'll do for today, I bid you all a good weekend. Thanks for visiting me.

A blessed Sunday to all and good day,

Out doing those pipe repairs still, cut away some of Roots that grew into the Pipes, amazing what trees do in 30 yrs.
So I have been busy running some consists made for Canadian Route, and they run great here as I check out my newly installed Signals, and I also had to replace all but a few of missing Switch Stands as well. Probably was missing assets I deleted from the Route, business as usual......LOL

This is a current map as the Route looks now, and you can see it good size for running lots of Trains in all kinds of different directions. Also notice I have lots of finish texture to do, but I may copy and paste lots of the Terrain since it the Ground level is relatively the same.

Shows my new return loop which I haven't tested yet for proper Grade %, at the moment it looks like the max is 2% with most of being in neighborhood of 1.25%-1.50% and that will work just fine for my needs.

There is interesting single branch lines coming off the Mainline.

And this is the second Single Branch line, be much longer by 3X and very interesting to work with........

Here is Map overview of how I spaced my Signals out and what I used.

This is the next area I intend to work on. Especially the Red Circle, I have some bottle necks inside the X pattern that I need to redo for better flow control, plus add another North/South Mainline, the reason being, we have 3 East/West Mainlines with only 1 North/South Line, and that isn't enough when I start running thru Portal Trains etc.

Now in this pic, you can see the Quadrangle with Single Track and tri Mainlines going across it. It will necessitate relocating 2 buildings and changing some switch locations etc.

And I here is even a better picture here showing how things are lined up presently. I will make some slight changes on the Hwy orientation.

And here we have three Signal Masts hanging in the air, I guess we had a missing Gantry Super Structure, I have others that will go in nicely.

Sorry about the Squiggly Yellow Line, but this represents approximately where the second main line will be installed.

In other news,, I bought an SRS NS Notched SD Locomotive and it has lots of animation features on it.

That's it for now..........Thanks for coming by.

NS SD70 Notchnose from SRS and Misc chgs

Good morning and happy Halloween to all.

So I bought the NS SD70 Mac from SRS Folks, really nice detailed engine with lots of Options as you can see below, I like to have my Door open sometimes when I'm getting the unit started for next days work. All these options are in the Properties Menu. Thank you SRS for a great job......This one goes for 8$........

Downloaded a bunch of CP "Q" Consist made up for the Rocky Mountains Routes, they are cool and run in T:ANE with not one Error......! Love it. Shown here is Road Railer, Telephone Pole Cars, and mixed junk Train, there are 25 I think different ones on DLS.

Here is NS SD 70 Mac with from Door open on Nose..........
r
Road Railer is on the move as we do signal check today.......

Coming thru on Branch Sidings, we get a Medium Clear Signal ahead. We are restricted to 15MPH, I need to check all speed Limits as several are not correct for us.

No Stops here, as we power thru here with are newly acquired Road Railer.....

Crossing Signals are working spot on as we make time...

Nice Divergent Route Signal, will take the high road for now.

Power Plant and Coal operation, Coal train is scheduled for tomorrow. A real short Branch to play in.....

The sign says it all as you see Train approaching in the background....Won't be long now!

I awoke early, I post more comments later this morning........Thanks for visiting .......

Why no Trespassing on R.R. & other miscellany

Good Thursday Morning,

I'll post later today, I just realized I didn't have the correct pictures for this Post...Thank you for your patience, been fighting a pinched nerve this week, and I forgot to delete my last set of pictures in my working directory for posting purposes........That's what happens when your up too late at night fooling with Trainz.

So here are the right ones for you to see.

Recall I discussed about walking on the RR, now in this pic, the Train is moving 45 MPH and it looks quit far away, if you were on the Tracks or nearby, you'd have enough time to cross right?

Less than a minute now the Train is on us, and moving what appears even faster!

Now it's too late, you've been hit or dragged along the Tracks, if your lucky all your limbs are still attached, or maybe your not lucky? Will leave it at that. Never trespass on the RR for your safety and that of the Crews, if they put a Train in emergency to keep from hitting you, they could derail the Train, with potential Deadly consequences for more death and destruction of innocent people nearby.

And here is the the Bridge area we were talking about with regards to Trespassing, one of the things I going to do is change the Bridge and Telephone Pole arrangement. I going to cut back the Land on both sides and have a larger bridge more elevated to allow better water movement here when there is heavy storms, there is too much of chance of our Tracks getting washed out.....Water is too constrained here, it only takes once of the River Rising too high and our Main line gets taken out! We only have one in this area, and no chance of a temp Shoefly arraingment, it would be catastrophic to the RR Operations!

Headed on North with no delays, Weather is good...We have several miles to go before we hit our Quadrangle area and go left to the Main Yards.

This is looking good, MOW Crews are installing new Rail Access Spur to this Business. More revenue for the R.R.

We had to slow the Train to Walking Speed only so not injure any of the workers nearby, with a Day or Two, this spur will be installed and Track Speed will restricted to 25 MPH until we make sure the new Switch and track pass final inspection for any unknown Defects or Track Settling.....That should be about 2 weeks, and then normal Track Speed will be restored here. Now why didn't we just go by on 2nd Main Line, well, that's because we have dedicated PAssenger and Freight opposing Traffic coming by any minute........So that option was not available to us......

And we get thru the Construction area without a hitch, and you see we have our Required FRED (Red Light and Auto Brake Modulator) this lets the engineer know his Brakes and Air are working OK at the back of the Train, and if another Train comes behind us, serves as a warning that there is a Train ahead of him in the Block by showing a flashing Red Light to the Rear of his Train. Trains don't rear end Trains right? Wrong, it does happen occasionally, that's just one of those things that occurs even with the best prevention, protection Services being used.

Ah here is the new Quadrangle, we are still testing the new Signals so all approach speeds have been reduced till me we make sure everything is working as intended. Plush we have all new Tracks installed too. $ tracks going across, and 2 opposing main lines. Why the 4 on one side, well, on the Right and left side of the Cross, both those go into main Rail Yards so will have a lot of Shunting Trains in Action as we make our Consists up for the next day or evening so we need to be sure we have Main Lines open for Threw Train movement as well.

I took a lot of the Highway Congestion out of this Quadrangle, and moved all the Buildings out to the sides as well. Because these three Diamonds Track Meets are very important to the whole Rail Movement and Dwell Time, I don't want street and local Traffic gumming up the works here. So will connect the Highways for Crossing the Tracks away from the Quadrangle with Highway overpasses away from the Center here. You can see one of the new overpasses on the left side 1/2 mile or so away from the busy Quadrangle Center.

This is a World Origin Pin, I don't know how it is placed but as you can see our Tracks are 45 Degrees opposing angle to North on this Compass. I need to read up on World Origin for the RR to understand how this is used........

That'll do for today, hope you liked the pictures and thanks for visiting here.

Quadrangle Changes

Sat Eve all,

We are headed North still, checking Route Switches and Signals, so far, so good.

I have done a lot of Tree Removal on this route to help my Frame Rates and jerkiness, all do to it being on a Laptop with Intregrated low end GPU.....But will make Soup out of it the best we can.

Our consist is empty except for one loaded car, so speed is not an issues.

OK here is the latest Quadrangle with 4 tracks between Rail sorting yards, and 2 mainlines passing thru the quad diamonds, connecting Rails curve into always destinations for opposing Mainlines. Highways have been taken out of the Center of it and rerouted away from the diamonds, and a elevated Freeway has been installed diagonally across the Quadrangle.

I set this new Spur in for several industries behind the Quadrangle and it will work out nicely.

Better picture of the new Rail Installation. And you see how the Quadrangle works.

Here is what the new Rail installation for 4 different companies.

These are temp length of Rail stubs and will be extended much further when we clear out some more trees, we need good storage for all the incoming Cars this spot will generate, there are 4 different companies here to service.

We have brought in our first load for the industries and we have a Passenger Train coming thru on the main.

Looking good as always, she is on the move with lots of Passengers in tow.

Signal Bridge works perfectly, and once our Passenger gets by ,will use crossovers to get on that track and, shove to the Industry Spur Switch then shove back to the Industries.

That's it for now, I have lots more signals on the Loop around Main Line I installed.

Good night and have a great week ahead.

Working the Quadrangle area of the Route

Good Monday all,

Our Prayers go out to Texas for the terrible situation that occurred yesterday.

In picture below, our Steam Train is making connection point from West bound to North bound direction, via outside Curve at the Quadrangle. Where all N, S, W, E, directions merge together via 6 different Main Lines set between to Staging and Sorting Rail Yards located short distance from the main Diamonds.

I have trimmed a lot of Trees out of the Route to help my Frame Rates, and edge up the Elevation 20-30 Feet across some of the Border Tiles, not all yet, it's a large WIP for now, little each day.

Below you'll see 8 Diamonds here where all the mains come together and are interconnected by Curved access Rail (4 of them). Center of this is cleaned out pretty much and Town Buildings were moved outside the Center of Quadrangle, now this area is free and clear of Highways crossing near the connection points, all highways will cross at less congested points, and there will be one 2 lane each way overhead Freeway that will cut Diagonally across the Quadrangle.

The 4 mainlines in parallel, connect to the Staging Yards on West and East points 1/2 mile away from center of Diamonds, you can see a Freight consists in one of them preparing to go into new Industry center just to Center Right. They'll be lots of Freight Traffic working in there, but it will separated and not interfere with Diamond Traffic. All Thru Trains have 2 mainlines on each Right Angle to get thru with no impediments of local freight Traffic.

One thing I don't see on the Route, and it's possible I missed it, because there are lots of area's I have yet to familiarize myself with, is a Main Engine and Car Facility for Loco Maintenance and repair. If that is the Case I need to see where I can build one that is somewhat Central to the Quadrangle.......

We make a quick stop to see if there are any passengers for pickup just past here is small freight and Passenger Station, we have 2 of them for the opposing directions , North South, and other for East West destinations.

Signal Gantry is working as intended, allowing our Steam to pass North bound here from Westbound direction.

And we make a short scheduled stop to pickup/drop off passengers and workers for local Businesses and Rail Road etc. Here is where I make the Street connections between parallel streets this works much better for City and the Railroads movement. I will need to put in Crossing protection on this one. OOps. And I didn't get the right Yarnish Connector, what I did do, is drop in blank Tile and lay out all the Yarnish Connectors so I can see better which goes with Which one, there are several differnent types and it is to hard to see what they look like in the small preview window.


Over on the Staging yard is Junk Train with lots of loads for the new Rail Center. Now that the Steam Train has cleared the main, will move thru Crossovers and line up 4 Tracks over then drag our consist up and past the Freight Spur switch, then shove back into the rail center delivery. We just got Green (clear aspect) Diverging Route indication on Signal Bridge behind us.

We move about 5 MPH as we carefully cross 4 tracks over,,,,,,looks like my puzzle switches are working as intended. And the next time I come up the main, I found a better way to get into the far Main via anther direction, still learning how to use the Quadrangle.

Just about got the Crossover move completed here and no derailments either.

This is are CN Power, 3 Loco lashup to move the loads..

Well will see how this ends out on the next post.

Thank you for dropping in today.

Harbor Rail Yard and small shunt yard added.

Good Evening,

My apologies here, I didn't see one of my messages double posted, so here is a change out and different set of Pics.

This is a picture shows the issue of Grid Lines not accepting full Texture Colors when applied. So what needs to happen is me re appling the Texture coat.

In this Picture our Rail Runner Train is passing thru this double access Spur to our Power Plant, now all we need is find out where the Coal comes from? And the answer to that will come in the next post.

Here is the Harbor sort yard, on the Right is Wharf Warehouse with different buildings put together and I think it came out OK.

In the middle is another small warehouse on the left with 2 tracks to serve Loads and Storage needs.

Here shows the additional Rail Lines installed to allow more versatility with the Harbor Yard.

White Arrow is Harbor Yard operations

Magenta Arrow color is Extended Loop out around the islands back to Central Valley meet with Main Line.

Yellow Arrow Color is short turnaround loop out back end of Yard into the Main Line from Front of Yard operations.

Red Arrow Color is new Spur line for mini Wharf operations for small Commercial or private Boats needing Rail Service for Supply items.

Bottom Magenta Arrow is area where the extended Loop goes back to Main Line in Central Valley area.

The small Silos on Middle in Concrete area for Commodity piped across the Rails from the Wharf House operations in large Green Factory. We use a small Stub line for Gondola Service where the Commodity is trans loaded to Rail Gons.

We have more Q CN train loads here to get filled and moving, one of these handles Logs from forest areas, we are just doing a Crew Change out here and fueling, then this Train is on it's way back for another load of Logs.

And our Show Stopper here, a small compact Diesel Shunter works perfectly in these tight corners, handling our shunting needs. # Facilities our shunted, Farm or any other Equipment by Flat Car is brought in and trans loaded to delivery Trucks, Warehouse behind in back has 2 Team Tracks. Rail Gon Cars handle Material Loads next to small Silos.

This area was mostly Truck haul area, so I decided to add some Tight Tracking here that would allow Rail Access, and right next to main Sort Yard we can handle anything they throw at us for Car service demands, and our little Shunter is up to the challenge.

Thanks for Dropping by folks.