Timber Ridge Line Redux

normhart

Trainz Entry Level
Around 2007 Klinger released his Timber Ridge Line route for TRS2006 SP1. I recently discovered this route and, somewhat to my surprise. it loaded into TANE with very few faulty or missing assets and it was a great joy to discover a route that I could use all the great Denver and Rio Grand assets I had accumulated over the past few years.

Recently meatloaf747 opened a thread asking for screenshots of modifications to the Murchison route which I thought was a great idea although I had not actually done any such mods and I see he didn't get any responses so far. It occurred to me that this fine old route might garner more interest and response. So dust off your old screenies and show us what you have done to Klinger's route or just show us your favorite shots from TRS2006 thru TANE on this route.

Something to get you in the mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1qECQ__Vvs


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL9l1KNLOBw

I've already started modifying the route somewhat, adding a turntable at Thomas' Lumber as well as replacing the 30" track with pencil42's 70lb track and I am planning on adding some logging camps.





Don't be shy. :D
 
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I doubt it, all my modifications are for myself. The chances that I would do something that I thought were good enough to share would be slim and, should I actually succeed, I would contact him, naturally.

This thread was basically to see what other people might have done to their version of the route. Such as your work on the dual gauge tracks, would you care to share some screenies of your mods?
 
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Such as your work on the dual gauge tracks, would you care to share some screenies of your mods?

I replaced Elvenor's 'MAN6 Dual Gauge Track' with 'MAN6 Four Rail Track'. It makes making curves a lot easier. Plus you also need only one set of signals instead of two separate pairs of signals, one pair for the standard gauge track, one pair for the narrow gauge track. This also replaces two sets of switchstands, one for narrow gauge and one for standard gauge, with one switchstand. All of this results in not having a narrow gauge train pass through a standard gauge train, which is a problem only with Trainz, which of coarse doesn't happen in reality.
 
this is a great route and it was one i played with a lot when i first started with trainz, in 2010 on the mac, there were a lot of issues with tunnels going missing, i eventually replaced them as well as adding more trestles. I also made some of the grades tougher as i really like to see NG 2-8-0s struggling to make the top of a 3.5 % grade .
I have now decided i have to move to TANE so i might fire this route up and see how it works just to get a respite from working on the cumbres and toltec, much of the work i did on it recently in TS12 is going to have to be redone anyway which is disheartening , so just playing with another less demanding route for a week or two might be fun. if i do i'll post some snaps here
 
as promised heres a few pix , theses are from a section of the timber ridge line i revamped just for fun .
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theres so much good stuff in this line i think i'll now i'll probably revamp the whole thing for my own use.
 
Looking good Dan!

Edit; Your experiments with replacement trees reminded me of a test I wanted to try. I thought that Dave Drake's Eastern Spruce-Fir 75m-wide cover spline looked remarkably good in TANE and klinger uses it extensively on this route. As you know klinger left wide open right of ways along the track line,



And I wondered if filling that open space with a moderately dense scattering of complementary SpeedTrees would break up the repetitive appearance of the spline as well as screening the more obvious billboard appearances.



Not bad IMO, I need to narrow down a good set of SpeedTrees and copy/paste them along a longer section of the line but my first impression is that using SpeedTrees near the rail lines and billboard at a distance may prove to be a good balance between performance and appearance.

Turning the idea on it's head I tried adding Dave's spline to the open backgrounds on jrfolco's WM & B&O Mega Route Tane,





and I have to say it may improve that route too. Of course this all requires spending an extensive amount of time planting trees but, hey, I'm from California and I'm a long time tree hugger. :D
 
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These pics are so cool, and good to hear the Route works in Tane, I just bought Tane 2 days ago, so I have lots to do, lots of Importing from TS-12 I've had for 2 years...Keep the Pics and Ideas flowing.... Thanks for sharing.
 
Your very welcome Blue. This route has been around for ages, hopefully more folks will show off what they've done to/with it.

Borax is a company town.







 
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the trees look good norm, heres a few more shots of what i'm doing with timber ridge
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I'm using textures from White pass and jvc trees ( 2012 versions ) as well as a few Aspens i've modified
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i too have been playing around with the mine, and will post a few shots of it later on .
keep up the good work, its nice to see these old routes coming back to life,even thought i can still see some tress suspended in mid air, have to fix those later ....:)
 
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The Gray Goose, Hurrah! An excellent transport for your track crew. :D Your talents are different than mine, I have little talent for changing textures and terrain and I'm more interested in the industries and interactions between the three gauges of railroads. I do admire the scenery you have created and look forward to seeing what you have done to the Badger and Cash mining district. In anticipation here are some "before" pictures as my route stands. I have not done anything in the area except switch the track to pencil42's 30in,

North entrance to mining district looking south








South entrance looking north


It seems as though there is no way to transfer coal or silver ore from the 30" line to the 36" line although there is coal transfer from the 36" to standard gauge at Prowler and from the 36" to 30" at Glenview. I am currently planning on adding some sort of interactive transfer industry at either Ashippun or Glenview. LOL, it just dawned on me that you are probably talking about the 36 gauge mining district and not the 30 gauge area I pictured above. :hehe:

BTW have you been able to fix <kuid:47439:25701> Wingatui Station? Mine is broken and I have not been able to fix it in TANE.
 
Oh, and Borax is about done for the first pass,





I'll add more after I figure out how to add a Borax commodity, add borax to the hopper's capabilities, make an interactive loading capability, setup a borax transfer to the 36" line and setup some sort of borax soap manufacturing industry. ;)
 
Your route is looking great, and Check with Dave Snow on Commodities adding or maybe JCitron, there lots of Knowledgeable folks in here....Those are the two that come to mind for now.

And Like the Goose, that is such a neat Asset with it's history when you thing about it,,,,,Your switch stands look cool, never seen that before.
 
I know how to make commodities the problem is finding a texture that works. Turns out there is already a Borax Commodity but it is the refined product not what gets dug out of the ground. It will work for now though.



:D
 
Transferring the Borax ore to the 36" line at Ashippun





Your switch stands look cool, never seen that before.
Those switch stands are included in the route and are Harp switches by elvenor, he did both the D&RG and DSP&P versions and they are on the DLS.
 
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You know, i was so busy looking at the wooded parts of the route i completely forgot the industries at the other ends. i'll be working on those later , this is the one i have retextured . One of my criticisms of routes is that they look far too tidy, as we all know, railroads often pass through some rundown and ugly looking parts of town, and industries make a lot of mass too, so i've tried to show some of the downsides of mining in this scene , such as land clearance and tailing and lots of rusty metal discards :)
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a few of the hands are living in vans at this site , probably watchmen or itinerant workers
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i was wanting to replace the stations with the rio grande southern depots but i've found that for some reason in the dual gauge portion , they will not place nicely in the ground where the old stations were positioned, they either float too high or if they are brought lower their platforms are partially covered , the terrain doesn't seem to be completely flat and if you delete track to fix this, then it messes up the signalling , anyone got any ideas about who to fix this ? i'll check out the station norm mentioned to see if it will work correctly in my version as well.
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Now that's brilliant! Turning the hills into tailing mounds and scattering damaged scraps of the construction process adds much realism to the scene. I have always been bothered by the pristine forests around logging operations in trainz. As someone who has seen the results of clear cut operations in the California forests I know what a mess is left behind not only during operations but for decades after operations cease. I can walk from my current home into second growth redwood forests and, in the other direction into areas where mining has left enduring scars an the landscape and remains of buildings rotting away.

Nice ore cars BTW, yours?
 
Thats a great thing about Trainz, one can enjoy it on many levels ,your talents are in operations, getting assets to work and reskinning, i haven't really ventured into reskinning as yet, i must do some eventually on rolling stock for my freelance route. I was a painter in my early days and i always liked landscaping even when i had a 'real ' train set , i had more fun making fields and mountains than actually running the trains, although i do like a good shunting session as much as the next person .

Although theres quite a lot of good items to chose from , theres in my mind, still not enough variety of objects that can be used to convey the devastation left over from these sort of operations , theres no really good log trash texture, i must try and make the ones available smaller so they work more efficiently or make one up myself if i can find a suitable pic.

also will add some more dead trees to the area, the denver public library has some great pics of the sort of devastation that ensued after construction , i found many from rollins pass, masses of dead tree stumps and thinner logs strewn around. theres some good stumps on the DLC but i used one that had this annoying bird noise attached to it , drove me mad until i found out what was causing it.
i wish i had the skill to make stuff like these ore cars, i am supposed to be learning blender, but i just have not got it together as yet, possibly next year if i can muster the energy .
the ore cars are made by Narrow gauge,who does lovely stuff , they are 36 Ore Wagon Empty
theres also a loaded version
the kuids are 2:44700:15312:1 and 2:44700:15311:1
 
Heres a few more timber ridge updates
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i modified the Durango roundhouse so it looks dirtier , i wish there was a way to drop dirt into the turntable pit , as i have seen in old images, overall i still think the yard is too clean , it needs more rubbish scattered around but there doesn't seem to be much more yard clutter that i can find .
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view from roundhouse of township , which has also been modified to get rid of some of the high rise buildings which would not be in such small towns in this part of the states.
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there weren't any workers houses, so i added a few
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dunno if there ever was an ash pit fill that was supported with a tie fence, but I like it anyway and it gets rid of the straight line at the base of the fill.hate those straight join lines , one of the biggest faults of Trainz methinks.
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A new depot has replaced the old one, and somehow Tom Baker from Dr Who has shown up in colorado !
i am replacing all the depots with RGS stations , the loco is one i can't get working, a pity as its a really nice model.
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Oops , i forgot to crop this one, i replaced the old freight house with others , two of which are interactive .
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Also had to replace the original bridge as the old version would not work in TANE .
Overall, almost all assets did work , the main issues were the tunnels and the digholes that could not be repaired as they left holes in the boards .Other than that , you could run this route as was ,with very little work. I've used a lot of new assets from Jangos Trainz italia routes and the White pass route in addition to modifying some other items to get variety in the landscaping. With these new mods, its still runs smoothly on my Mac pro with 1gb vram on the old 5870 radeon card , so i'm pleased with the TANE performance, apart from some screen flickering , i have yet to install the recent mac update, hopefully that may have been addressed .
 
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