The Chicago Terminal District Project

B

Bradleyeed

Member
After working on and off for almost 9 years, I have finally completed the preliminary design of every rail line and yard within the Chicago Terminal District. This includes the class 1 railroads, the BRC and the IHB, as well as all shortline railroads and the entire Metra network and the NICTD system from Gary, IN to Millenium Station. Using various resources, including but not limited to Google Earth, Bing Maps, The Chicago Union Station Master Plan, an FOIA request to Metra, and Chicago-L.org. I drew the entire rail network, except the CTA Subway portions which were approximated, in Transdem, and with the help of AutoCAD I imported drawings of CUS and Millenium Street Station. Here are some screenshots of some of the railyards in city.



Overview of TransDEM Map

USS Gary Works Facility and CN/EJE Kirk Yard

AMTK 14th St Yard and Metra Roosevelt Yard

BNSF Logistics Park

UP Global Yard II

NS Ashland Ave Yard

CSX Barr Yard

IHB Blue Island Yard

CP Bensenville Yard

BRC Clearing East
 
Oh boy, all I'm going to say is good luck. You will need it. Hope to see this progress beyond elementary stages, as I am fairly sure nobody has ever done so!
 
All I would like to say I'm dizzy looking at all the tracks,

A compliment to you sir, that is one grand historic project your working on, best of luck in your quest.

It's way above my pay grade.
 
Surely many, many, thousands of redundant track spline point circles ... as a curve usually needs only 2 or 3 ... but very nice trackwork ! No doubt you could only place a few handfuls of consists in those huge yards, before locking up framerates to single digits. Those hump yards look fantastic, as I have gotten my hump yards running fabulously with extremely slowly rolling railcars ... I hate when a hump yard has 45mph rolling railcars speeding and crashing together. Using the pink Speed Retarders, and the TPR Hump Yard Kit, these yards would be epic !

My yards have absolutely ridiculous straight tracks ... something that is not true in real life yards, that have leaps, dips, and swerves on the prototype

You must be from Chicago ?

Please post more screenshots and turn off fog and haze :cool:
 
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Thanks!

I when I was tracing the tracks in in Transdem, I had a difficult time judging how many spline points would be needed in a lot of places and those are items I plan to modify as I move into the next phase.

I actually live in Iowa. When I was young I, after riding Metra and Amtrak for the first time and spending most of the trip home with the conductors, told my parents that I wanted to own my own railroad. This was the only realistic way to achieve that!

I'm also glad that only days ago someone finally completed and released a Metra MP36PH-3C.

My next phase will be scenic design and trackwork along Metra and Amtrak Corridors, this way I get the items that have a known timetable. After I'm a good way through that phase, I'll add unit train (Intermodal, Coal, Automotive, Grain, etc), and then I'll be adding mixed freights in.
 
Also, it is handy with this size of a project to have OCD when working on this and ADD when working on anything else!
 
I think all artists, collectors, model railroaders, train sim creators, have OCD, ADD ... I know that I have every disorder possible, including Oldtimers and CRS :cool: Makes me want to reach out with my mouse, and help you straighten out each of your tracks ... great (big) job !

A route this size could use a team of several people working on it ... I'll be the track straightener :hehe:
 
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That is an incredible amount of work and a very ambitious project. I hope for your own sanity that you have this route backed-up in several different locations and media types.

Regards,
 
ren.jpg
 
Last summer is when I used Google Earth to retrieve all of the orthoimagery for Transdem. So from the Bensenville Yard South it was dated 4/30/15, not sure about north of that area but it was definitely since 2010, when the CN started upgrading the EJ&E.

With this process, I caught the area in the middle of the CREATE program and I can use theire data to build the model, and provide construction sites to model.
 
After some research, I realized that to design the various subway stations, CUS, Millenium Street Station I will need to design them in two phases. The first phase will be the stations, with nothing above, so that I may place track, signals, and other scenery. The second phase will be the cover above the stations, roads, ground, buildings. If there is any advice on how to design these systems to that the two objects are connected that would be great, I am a novice when it comes to 3dsmax, sketchup, and blender.
 
I've spent the last week working in TransDEM creating UTM tiles for the entire route. That took a couple of tries to achieve at least 90% coverage without Trainz crashing but I think I have finally success. At approx 1.2Gb for the route (DEM, texture and track), and a total of approx 15Gb spread over 4600+ UTM tiles, needless to say my biggest issue is opening, closing and autosave.

I did manage to capture this view of the BNSF-IHB Crossing with the mine in the background, without the game crashing finally.

I also wanted to show my AutoCAD file with color-coded lines representing all of the different railroads.

I'm currently focused on the area around the Kenosha Metra Station and the Kenosha Trolley Car.

I'm sorry if this screenshot is too dark, I'm still learning how to use these tools.
 
No complaints in this Peanut Factory, really like the education I'm getting from your thread.......That is one heck of a lot of Base Boards, if not the Record? I don't own Tran Dem yet, still kicking it around whether I want to dip my toes in or not it truly is one amazing program for what it can do?

Your maps you showed really help in understanding the expanse of project your showing us, don't worry about the dark colors, on Track schematics I was able to make out the detail just fine..........

Thanks for sharing a great story......

Edit: One ?....for you,,,,,:eek: I don't know what a UTM tile means, if you could elaborate just a bit.....Thanks.
 
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