Progress on the Uintah RW

dangavel said:

Thanks Mick, but sometimes I wish I'd started a uk country route with lots of regular fields and grass and NO sagebrush

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LOL least you are making headway with a project you love that is the main thing mate I can't complete half a baseboard on any project yet and I've been here since 04-06 days .
Cheers Mick.

Been busy and have changed quite a few things and have made another extension to the end of the Eureka vein . Also changed the route just outside of Bonanza.

The newer stuff comes first

The end of the Eureka spur in the distance, there will be another big hoist here eventually.


Nearing Cowboy East mine

Still a lot more to do here, but the vegetation is very sparse compared to the rest of the line , the badlands are not that far away and not even grass grows there.

I've now done more work on Cowboy East mine trench.




more to come later on today.

This is near the wye leading to Cowboy west





incomplete vegetation , but most rock outcrops in place.

overviews of the Cowboy area ,the eureka extension is to the left, still only about 2 million sagebrush plants to insert before its complete !

Looking absolutely fabulous Dan! I've been spending a lot of time in Wyoming's Powder River Basin hauling coal and the difference between the Great Plains and the western desert are amazing. Both are basically empty but such a difference! The difference in mining operations and trainz are pretty amazing too. I am so looking forward to this route.

Great views of the Desert,,,,,, you should be so proud.........I am for you!!

:wave: Good Day Sir Dan Gavel..........Looks as real as real can be, Color, Sky Lighting, and oh, those millions of Scrub Brush you painstakingly have added......And the Cliffs you made, wow does that enhance the view.......

Quote "overviews of the Cowboy area ,the eureka extension is to the left, still only about 2 million sagebrush plants to insert before its complete !"......Egads you be careful pardner, I don't want to see you getting Hand Cramps......Slow and steady is the game my friend.......

Your Route is just outstanding and our friend Ben Dorsey RIP ,, must truly be smiling from above at your accomplishments........

Thanks gents, I think I’m getting there now, more shots to come later today as there’s a lot more I’ve changed in this past week or so.

Nice work Dan looking good mate.
Cheers Mick.

Nearing Bonanza , still a few bits to vegetate but this is getting closer to completion .











From here on I rebuilt this entire section as when I checked the line out against the google earth topography I realised I'd laid track up the wrong gully, so I rebuilt about 3 miles of hills and made it much more accurate.
Where the telegraph line goes off to the left is where the old track went.

but now we take off to the left . across a trestle and up a gully that joins up with another up the top of the hill. Of course this is all speculation as this part of the line never existed, but going by old plans I think this is pretty accurate as to where the line would have run . its also given me a chance to put in two extra cuttings, which are rare beasts on the Uintah. It has no tunnels, very few cuttings as such and over 100 bridges.


new trestle 74B

ute summit siding

Overview of the new alignment looking to the North

Here you can see the first cut.

Cut near the top of the grade, which is 6% in some sections. number 30 was plodding by the time she got to the top. Bonanza in far background.

Then its downhill .Over another new trestle
Still have some veggies to plant in this section


Nearing Ute summit siding



and that's yer lot for another week or two.

Looking Awesome!

Ive been working on the section between Dragon and Rainbow Junction , which is complex and varied in its vegetation, lots of pinyon pine and utah juniper forest in the foothills. Sage , dry and green grass and snakeweed on the plain near the creeks and patches of arid sections too.
I looked really carefully on google earth and have now made this much more accurate, there still a great deal to do , especially on the hills, I have splines to use and i cant see how else to do the hills on one side of the valley as these are so complex, the other side are much simpler and probably can just be done with textures, will have to see how it looks when i have completed a section on both sides of the canyon .

This is a section where I have roughly completed some background hills using textures.
this is the section before the cribbing

lots of creek banks here ( as usual ) , I found some images where these evacuation creek banks are infested with snakeweed, so I've been applying this plant a great deal on the banks , I also used a water spline of Jangos, which I de-saturated and it works a lot better than the other one I was using, I'll have to ask him if its ok to use if this goes on the DLS , the creeks here are seasonal and i think the light touch is best as these aren't rocky mountain type creeks with lots of rocks and fish.


Reverse angle view of the other side of the canyon, these are very complex cliffs and will probably need to use splines. parts of the ground here are very low lying and get seasonal floods so its a lot greener than normal.

i must admit to being addicted to using the snakeweed now Ive found tis widespread in the area as it hides joins between creek bank
and the ground.





one of the areas that floods .

as you can see there's still masses to do, I estimate I have 36 miles of canyon to vegetate ...:-(

Nice work Dan.
Cheers Mick.

dangavel said:

Ive been working on the section between Dragon and Rainbow Junction , which is complex and varied in its vegetation, lots of pinyon pine and utah juniper forest in the foothills. Sage , dry and green grass and snakeweed on the plain near the creeks and patches of arid sections too.
I looked really carefully on google earth and have now made this much more accurate, there still a great deal to do , especially on the hills, I have splines to use and i cant see how else to do the hills on one side of the valley as these are so complex, the other side are much simpler and probably can just be done with textures, will have to see how it looks when i have completed a section on both sides of the canyon .

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Dan.....Could you tell me what the Concrete Tie Backs here? I didn't recall seeing these in Trainz before, or maybe I just missed them..........


Update Sat Morning 11:00 AM PST:

dangavel said:

They are wooden cribbing sections made by Ben Dorsey. Just look for URY cribbing on the DLS .

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:wave: Thanks Dan.....Found them OK........... I was trying to think what the word was that applicable for these, and you rarely hear anymore, that I'm aware of.....

And it was CRIBBING........These will work perfectly for my needs..........!

blueodessey said:

Dan.....Could you tell me what the Concrete Tie Backs here? I din't recall seeing these in Trainz before, or maybe I just missed them..........

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They are wooden cribbing sections made by Ben Dorsey. Just look for URY cribbing on the DLS .

Every single shot is absolutely beautiful! you must get some serious mouse clicking ache after putting all that veg down!

rjc0235 said:

Every single shot is absolutely beautiful! you must get some serious mouse clicking ache after putting all that veg down!

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Yeah , i do . Wish there was a way to group and paste vegetation without taking the terrain along with you, it would save a huge amount of work. !!
I've had a bad shoulder which affects my forearm since last year , but physio is making progress and I'm now able to do more then I could in a session than I was capable of doing a few months ago .

Dragon township

Been working on Dragon this past few days, vegetated the hills and added some MORE creek beds, there are dozens of the pesky things, must have done at least 100 so far :-( I keep on finding more as I go along the route !!!!!

Dragon had no running water, no electricity apart from batteries used on the mines and it was hot in summer and cold in winter, in the middle of nowhere , it was a real nice place to live
by 1939 the place had fallen into disrepair as Watson took over as the main freight hub, but in my alternative universe the mines had been opened again due to the second world war demand for gilsonite. so its in its glory , if this route ever gets distributed it will be easy to remake it in different eras, pre 1911 this was the terminus , the mines were going full tilt as well as horse drawn freight coming in from Vernal and local mines that were dotted around the area .


blacksmiths shop, engine shed and gilsonite store are in the foreground, the store was a replacement for the bigger freight house which burnt down early on in the lines history. the engine shop is a later addition as is the tipple on the left which was originally just a coal bin .

The URY management built a fancy hotel which was similar to the one in Mack , but when dragon declined so too did the hotel , it eventually became derelict and finally burnt down, the terraces are still visible in the ghost town but thats about it .The lawns are far too green but I don't have a suitable spline that can be reskinned to show this as this is a built in item . :-(
The tank on the right was the towns water supply , replenished daily by water tanks hauled from Mcandrews lake.

The tipple, made by the late Ben Dorsey. on the far left is the general managers house and then the far less imposing superintendents house . Both joined by a boardwalk that runs to the main township.


the ice house , engine shed and blacksmiths shop, looking across the valley from the hill next to the hotel.Corrals for the horse drawn freight would probably have been disused by this time as there was a truck garage at Watson . the remains of the corrals can still be seen today.

I've returned to the short branch line that went to the Black Draqon mine ,its about a mile long , so it doesn't seem as endless as the long canyon sections on the main line. This was the main mine on the route when it was first created , they had issues with fire , the mine was closed for some time when dust ignited and several miners were killed. Later on the mine became less economic as they removed contents of the main seam .It originally had a large tipple which was removed and replaced by two smaller loaders which were at work in 1928, Ben Dorsey made these, and would no doubt have made the larger version if he was still around , really miss his input. back in the day there was a large boiler house which served the mine, but by 1928 it had been demolished.
I've used google earth and video on youtube as my source for placing rocks and trees as there are no images of this stretch from the days of the railroad apart from one shot at dragon looking towards Dragon township and others at the mine itself . I suppose rocks and trees weren't a priority for photographers .... they wanted interesting stuff like engines and mine equipment.I've decided to go back to the mine and work on that later on today. Variety is the spice of life and placing trees endlessly can get a tad boring





Looking up the Canyon towards the mine , the section beyond still needs work.

If there were easy ways of isolating parts of the route without laboriously deleting all the other boards I'd take sections like the mines and release then as modules as I complete them , but I am reluctant to do that as I am always a bit suspicious of merging routes.