Progress on the Uintah RW

blueodessey said:

:wave: Evening Dan,

Sorry to hear about the Corruption etc on your Route, thank goodness you had a recent good backup to get going again........I'm playing around with a Copy of Marias Pass, making several changes here and there. And the other day, I was running some Trains on the route, and noticed that some 30 tiles in outside corners had lost their Texture and several hundred feet of elevation.......Don't know why, but I do remember my Route trying to save, and it never finished completely.....I had to close Trainz and re launch the Program. Re save the Route, but apparently it got corrupted and since it is a large Route, it didn't come up till I entered the affected area a week later on New Safetran Signal checks........

Thus I had to rebuild several miles of Route, and re texture too. Ironically the Trees and Shrub held in their position, so I just had to re level and build the Mountainous areas back to the Tree levels. Crude but effective.......

And while I'm thinking about it, even though you don't have the proper Google Maps you need for your Route, I am sure, based on what your work product emanates thru Screen Shots, everything will come out just fine.........Your Route looks so natural with all the detail you have projected into it.

Take care ole friend, we are all watching with great anticipation as you perform your magic.

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its a horrible feeling when there is a route issue , i lost a lot of good work that I'd done, but no long term damage.
Google maps are really good, just don't give accurate color of rocks etc from the air. But fortunately there are a few images from further up the line here .

http://www.drgw.net/trips/report.php?tr=UINT.6

dangavel said:

its a horrible feeling when there is a route issue , i lost a lot of good work that I'd done, but no long term damage.
Google maps are really good, just don't give accurate color of rocks etc from the air. But fortunately there are a few images from further up the line here .

http://www.drgw.net/trips/report.php?tr=UINT.6

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Thanks for the link Dan, you don't know it, but you did me a really big Favor here, on this site I saw this http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?railroad=Deseret Power Railway
just happens, on my trip back from Illinois.

I saw this Railroad out in the middle of nowhere in the Desert between Utah and Colorado, and couldn't figure what the heck this was, other than obvious, an electrified Route for something, but what? No Station Stops, and one basic Mainline and occasionally, maybe twice it had small spur line, un electrified I think?

:hehe: We followed this for miles on a parallel highway, till suddenly it just turns right and literately climbs over a stiff graded cliff out of our site into a higher hill top area.........

Now I know what it's for.......Was like something out of Sci Fi Movie....LOL

a few more shots of the interloping, infernal machine in Rainbow

and a couple from Pigeon toe mine


and one of Augustine mine

Ive been continuing to work on the rainbow area and have now more or less vegetated about 2/3rds of the canyon from China Wall to Rainbow , I shifted my attention to Rainbow Junction and began constructing the dry cliff walls thst are the main feature of the canyon that climbs on a stiff 5% grade up to American and hence to Rainbow and the China Wall extension . The canyon is very narrow and it pretty arid, as well as subject to flash floods, I've not put any cribbing/piles in here yet but will do so later , this section, which is about a mile long, is about 2/3rds complete , I have to add the cliff wall textures ( taken from photos fro
m the canyon ) onto the higher walls as well as adding more rocks and sage.

looking down the canyon to the junction, Watson is about a mile to the left and Dragon about 10 miles to the right. the grade at Dragon Junction is about 7% near the bridge on the right , which is out of sight ) just after the rainwater tank .

Gotta add sage to the hills behind here.


about 200 metres up the grade , there was a short spur , whether this was a place to store wagons or for helpers to wait , I do not know, it definitely existed as it features in a film made in the 30s of this portion of the line .

there are about 7 small trestles in just over a mile of track , despite that, washouts were frequent here .


the 5% grade is fairly obvious in this shot .
jumping around a bit, this is the gilsonite trench near Rainbow, in the far distance is Thimble rock mine, you can see Rainbow in the middle distance and in the foreground is Pigeon Toe mine, the seam continues more or less in a straight line for about 4 miles , the actual width is much narrower, Paul is working on a 10 ft wide version.



finally for now, here's a shot showing a scene that i have used the old film as a resource to stage, its accurate down to the tree positions. Needless to say this has proved invaluable as it has footage for about a half mile or so taken from a camera positioned on a flatcar.

Flash Floods anyone?

:wave: Evening Dangavel,

:udrool: That's a great view of the Canyon Walls, and when I look at it, I envision in my mind, how in the heck did these folks make this railroad in such dry, high elevation, conditions.....How did one survive in this arid area, along with whatever else in Pests and Insects lived in this hostile environment, OH, we probably had had some good size Rattlesnakes if the other bad guys didn't take you out!!!.....

And the added bonus, if Rain came and it was too much, you had a flash flood to that could kill the unknowing with impending liquid explosive Doom as it washed down the steep sides of the Canyon......

Looking good Chief.......

blueodessey said:

:wave: Evening Dangavel,

:udrool: That's a great view of the Canyon Walls, and when I look at it, I envision in my mind, how in the heck did these folks make this railroad in such dry, high elevation, conditions.....How did one survive in this arid area, along with whatever else in Pests and Insects lived in this hostile environment, OH, we probably had had some good size Rattlesnakes if the other bad guys didn't take you out!!!.....

And the added bonus, if Rain came and it was too much, you had a flash flood to that could kill the unknowing with impending liquid explosive Doom as it washed down the steep sides of the Canyon......

Looking good Chief.......

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They were tough ..... and during the depression years ,glad to have any employment, but it was a hard life and a very remote place to live whether it was winter or summer. there are even fewer people live there now and for good reason !

A route so fascinating and intriguing that I had to google what on earth Gilsonite was. such a strange way of mining, and amazing how consistent the veins were!

rjc0235 said:

A route so fascinating and intriguing that I had to google what on earth Gilsonite was. such a strange way of mining, and amazing how consistent the veins were!

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And also very difficult to model, given that trainz terrain tools dont like to make narrow vertical shafts that are hundreds of feet deep, covering up the Long narrow shafts convincingly is proving difficult but we are learning how to do so and thanks to Paul Gorsky we are improving the techniques . It won’t ever look totally convincing due to the limitations of the terrain tools,the Veins have a habit of being on an angle to the mesh and thus develop kinks that are very hard to get rid of. Dig holes are even worse .

A fascinating route and great shots as always. Thanks Dan, you being credit to the community.

dangavel said:

And also very difficult to model, given that trainz terrain tools dont like to make narrow vertical shafts that are hundreds of feet deep, covering up the Long narrow shafts convincingly is proving difficult but we are learning how to do so and thanks to Paul Gorsky we are improving the techniques . It won’t ever look totally convincing due to the limitations of the terrain tools,the Veins have a habit of being on an angle to the mesh and thus develop kinks that are very hard to get rid of. Dig holes are even worse .

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True.
It is very difficult to make those slopes in Trainz.
Especially the groundtextures of the canyon walls.
A little you can help using a grid at 5m instead of 10m.
But it does not completely solve the problem.
Good job Dang, I always like your route.
Very "personal".

Been playing around in Evacuation creek near White River , discovered that the dem I used made a lot of the hills about 10 metres too low :-( so a lot more work than i had hoped for , still, I managed to make about 10 creeks - but there are still about 14 to go. I did a little bit of cliff work , which is MUCH more interesting than darn creeks, which are just a pain to do as they are so repetitive and tricky to get to look right .





this last shot is from the Ute Summit, where a 6% grade with a 3 big reverse curves leads to the high spot on this section of the line , this is the driest section of the line , bu there still quite a lot of desert vegetation. Further over near Jensen the badlands have no vegetation at all, too alkali ...but thats not part of the route.

Certainly made routes with tall cliffs a lot more doable now Dan, Great work.
Cheers Mick.

Those cliffs are awesome! I have been looking for something just like that in brown columnar basalt....

I agree. Those cliffs are most impressive. Are they two or three splines mounted on top of each other? If so, that's a lot of work to get the positioning correct.

philskene said:

I agree. Those cliffs are most impressive. Are they two or three splines mounted on top of each other? If so, that's a lot of work to get the positioning correct.

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These do work pretty well, and I will distribute them this week. There are three separate splines, all sourced from one image,so each is slightly different . These have top and bottom sections , dropped in three layers. I usually use 20 degree splines for middle and 10 degree or flat for top. It took about 15 minutes to do that particular cliff section, but then I've had a lot of practice recently. it gets tricky if you have a very undulating or tight section to do ,as bits of spline tend to stick up in tight corners, its also good to bury bits in terrain so they don't look too repetitive.
There's also this series ,which has a variety of top ,centre and bottom sections. These are all taken from the same cliff images so they match up as they do in nature , you can use the slope of the top section to cover up scree areas .

:wave: Evening Sir Dangavel,

You say hanging Cliff's are a Pain and 1/2, and I say they look so right on in those wicked Hills.............:udrool: The Route is looking Majestic, and so real life, keep at my friend, what a master piece you are creating there.......And I was looking at those Sacks you had made, they look spot on too.........

My right arm is aching so much from applying endless vegetation I decided I might as well do something different to let it cool down a bit. So here's the result of this weeks playing around , this is Ute valley section house and the climb towards Bonanza.
This whole section has been handbuilt as the DEM ran out just around this sector. I've spent most of this week rebuilding the hills and adding creeks so they are more accurate and its looking a lot better now.



Ute valley section house.



Fortunately for the Uintah . most of its steepest grades were in the direction where they carried empties, although due to lack of water, there were always full water tanks on whatever load they carried for the communities on the route northward.

still haven't got round to vegetating the hills on the right...

as we get up the hill , scrub gets a bit thicker. Nary a tree in sight in this area .



Bit more exposed rock as we climb but not a huge amount of cliffs in this area.

near the summit

Superb work Dan.
Cheers Mick.

matruck said:

Superb work Dan.
Cheers Mick.

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