WIP: Carrabassett Valley Railroad

Howdy all!!! Apologies for this late post, but I've been caught up with life and the discord server's im apart of since it's been pretty easy to keep up to date there. Well I figured it wasn't fair to the folks here that still loyally use the forums to abandon this thread since progress is still very much underway way with the CBVR. Here comes a BIG photo spam as well as our 2020 roster update!!! Hope you all enjoy! Thanks!

Roster
EMD GP35 202-206
EMD GP38-2 207-226
EMD GP40-2 1551-1562
EMD GP60 770-771
EMD SD38-2 2951-2960
EMD SD40-2 1006-1049
EMD SD40-2F 921-924
EMD SD40T-2 1000-1005
EMD SD45X 5740
EMD SD45-2 3271-3282
EMD SD49 414-423
EMD SD50 4320-4329
EMD SD50-2 5331-5350
EMD SD60 5970-5975
EMD SD60M 2440-2444
EMD SD70 2000-2019
EMD SD70M 2797-2799
EMD SD77I 444 (4751)
EMD SW1500 566-575
MLW M420W 3800-3811

Passenger Roster
EMD E8 500/502
EMD E8B 501
EMD F7 749
EMD F9B 747-748
EMD FL9 746
EMD GP30M 821-823
EMD GP39H-2 800-805
EMD GP40-2H 806-819
EMD GP59H-3 820

Here we see the portion of the Abenaki Sub in Palmyra Maine, with 770 and two now retired GP15's rolling along on a small movement between North Anson and Newport Maine.




FS44-L, the Chain of Ponds local working the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association switching out 20,800 gallon milk tankers and boxcars loaded with Apples, Potatoes, Blueberries and Maple Syrup. 204 a GP35 works the small turn in the early morning hours of Monday. 6 cars in total will return to Flagstaff yard in Eustis Maine and be brought south toward North Anson





The dropped cars will sit in Chain of Ponds until next monday when the local returns to pick them up with fresh empties



And a GP60 returns the following week to repeat the process. This time working the MOFGA off the Sappi North America Papermill Local in town.

Slowly rolling through Kennebec Yard we see the Lac Megantic Limited on its dry run north. This run would occur about a month and a half before Labor Day but is occurring only three days out this year. The current world situation is keeping the LML from doing many runs this season or even operating at all. But we execs here at the CBVR are determined to keep the wheels rolling just incase the situation here improves



And coming across the bridge behind the LML a small yard switcher pulls a small consist of wood products bound for Flagstaff Yard. The GP35 finished up with a small run from Skowhegan's Currier yard and was tasked of pulling some cars over to the proper side of the yard since it was heading that was to park anyways.





A pair of GP38's come across the yard bridge that crossed Maine State 16. Not the lowest bridge clearance for a railroad bridge in the state of Maine oddly enough.




And finally I have been building a MOFGA Dairy Processing Facility in Norridgewock Maine. The facility takes in about 26 tankers a week on Tuesday Morning's and makes enough products to be loaded onto 92 individual 57 foot Refers. The cars are apart of the CBVR Rolling stock (Refers not in our paint yet). I started this facility on Saturday and have streamed it on youtube over the course of two days. This is show casing all the work I have made on it. Not done entirely yet but happy with my work so far!!!!

Hey guys, been a while.

We've actually made quite a bit of progress on the route since we last posted in this thread over 2 years ago, and I figured the thread was long overdue for an update. The project was never dead at any point, it's more just a case that all of us working on the route primarily communicate with each other and the Trainz world through Discord and the occasional YouTube livestream, and this thread has kinda fallen by the wayside as a result, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. In the two years since we last posted here, we've:

- Added 2 new creators to the team, bringing us up to 4 team members working on the project.
- Made countless changes to the roster as we tried to hone in on what we wanted for the railroad, with the roster now sitting at 271 units, of which we have 122 in some presentable form in-game thanks to many new skins being more or less completed.
- Extended the DEM, bringing the eastern terminus of the line from Newport, ME to Northern Maine Junction, ME, which sits on the outskirts of Bangor, and adding a second southern terminus at Waterville, ME. This extension also added 2 branch lines.
- Completed large swaths of trackside scenery along the Bigelow Sub between Lac Mégantic and Kingfield.
- Largely finalized the trackwork along the full route, minus a few branches and two major yards which have yet to be built.

That short list kinda undersells just how much work we've put into the railroad. Before I go any further, allow me to share this fairly rough and excessively large map, as it will help give some context to a whole spiel of route-related madness to follow:


So, we've decided that the route will be released in Phases. It simply makes the most sense given the scale of the project; if we didn't, the project would take years and years to see anything releasable (kinda like it already has). We've decided that Phase I will cover the Bigelow Sub from Lac Mégantic to Kingfield. We figured that this section would provide a well-rounded taste of what the route would offer, with two yards, one at Lac Mégantic and one at Eustis, and plenty of switching to do. We decided to extend Phase I beyond Eustis to cover Kingfield since Kingfield is serviced from the yard in Eustis, and it would provide more to do. It also provides more mainline running for the through trains going to/from Lac Mégantic from/to points south, more gorgeous Maine scenery, passing through the railroad's namesake valley and by Sugarloaf Mountain, and it also provides a taste of the steep grades that are common throughout the rugged mountainous territory that the Carrabassett Valley runs through. At roughly 95 miles, the Bigelow sub is the largest of the CBVR's main subdivisions, and Phase I as it sits currently will cover roughly 70 miles of it. The release date on Phase I is still tba, as there still is a decent bit to finish up before we enter the testing and dependency-wrangling phase, but we are getting there. The route has also made the great migration from TANE to TRS19, and it will be released as a 19-only route. I am currently the only member of the build team that does not have a 19 build, as at the moment I just don't have enough storage space for another Trainz build, but I don't do much on the route building side of things for the route these days so it doesn't matter too terribly much for the moment.

Once Phase I is out, we have two options for what to make Phase II entail, as Kingfield also happens to be where the main line splits. One option would be to do the New Portland Bypass between Kingfield and Farmington, which would add one of our two major southern terminus's and one of the major hubs for bridge traffic on a hot shot out of Canada, as well as several switching opportunities near Farmington and at its corresponding yard. The other option would be to continue the Bigelow Sub to its terminus at North Anson, which is the railroad's central hub and headquarters, and is home to the railroad's largest yard and main engine and car shops. This extension would also include the Solon branch (not included on the map as we have not yet laid this one in its entirety), which ships lumber, gravel, and bulk produce, and is one of the more productive branches on the railroad. Whether or not we'd continue this version of Phase II south onto any decent chunk of the Kennebec Sub or even going down the Nordica Sub to go to Farmington from the other side is still up in the air. Speculating anything much beyond that is just to far away to really try and set something in stone.

Anyway, I think that's quite enough talking about all of the fun and skippable things that we have planned for the route, how about I show y'all what we've managed to accomplish? As I mentioned earlier, I am the last remaining TANE holdout on the team due to storage constraints, and as a result, the shots I've taken are all on the final TANE-compatible build of the route we did before we moved fully to 19. We've made more progress since this version, and hopefully either Jayden, Ethan, or Mal will post some of their shots showing some of the newer work as well as showing off the route in much nicer looking Trainz 2019 lighting, but for now, I hope this will get across just how much we've gotten done.

We'll be following a northbound mixed freight that departed from Kennebec Yard in North Anson and is heading north to Lac Mégantic for interchange. The weather is overcast, but the rain seems to be holding for now. We first catch the train on the climb out of the Carrabassett Valley heading towards Bigelow:


Crossing over Huston Brook Falls:


Through a large rock cut:


A look at the body of the train as it snakes its way through a small cut towards one of the several tunnels on the Eustis-Embden line:


The weather has worsened into a downpour as the train arrives at Flagstaff Yard in Eustis. Eustis represents the north end of the helper coverage on the Bigelow sub, and the train will slow as it passes by the yard before stopping to cut the helpers off, then continuing the trip to Lac Mégantic. Sitting in the yard is a Chain of Ponds-bound local waiting for the main to clear before departing to service the industries in the Chain of Ponds area.


The helpers for the day are a pair of rebuilt SD50M's and a single SD40-2 bringing up the rear. The train is now slowing to a stop to allow them to cut off.


The helpers are now parked, ready to assist the next train heading south out of Flagstaff. The freight has powered on towards Chain of ponds.


We catch up with the train as it crosses a bridge south of Chain of Ponds. The main line through here was once double tracked, but it is now necked down to a single track. Beyond the bridge, the main still exists in spirit as the Chain of Ponds siding, which can just barely be seen splitting off to the right. The siding ends just shy of Chain of Ponds proper.


Blasting past the depot in Chain of Ponds at track speed:

Continued:

We get one last look at the train on US side of the border as it runs past a logging operation on a large fill:


The weather has largely cleared up as the train crosses into Canada. The line is largely 55 mph running from here on in until the railroad hits yard limits, so the engines are getting to stretch their legs for a bit and run at higher speeds. We catch the train as it rockets through St. Augustine de Woburn towards Lac Mégantic.


One final shot of the train as it passes north of St Augustine de Woburn and enters a large swath of farmland that will make up the scenery until the railroad hits the marshes around the Trois-Lacs area and the southern end of Lac Mégantic itself.


I didn't get any shots of the train entering the newly scenic'd/refreshed yard at Lac Mégantic because...frankly I was too tired to keep running trains at this point in the night, but nonetheless I hope y'all enjoyed the shots and the long overdue update, hope to have more for y'all soon!

Good looking route. Nice job.

This looks great! Looking forward to future updates.