Bear Creek & South Jackson - progress reports - Building a Mountain Railroad (1080p)

Summit Yard

The railroad improvement crew has reached Summit Yard and spent the evening working their magic on the yard and its surroundings. This yard is the highest point on the railroad. Summit tunnel is off to the right.

Here's a quickie screen shot showing a meet at the yard.

The track leading to Oakhill disappears off to the left. The foreground train will soon be traveling the 7 miles downgrade to Oakhill and then beyond to Bear Creek, Junction City, Browning, and finally to Salem where it will tie up.


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I spent the past week on Maui (where I amazingly managed to not acquire a nasty sunburn) and returned home around 8:30am this morning after not being able to sleep on the plane. It's now 1:45am the next morning so please forgive me for having only a single shot tonight. There should be more tomorrow.

H. Fithers
 
Summit Meeting on the BC&SJ

The newly finished Summit yard (located at the highest track elevation on the BC&SJ, duh...) hosting a pair of trains trying to get past each other. Train 202 is on the main track heading east toward Pocatello. Train 111 is on one of the 3 passing tracks heading for Salem. The multiplicity of sidings at Summit isn't for switching. Instead they offer a haven for trains which need to set retainers before heading down the 2% grades on either side of this area.

Continuing from my previous post of November 20th...

2) No. 111 at the west end of summit yard. The Summit tunnel is barely visible in the distance.

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3) Another shot of No. 111 as it waits impatiently for No. 202 to clear the ladder and give it a green.

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4) However, No. 202 is led by a pair of SP-2 steamers (4-10-2's with three cylinders) that are in need of a drink after climbing the grades up to the summit.

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5) Magically an office, store and crew hostel have appeared behind the depot at Summit (I was working on the area while I was screen grabbing)...

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6) Looking past the depot to where the second SP-2 loco is now getting it's drink.

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7) Flash back to No. 111 emerging from the Summit tunnel.

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8) Deja vu all over again? Sort of - different lighting and closer to the tunnel. The road the train is crossing leads to the depot (going left) and further up into the mountains, and is a short cut to Oakhill (going right) if one is in an automobile and not a train. The grades and radii on that road would make a Shay or Heisler shudder.

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9) Behind the depot with the office, store, and crew hostel. Track side from right to left; piles of ties, speeder shed, water tower, sand house, and depot. I expect the power for No. 202 might have used a bit of sand getting their longish train up the grades.

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10) Looking down at the depot from up on the knoll across the tracks from it.

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11) From west of the Summit Yard looking toward the east, the main and 3 siding tracks are visible as are the depot and the cluster of activity around it.

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If you noticed discrepancies between some of the shots - differences in the placement of stuff and textures - I was continuing to work on the yard while I was doing the screen grabs...

And now to start on re-doing the Upper Roberts Creek area. Again (the previous finished scenery there was wiped out in a database malfunction). This will likely take a while.
 
SP working in the high mountains.........Awesome to look at......

:p Your Scenery looks out of this world realistic, and then you have SP livery working the lines........

I grew up around SP yards and Union Pacific, both of which I like, but I think SP is closure to the heart.......:mop:I just had a real fun time day dreaming, looking at your towering Snow Capped Mountains. Keep up the good work, it really shows in the pictures...........:clap::clap::clap:
 
Horace,
Wonderful screen shots. I'm with Blue, it's just fun to look at the scenery and imagine that I'm there. Your details are very immersive and make the scenes believable.

Great job!

Heinrich505
 
The BC&SJ mainline reaches 105 miles

Ride along for a blitz tour of the entire 105 mile BC&SJ mainline in only 9 minutes!

You'd better fasten your seat belts before hitting play...


Horace Fithers
 
Horace,
Well, that was a rush! The train is going to need more dilythium crystals after that Trek. What a cool way to show of the route. Very nicely done. :cool:

Heinrich505
 
The Daylight in Upper Roberts Creek

If you've been following this blog you may recall the several months ago I suffered a database corruption that wiped out the finished scenery in the Upper Roberts Creek area (I was able to recover the roughed-in scenery).

Well, I'm finally getting around to re-finishing the Upper Roberts Creek scenery. The good news is I may have gotten better at finished terra-forming since the previous (actually the 3rd) version of scenery in these parts of the mountain. So, I thought I'd tell Hillmovers Construction to take a break for a while and fly in the railroad's photographer and a brightly colored passenger train for him to shoot. Here (in no particular order) are the results.

(1) Approaching tunnel 5

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(2) Wouldn't you like to be sitting in that parlour car?

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(3) PBR textures galore!

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(4) I bet the locomotive's chuff would echo for minutes in this canyon!

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(5) Crossing a fill. The valley in the background goes on for quite a way.

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(6) The same fill from a different direction.

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(7) Did I mention there are a plethora of water falls in Upper Roberts Creek?

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(8) Bending around a curve while snow-capped peaks watch

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Hope you approve...

Horace Fithers
 
... yes, i approve ... and still following this ... great blog and magnificent shots ...
gretz
daveric
 
Good evening Horace,

Great looking Canyon Shots of your Daylight Special, the texturing looks super too........:cool:

Congrats on recovering the lost work.........;)
 
I wasn't really gone. I've been working on route clean up (signals / grade crossings didn't work, industries without industry tracks, floating roads/tracks, etc.) and only just got started on reconstructing the Roberts Creek scenery that got lost in the database corruption of a few months ago.

HF
 
Join date Dec 2018, your skills surpassed mine long ago :cool: I was driving my motorcycle at 100 mph, and you passed by me so bloomin' fast, you must have been doing a buck-three-eighty ! You were going so fast, that I thought I was stopped, so I got off my bike, and ended up wiping out !
 
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