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

Burnout!

It's been at least a month (and probably more) since I last fired up surveyor or driver to do "something" useful on the BC&SJ (or anything else for that matter...)

I guess spending most waking hours that weren't absolutely required for other stuff working on the route caught up with me.

Right now I'm trying to resurrect a ray tracing program I wrote for the Commodore Amiga back in the early '90s -
RayDance http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/raydance/index.htm.

It's slow going. I think aging is not the friend of a programmer, at least not as I close in on 70. It feels that everything takes much longer than it used to and
this is despite Visual Studio 2017 having a much better UI, compiler, and debugger than was ever available on the Amiga (the compiler there was so bad
that all too frequently I would rewrite critical C functions in 68000 machine code and sometimes see up to a 30% speed improvement.

That would be impossible these days given how good modern compilers are with code optimization. Plus now I have a fairly fire-breathing computer with
triple monitors so having a dozen windows open isn't a problem.

The big problem I'm dealing with is trying to optimize Binary Spacial Partitioning algorithms to get make it render faster. Yeah, it's blazing fast compared with
the 25mhz 68030/68882 cpu in the Amiga, but I feel like I should be able to do better. So I'm re-writing that code. Again. Maybe this time I'll be able to
optimize the BSP trees it generates enough to see a significant speed improvement (I'd love to see a factor of 2x - the current code has problems with
tree threads to go too deep and especially with having too many primitives (triangles & spheres) in a give bounding volume. The original program used a
hierarchical bounding box optimization system. Maybe I should go back to that?

Anyway, sometimes I still think about what to do next with Trainz. I think that when the time comes I'd like to do a DEM route, but which one? Something not
too long (105 miles was a bit much!), but with interesting scenery and perhaps some ops potential. Maybe go more modern, too. Perhaps '80s instead of the '50s?
Although I've been a closet South Pacific Coast nut for decades. Doing a SPC route would be cool, but the lack of good 3' narrow gauge track would be a problem
as would the need to scratch build most structures. I've been really admiring what Jango has done with the Gilpin Tram route and that's (really) narrow gauge!

HF
 
Anyway, sometimes I still think about what to do next with Trainz. I think that when the time comes I'd like to do a DEM route, but which one? Something not
too long (105 miles was a bit much!), but with interesting scenery and perhaps some ops potential. Maybe go more modern, too. Perhaps '80s instead of the '50s?
Although I've been a closet South Pacific Coast nut for decades. Doing a SPC route would be cool, but the lack of good 3' narrow gauge track would be a problem
as would the need to scratch build most structures. I've been really admiring what Jango has done with the Gilpin Tram route and that's (really) narrow gauge!



I recently produced the start of the Alpine Tunnel route in Colorado from TransDem. However, it would be narrow gauge. Another line you might look into is the Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek RR (I think that's the right name, there are so many in Colorado). It was a standard gauge (many books erroneously say a narrow gauge) that ran from a huge mill in greater Colorado Springs through the mountains to Cripple Creek (a huge gold strike, numerous mines). The Midland Central joined there and ran north to Divide and then east to Colorado Springs.
 
A historical route always gives you an emotion, especially well set as you can do.
The historical research of images and texts, the team work are a further push.

I can't tell you a particular route.
I hope fans show you the best.

We feel.
 
Burnout!

Doing a SPC route would be cool, but the lack of good 3' narrow gauge track would be a problem
as would the need to scratch build most structures.

HF
You could always do the SPC after it was standard gauged by Southern Pacific, although that would not help with the structure problem.
 
The SPC (which ran from Alameda (across the bay from San Francisco), southward skirting the bay's tidelands/marshes, through Santa Clara, Los Gatos then followed Lexington Creek up into the
Santa Cruz mountains cresting the mountains with a 6000' tunnel at Wrights Station (there's still a Wrights Station road up there and the north tunnel portal though the tunnel was dynamited in
the days after Pearl Harbor for fear Japanese infiltrators would use it as a base to stage raids into the surrounding area - small amount of paranoia there!). Then headed down grade to Felton where it
followed the Santa Cruz and Felton railroad's right of way to Santa Cruz. This track is still operated (I think) as a tourist line. Going north out of Felton was a branch to Boulder Creek where huge amounts of first growth redwood - logs 8' and up in diameter! - were loaded on tiny 3' gauge flat cars with link and pin couplers, taken down to Felton and then they tripled the hill up to Summit because they
didn't have locos big enough to drag a 100 car train of ginormous logs up the grade.

No, I never did any reading to speak of about the SPC (lol - I have all of Bruce McGregor's books on the railroad and have met and spent a bit time with Bill Wulf who was a top historian of Los Gatos and the SPC (when he was a kid he hung out with Billy (last name escapes me) of Billy's Wildcat Railroad at Vasona park). Bill Wulf's apartment was a feakin' museum of SPC memorabilia and he had a vast collection of photos, too. I don't know if he's still alive. That was back in the late '90s.

Anyway, speaking of the conversion of the SPC from 3' narrow gauge to standard gauge, it turned out the Hogg Davis' surveying on construction crews had done a really good job of laying out the railroad through the Santa Cruz mountains from Los Gatos up and down to Boulder Creek. This part of the route required only minimal revision/widening because the grades were under control and the curves relatively broad. The SC&F right of way was another matter entirely. It had been built quick and cheap with 4% grades in places and tight curves.

Anyway, in 1906 they were just about set to open up standard gauge operations when the 1906 San Andreas earthquake hit. The earthquake shifted tunnels so the bored before and after the fault zone were not longer properly aligned. There were also cave ins and lots of landslides where the mountain obeyed gravity and tracks were buried. The SPC (which by this time (iirc) had been bought out by the Southern Pacific used narrow gauge equipment for another year or so after the earthquake to dig the railroad out from under the debris (because the 3' tracks didn't need as much room on either side
and the lighter loading from the small, 30' cars didn't require as strong a roadbed.

By 1908 (iirc) though the SPC over the Santa Cruz mountains was in full standard gauge operation.

At one time I was planning an On3 model railroad version of the SPC for my garage. After doing lots of planning I reluctantly abandoned the project because I finally got it through my think noggin that doing an O-scale narrow gauge railroad where lots of scratchbuilding would be required and most of the layout would be tricky multi-deck construction was perhaps not a great idea for someone who had never built a model railroad to any serious degree of completion. Instead I decided to build a 4x8 railroad that would become the first Bear Creek & South Jackson railroad. I built the 4x8 BC&SJ with nicely finished fascias and castors underneath with the idea I'd move it from the construction site in the garage into our relatively unoccupied family room. Then I'd go back to building the On3 SPC. Instead I got hooked on proto op sessions on Joe Fugate's (Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine - mrhmag.com) HO Siskiyou Line railroad. I ended up ditching the SPC about building the second HO scale BC&SJ which lasted until we sold the house and moved.

I set up a website for my South Pacific Coast dreams and it's still on the www.bcsjrr.com website at: http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/spc/spchome.htm

flyer.gif



map.jpg


There are still some traces of the SPC around (or maybe they're still around, the Union Pacific isn't much on nostalgia if money is involved (unless it's their own steam program).

The last time I checked (2010) the SPC Agnews depot still stood trackside at Agnews although it was not longer used as a depot and housed the California Central model railroad club.

Well, after all this typing, maybe I should put my Trainz cad instead of my fingers into action...

Are there any 1910's vintage truss bar 36' box cars around that either are skinned or could be reskinned as SPC equipment?
Maybe some SP prototype 2-6-0 moguls (because of the curvatures on the old SC&F branch and some bridge load restrictions they were the biggest standard gauge equipment I believe ran on old SPC tracks.

And some truss road passenger cars to deliver to Sunset Park next to Wright's station for weekend picknicking in the summer months?

H.Fithers
 
I think pencil42's rolling stock may be suitable if you are looking at standard gauge.

I walked the rail line up from Santa Cruz to Felton and waded the river from Felton back down. Back in the sixties :D
 
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The SPC had an atrocious safety record. That is they must have set some kind of record for lack of safety.

On opening day for the track from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz they were running an excursion train for dignitaries (and anyone else who had the nerve to ride).

On the way back they overturned a couple of flat cars with bench seats and threw quite a few people (maybe around 200?) into the San Lorenzo River. Just to make life a bit more interesting this happened at a place called Rattle Snake Point! If you didn't die on the way down from bashing your head on a rock, and didn't die from drowning in the river, you stood a good chance of getting snake-bit.

These days that would kill a new railroad before it got started. In 1883 I guess they figured it was just one of those things.

Some of the tunnels had gas leaks in them. There are stories of mine workers being shot out of the mouth of the tunnels like they were human cannon balls.

The real reason the SPC came into existence was that the Big 4, Crocker, Stanford, Huntington, and Hopkins snubbed Hogg Davis. The SPC was apparently an "Oh yeah, well I'll show you a thing or two" railroad. They were constantly fighting with the SP. There was another case where a farmer refused to sell them a right of way across his farm and hired armed guards to keep the SPC out (iirc the farmer was being bribed by the SP). So the SPC pretended to give up and had a party with the guards. When the guards went to sleep from too much liquor the construction crew moved in and the next day there was the railroad.

A nice, friendly operation for shure.

HF
 
Hello Horace
I see on your other thread that you haver listed 3 download kuid options for the B CV & SJ RR. I love the route but with a PC problem had to reformat my SSD and lost it all. When I initially downloaded your route I had quite a lot of missing dependencies that I had trouble finding. They were mostly rolling stock ad payware etc so to prevent that happening again, which of the three route kuids do I download to get the working route without rolling stock or sessions etc so that I can put my own SP rolling stock and payware into it. I presume frorm the discussion on that thread that all assets are on the DLS?
Cheers
 
Hello Horace
I see on your other thread that you haver listed 3 download kuid options for the B CV & SJ RR. I love the route but with a PC problem had to reformat my SSD and lost it all. When I initially downloaded your route I had quite a lot of missing dependencies that I had trouble finding. They were mostly rolling stock ad payware etc so to prevent that happening again, which of the three route kuids do I download to get the working route without rolling stock or sessions etc so that I can put my own SP rolling stock and payware into it. I presume frorm the discussion on that thread that all assets are on the DLS?
Cheers

Just load the BCSJ route file and skip the session files.

<kuid:884720:100477> BCSJ-555-RHR

Horace
 
Horace, I asked a member of the Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society for info about SP ownership of the line and motive power used. Here is what he told me.

"Freight was handled by 2900 series 4-8-0's and some additional 2-8-0's while the through passenger trains got 4-6-0's and some 2-8-0's. After the line was cut back to Los Gatos, the 4-8-0's were reassigned and the 2-8-0's and a few 2-8-2's handled what freight was left. The lone commute round trip got "Mutt and Jeff", P7 4-6-2's 2476 and 2477 as regular assigned power, supplanted on occasion by other Pacifics. After 1940, the largest power to use the line's remnants to Los Gatos and up the Mayfield Cutoff was a F1 class 2-10-2. The line was severed between Los Gatos and Olympia due to flood and slide damage in early 1940. Consideration was briefly given to restoring the line, broadening curves and enlarging tunnels and bridges to allow the line to act as a bypass around commute operations and yard congestion at San Jose, using larger power. It did not take long for SP to back away from that idea. By the end of 1940, the portion of the line mentioned was torn up by salvage crews."

If you did build the line, would you want to do it as Standard or Narrow gauge? I remember several years back dmdrake was working on a version of the SPC, but that was a long time ago.
 
Just load the BCSJ route file and skip the session files.

<kuid:884720:100477> BCSJ-555-RHR

Horace
Thanks Horace Its a magnificent route with many options. I Love it.
What sort of loco did you have in mind for the narrow gauge line at Franklin timber? I cant find any NG steam engines so was looking for a narrow gauge shay for it like the 36 Cold River shay for it but it has a lot of faults.
As I have found it, there is no link between the NG and the Std gauge tracks is there? just the loading platform with tracks of each gauge on either side of it? Cheers

Edit: At least it looks like NG compared to the other track . What gauge is it?

Cheers
 
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The NG is 3' gauge. If you look in the dependencies list on the forum at https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?158633-BC-amp-SJ-asset-dependencies
you should find a bunch of narrow gauge assets listed. A logging railroad of this type would normally use Shays or Heisler locomotives. Note that the logging branch is still unfinished.

No direct link between the standard and narrow gauge is present. Just the transfer platform (as you noted). While some railroads have used dual-gauge track I did not add any of that. Maybe in a future update. Of course, feel free to add it yourself if you'd like.

Horace
 
Horace
In my copy of BC& SJ the route clock does not work and therefore no elapsed time.
I gather that it needs something called quicktime to make it work which is usually buitin to Trs 19 routes. Presumeably you did so but how do I get it to work? Is there a setting?

I love the route. So many options. Just got to get the clock working and to clear up the mist/fog. See my post to your other BC & SJ thread Cheers
 
Nimec,
I found a fix for this, kind of by accident. This seems to work, and I just checked it now for TRS19 Version 105096.

Go into the Window Menu on the tool bar in the upper left. You will see Session Options. Click on Session Options and you will be looking at the time clock, date, etc.

I changed the time just slightly, to say 6:59 (just enough, I suppose, to change the time arrow just a little). Then you have to click on the Time Rate, which should be showing 1x. You will have the whole range of time rates show, but just click on 1x again and that closes the menu. Close out the Session Options menu and now the time should start advancing.

I have no idea why the route is stuck on 6:41 at the start, but maybe it just needs to be reminded that time is progressing at 1x. Hopefully this works for you. You will have to do this every time you start the route, but once it's done, the game time advances properly.

I hope that helps.

Heinrich505
 
Heinrich, thanks for the tip on getting the time to move. Time is kind of big-city stuff for me. I'm more of a scenery slinger.

Nimec, would you consider posting some screen shots of favorite places on the BC&SJ?

Horace
 
Hello Horace./ With Grazlash's help I found a permanent fix for the clock problem and reproduce my post on that thread here for others in case they have the same problem

Thanks Grazlash. Downloaded and installed the kuid ‘Set Time and Rate’. Surprised it wasn't with the initial download of the route itself. Path was not quite as you described it and it took me a while to find it, but find it I did thanks to you.

In case others have the same problem I will describe the path again.
Open the Route> Edit Session> then Edit Session in the next screen as well>Add> On the menu that comes up scroll to and find 'Set time and Rate'>Add> Tick > Exit >Exit

Did the trick for me and not only does clock now start at 10am now instead of 6.41 and work correctly all the 'fog and mist' that was in the picture has also gone and the picture is now as clear as Horace's photos on his thread. So thanks I appreciate your help. Cheers

Edit: Make sure first that you have installed that kuid of course

Re screenshots. I've never taken any and don't know how to put them up however will make a point of learning to and once I have it will do so. They say that to keep dementia at bay one has to keep setting new and hard tasks to learn to keep the brain challenged so Trainz certainly provides opportunities in that field. I'm a 'sometimes' user of Trainz
but your route has certainly got me motivated. Cheers
 
If you're wondering where all my photos went, my ISP where I've been hosting my photos has abruptly dumped me apparently in the process of reconfiguring themselves.

C.
 
My website is back online. Credit card expired at the ISP and for some reason their emails to me didn't get delivered...
Sigh...

Horace
 
Huh????? (or where did all the screen shots go)?

Huh?

I just looked at Bear Creek & South Jackson - progress reports - Building a Mountain Railroad (1080p) thread after being away for awhile.

To my consternation (and surprise) I couldn't help but notice that ALL of the photos I posted were missing.

Huh?

I know that a while back my ISP where I host the photos went incomunicado because of a credit card expiration date issue. But that was
resolved.

So where are the pictures?

Please don't tell me that because the server disappeared the N3V forums deleted all photo references from this thread?

Horace Fithers
 
Huh?

I just looked at Bear Creek & South Jackson - progress reports - Building a Mountain Railroad (1080p) thread after being away for awhile.

To my consternation (and surprise) I couldn't help but notice that ALL of the photos I posted were missing.

Huh?

I know that a while back my ISP where I host the photos went incomunicado because of a credit card expiration date issue. But that was
resolved.

So where are the pictures?

Please don't tell me that because the server disappeared the N3V forums deleted all photo references from this thread?

Horace Fithers

i just checked out about 6 pages and I could see all the images...
 
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