You know, four years is a long time for a route to develop. And with that comes two new editions of Trainz, the latter of which I end up with.
Areas in my section of the Key West Extension are LONG overdue for overhauls. South Miami, Pinecrest, and the areas between Key Largo and Islamorada need to be repolished and upgraded with the newer high-res textures, content, and trackage that I have come to familiarize myself with. (Note: Nikos's sections are staying unchanged to the best of my ability, there are a few missing assets from the jump to TS12 but I'll fix that)
Snake Creek, at Mile Marker 85 (FEC MP 435) is the first area to be redone partly from scratch. The speedtree bump made every "Oak Tree" a super-hi-poly shrub, so I redid the shrubbery with Jankvis's freeware shrubs, a series of scenery assets I began incorporating with the Tampa Terminal in 2011. On the side of course a couple 3d trees were added too. The textures were changed from the very strong and blinding CAB textures to a mix of Murva and the high res 2009 textures, putting the real teeth back in the extension.
2009
2013
I know I've been focusing way too much on the mainland. So I returned to the upper Keys for new areas. Here's Plantation Key. I found a patch of grass that could form a train station and from my query to the FEC mailing list, they told me it could very well be that area. So since I added an Amtrak element a while ago to this route, I made Plantation Key station part of the route. It is only served by the Floridian and the Star, as the Meteor bypasses this station due to low ridership and low demand.
Yes, FEC rivet counter and historian, the tracks and US-1 are flip-flopped. I didn't know that the tracks are supposed to be where the "Old Highway US1" was when I did the nearby overpass in 2009 but realized that all parts of "Old Highway" in this area could be the ex-FEC mainline. Since the "New Highway" is supposed to be more direct, I laid the "higher speed mainline" that was mentioned in this route's basic story where the current US1 is today. But I preserved history. Plantation's "old depot" sits next to US-1, and....
The Plantation Key industrial park, meant to spice up an area with a couple real-life industrial looking buildings/places, includes a spur that was the ex-mainline. Three customers are on the line: Amerigas, which is made up, a fertilizer customer which there's a similar building there in real life, and a lumber yard that sits there today (background). There are two more manifest customers, mainly boat parts/machinery on the big curve towards Tavernier. Also on the north side of the key, there's a steel customer which is just an industrial building in real life. As Richard said earlier in this thread (Throwback Thursday), Trainz is great for designing all the possibilities of a certain railroad at a certain place/time period. And that's what I hope to aim at with this route.
As may be hinted earlier in this thread, the track is now JR concrete and the ballast will be upgraded on the entire mainline to match the concrete ties to give an updated look. A siding was added at Long Key-Fiesta Key and Spanish Harbor was extended north just a little to allow longer meets. Soon, Marathon will be a longer super-siding, a siding will be installed near Boca Chica Key, and entire route will be level (
Long Key to Jewfish is completely level). No more
bucking broncos!
