JointedRail stuff [screenshots/renders]

After climbing uphill to Peabody, the quartet of RPPX Geeps lead the coal train downhill towards Parker.

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The train has just crossed the main street in Parker.

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The train negotiates the S-curve just past the Parker depot.

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Now empty of coal, the coal train passes back thru Parker, crossing over the dirt railroad crossing for the Parker Coal Loadout.

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The train has reached the bottom of the mountain and will soon begin the climb to the summit at Peabody.

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The train has climbed up the mountain, gone thru Peabody, back down the mountain, and is crossing a dirt road as it nears the outskirts of Richmond.

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The train passes by an empty Richmond Yard and heads on to the coal mine to load up with more coal to deliver to the customer.

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I want to know, what locomotive did you use, and how'd you do that? Because it's hilarious, and I want to try it myself.
 
I want to know, what locomotive did you use, and how'd you do that? Because it's hilarious, and I want to try it myself.

It's from the Conrail C39-8 Late.
I think I remember seeing one message in the C40-8s that said "Dillon Hayward is sliding across the hood"
 
story time

Not long after 7:30, T01 begins its assault up the intermittent climbs South of Bangor, Maine.
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Crossing the Penobscot river. Shortly after clearing yard limits South of Brewer, L25 (seen at water level) will follow up to the Bucksport branch switch, where it will service Brewer-area customers and build T05.
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About 10 miles further South, 01 is digging its heels in at Gomer, a pulpwood loadout that doubles as a run-around.
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Back up to track speed through Holden, another few miles South of Gomer.
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Just shy of milepost 20, the trio is pulling hard out of the valley alongside Green Lake.
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Back up to track speed, 40mph through Walnut (or Walnut Hill, for purists.)
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At Wilmar, the mill queen 702 has taken hold of the front half of the 4500-odd ton freight, and begins its descent into the pit of despair that is Verso Paper.
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With a lightened load and Swanson just over the horizon, 9008 leads T01 across a smatter of fills and trestles, geographic East of Leiver.
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Almost ready to tie up for beans in Swanson.
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Therock,
Great story, and equally great pictures. The shot where the train is crossing the Penobscot River is perfect. Pretty much a photograph.

The line where Mill Queen 702 is descending into the "pit of despair..." is a classic. The route looks very nice!

Heinrich505
 
OK, I've been a Trainzer off and on since about Trainz 2004/2006, but have stayed away from participating in these discussions because I never felt the need. I mean everything I had questions about pretty much got answered just by following the many conversations over the years. However, this route hits too close to home. The first town south of Bangor, as mentioned by Therock, is my hometown of Hampden, ME. My grandad had a large dairy farm, the northern edge of which was along the MEC mainline between Bangor and Northern Maine Junction in Hermon, ME. My grandad's farm was literally about 100-150 yards from my childhood home, but still one of the special treats I had as a kid was spending a couple of weeks with Grandpa & 'Nanna' in the summer, or when Mom was in the hospital delivering one of my younger siblings (I'm the oldest of six), even though their home was within eyesight of my home. I would stay in my dad's childhood room which viewed that MEC mainline. I spent many hours just watching the trains going back and forth between the two yards - I guess that's where I got my interest in trains.

My other Grandma lived in Bangor, and to get to her place the usual route we took passed by the old steel bridge between Bangor & Brewer. It looked very much like the bridge in Therock's 2nd screenshot, except that maybe the original was a bit more angled north to south.

It's too bad that so much of this stuff from my childhood is gone, but just humor me for a moment and let me try to describe how this route was in the 60s & 70s. This is a route I have imagined building in Trainz, but have never been able to find good documentation for so far. Starting at NMJ, the B&A came in from the north, crossed the MEC, which roughly ran east to west, and continued south to Belfast to service local industry and a large tank farm in Searsport to provide fuel/chems for the paper mills in northern Maine. The MEC came from the southwest/west from southern ME and continued east. The MEC mainline between NMJ in Hermon to Bangor was a very long, gentle curve (prob about 10 miles or so), with a spur in between to Dow AF base which had a huge fuel tank farm (there was a B-52 wing based there back then). Once it hit Bangor there were a number of warehouse sidings, including a fuel receiving depot from incoming ships/barges via the Penobscot and a rather large roundhouse, before reaching the Bangor yard, now gone for the most part.

The mainline continued up the river to paper mills in Old Town and Lincoln, along with major maintenance facilities in Derby/Milo. Just north of the yard were sidings for warehouses and the old passenger station (all pretty much gone after urban renewal and my remembrance), and the old steel bridge mentioned earlier. What was interesting about that bridge was that for trains heading east to Ellsworth, or south to places along the other side of the Penobscot like Brewer & Bucksport; the trains would have to back up north out of the Bangor yard along the river to beyond the old steel bridge to cross the bridge to head east in the right direction. (FYI, there was a paper mill in Brewer. It was an old facility - it was of almost all red brick construction. In later years they did 'specialist' paper manufacture, whatever that meant.) This probably would be as interesting a scenario as the fictional BANG route.

Sorry, I realize this route is fictional, and this is not meant in any way as any criticism for the BANG route and its developers, it looks really cool. I'll definitely be purchasing a copy if and when it shows up as an item to buy (from JR?). Like I said, this one just hits very close to home and it's very cool to see.
 
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Thanks all for the kind words. This project has been going on since fall of 2014 and it's kind of surprising that we've been able to keep momentum behind it!

OK, I've been a Trainzer off and on since about Trainz 2004/2006, but have stayed away from participating in these discussions because I never felt the need. I mean everything I had questions about pretty much got answered just by following the many conversations over the years. However, this route hits too close to home. The first town south of Bangor, as mentioned by Therock, is my hometown of Hampden, ME. My grandad had a large dairy farm, the northern edge of which was along the MEC mainline between Bangor and Northern Maine Junction in Hermon, ME. My grandad's farm was literally about 100-150 yards from my childhood home, but still one of the special treats I had as a kid was spending a couple of weeks with Grandpa & 'Nanna' in the summer, or when Mom was in the hospital delivering one of my younger siblings (I'm the oldest of six), even though their home was within eyesight of my home. I would stay in my dad's childhood room which viewed that MEC mainline. I spent many hours just watching the trains going back and forth between the two yards - I guess that's where I got my interest in trains.

My other Grandma lived in Bangor, and to get to her place the usual route we took passed by the old steel bridge between Bangor & Brewer. It looked very much like the bridge in Therock's 2nd screenshot, except that maybe the original was a bit more angled north to south.

It's too bad that so much of this stuff from my childhood is gone, but just humor me for a moment and let me try to describe how this route was in the 60s & 70s. This is a route I have imagined building in Trainz, but have never been able to find good documentation for so far. Starting at NMJ, the B&A came in from the north, crossed the MEC, which roughly ran east to west, and continued south to Belfast to service local industry and a large tank farm in Searsport to provide fuel/chems for the paper mills in northern Maine. The MEC came from the southwest/west from southern ME and continued east. The MEC mainline between NMJ in Hermon to Bangor was a very long, gentle curve (prob about 10 miles or so), with a spur in between to Dow AF base which had a huge fuel tank farm (there was a B-52 wing based there back then). Once it hit Bangor there were a number of warehouse sidings, including a fuel receiving depot from incoming ships/barges via the Penobscot and a rather large roundhouse, before reaching the Bangor yard, now gone for the most part.

The mainline continued up the river to paper mills in Old Town and Lincoln, along with major maintenance facilities in Derby/Milo. Just north of the yard were sidings for warehouses and the old passenger station (all pretty much gone after urban renewal and my remembrance), and the old steel bridge mentioned earlier. What was interesting about that bridge was that for trains heading east to Ellsworth, or south to places along the other side of the Penobscot like Brewer & Bucksport; the trains would have to back up north out of the Bangor yard along the river to beyond the old steel bridge to cross the bridge to head east in the right direction. (FYI, there was a paper mill in Brewer. It was an old facility - it was of almost all red brick construction. In later years they did 'specialist' paper manufacture, whatever that meant.) This probably would be as interesting a scenario as the fictional BANG route.

Sorry, I realize this route is fictional, and this is not meant in any way as any criticism for the BANG route and its developers, it looks really cool. I'll definitely be purchasing a copy if and when it shows up as an item to buy (from JR?). Like I said, this one just hits very close to home and it's very cool to see.

This is a great post. A majority of the BANG is freelanced with some exceptions in a few of the major towns like Bangor, Brewer, Bucksport, Old Town, and NMJ, so there's a lot of fiction mixed in to the route. That said though, I would love to make it closer to what the line was really like in it's heyday. We don't have any dairy farms or even regular farms set up by the tracks but I think that should be something that comes next. Thank you very much for sharing your experiences and knowledge of the real world line.
 
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