Southern Railway's Saluda template, New template on the works Options

[dgionet]

Hi to all,

About two years ago to the month, as some of you remember was done Norfolk Southern's Saluda template, which was among my earlier templates. I have decided to work on a completely new template to reflect as possible Southern Railway's
operations inside the Saluda route. Southern books on Saluda are very rich in history and saw some very challenging and difficult years and I took some extra time to try to get as most information as possible to make it as realistic as I could and believe this one will deliver .Southern operated the route until it was officially merged with the Norfolk & Western, creating the Norfolk Southern in 1990. Such merger would compete with another massive one (Seabord and Chessie) created in 1986 making this one the CSX rail system.

The Southern Saluda templates timeframe is set 15 years earlier than its predecessor, that is for 1972 when Sd40-2's and GP38-2's began service. At the time F7 units were the prime movers through the 4.7% grade and made the grade safer to cross, when compared to steam which caused many casualties in the first half of the 20th century and much damage to the railway stock. Also in the templates are included the F-units, U23B's and even RS-1's which one was seen in a photograph as a switcher in the Spartanburg Yards. The RS-1 will be the player unit for the YARDS template which will see service within the limits of the Spartanburg and Asheville Yards respectively.

The template package will also see EB, WB, a GRADE template only for tackling the grade with the units and stock of your choice in content and length and also a LOCAL template which have return paths from both yards to do local work on each side of the Saluda Grade.

Here are some pictures of some of the players inside the template package.

Only 15 downloads will be required. Three of the templates are finished and have started testing while working on the remaning ones, which are the LOCAL and GRADES templates .


Will update later,

Enjoy

[dgionet]

Hello again,

Additional pictures, this time from the GRADEUP Template. A triple Saluda was done as you will see in the following shots. Before starting your activity, once AG has created your SLG-SALUDA_GRADEUP consist with its 60-car load and caboose, you can check with Conbuilder the MASS of the train for the task and you may increase or decrease the weight of the train by changing some of the cars to increase or decrease its weight, save the SLG-generated consist and start the activity with the new train mass.

My train total mass was over 4900 tons after some manual changes with CB. My third cut was a bit over the SD40-2's capacity and had to back down and give the train an extra distance to accelerate, go beyond the speed limit to finally bring it up the grade. The whole process takes about two hours to complete.


Suggested total Mass of your train shouldn't exceed 4800 tons. In a TRAINS magazine (November 1984), one reported triple Saluda train with 3 SD40-2's was close to 5200 tons. Since a triple Saluda consist in bringing three cuts of cars (for MSTS, it has been set at 20 maximum per cut, total of 60 cars for the run), a third of the total would be about 1700 tons per cut. Of course, you can try over the proposed limit. After all, this is MSTS world and not the real thing!

Also take note that each cut may be not exactly one-third the total weight as one cut may be quite over one of the other cuts. that is why the suggested limit take this into account. Usually the brakeman knows where to make his cut during the separation of each cut to have about the same weight(a little more complicated and longer to do with MSTS!). Once reaching the area to cut, the brakeman calls his engineer to slack and the engineers slacks enough to allow the brakeman to take the pin out of the car to cut and rides at the end of the cut up the grade and repeats the same procedure for the rest.

Enjoy the pictures

Going down the grade after the first cut was brought up and put into place.


Cut #2 (at the top) is set and the 3SD40-2's returns down for the last cut


The last cut has left Melrose for final assembly up the grade


The engines separates from the third cut and will start assembling the cuts the same way as before


The reassembled train resumes his run to Asheville