Stowe Northern, Re-release and oncoming template Options

[dgionet]

Hello to all,

As many of us know, Max Brisben released the Stowe Northern route for the first time in early 2010 but later has been removed from the Train-sim file library. However, it has been re-released at the end of May and became available at Nick's At the Railyard web site. A big thanks to Nick and Max for this re-release.

Following its re-release, I have made a request and have received an authorization from Max to allow myself to create an upgrade to the route. This upgrade will stretch out all the unstretched sidings in the route, create some additional sidings to be used with AG and rename some of the sidings for an oncoming template. Thanks Nick for contacting Max and thanks Max for your green light, much appreciated!

During the upgrade, I hit a snag at the Waterville area. I cannot figure out why but trying to save the changes at Waterville always ended with a crash. All the other areas of the route were successfully upgraded and ready for a new template. That means the Waterville area will see no work out there but will be used for railfill purposes or to allow meets. There's still potential with the rest of the areas for a good template.

Construction has started this week-end and have finished a first template. Planned are NB and SB mainline templates.Some LOCALS and also a LOCO template to have one S2 handle the locomotives to be maintainted at the Stowe engine shops. Route Riter has made unpowered locos from the locomotives used for the template. This doesn't create copyright issues as no changes were made to the original, only created additional WAG files. They are identified preceded with a $sign.

Ten (10) downloads will be needed, including five (5) canadian car packs from Paul Charland and two (2) payware sets. The first is from BLW/ZT Central Vermont (CV) pack and Ed's trains CN GP9 set. Combined, both sets have the Noodle livery (starting in 1961) and also the former Green and Gold livery. The timeframe is expected around 1961-1962. Benny has provided some information to help in making the template as realistic as possible despite the fact that the Stowe Northern route is a protolanced route.

I am including some shots of the first SLG-generated act. It will be recommended to run in autumn mode as the following images will give us a spectacular view of the route.

On the ninth picture, you can see a meet with what is called a milk train, composed of a RS3 loco, a mail car, some milk cars and a few box cars, as it has been seen in images. The milk train will be part of AI traffic,





















More to come later

[dgionet]

Hi to all,

Work is now mostly done on the templates and will start testing the route.Benny assists me with testing the templates. If someone else would like to test the route and template, let me know.

A YARDS Template has been added to work in St.Albans, Waterville and Stowe. That makes the total of templates to seven (7) templates. Also for six of them, traffic pattern maps were done with arriving time at designated locations, done in the same concept as the ones done for the Blackfoot, Ozark Northern, A&O Sub routes. It will be to the player to determine the best area for an oncoming train, taking in consideration time to do your work, etc... Other that the one AI at the beginning for most of the templates, the player is expected to have only one AI along the run.
At Waterville (for the YARDS Template).

Before exiting the Waterville shops, the S4 player train will have to wait for two meeting trains at Waterville ( see 7th image) to clear the yards before proceeding ahead for work on the yard

For those having an older computer (in my case a dual-core quad), it will take some knowledge of the route to overcome some of the crashes I have encountered. For example at Stowe, my PC freezes with the Object density at 10 and the Terrain Error threshold at around the two thirds toward the right. Changing the Threshold to the middle resolved the issue. At Morrisville, I had to lower down the Object density to 9 instead of 10 following some crashes upon arrival at Morrisville etc...

In some of the templates (NB, SB, NBLOCALS and SBLOCALS), some of the paths will lead you to end up (while in movement) inside the limits of sidings named To Montreal, (see 4th image) To Cambridge (see last image) and To White River Jct. When the paths indicates the user must select these sidings to end the act, it is a must. Two of the pictures seen here shows that a moving train getting inside the designated sidings, simulating a continuity of the run, will end successfully the activity. This has been previously done on the combined Potash-DRGW Green River route templates.

Here are some additional shots of some of the acts.





















Will update later