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,

Testing and changes are slowly continuing to be done in order to refine the whole package. I cannot guarantee for users completion of every activity AG has generated due to the graphic intensive nature of the route. Activities are being completed more and more. It is a beautiful route to run, once the graphic issue is controlled.

I am still having some freezes but am able to save my acts prior to getting to areas prone to freeze. Once saved, I adjust the sliders to allow continuation of the act with lower graphic levels. Once the area is passed, I save again, adjust up the sliders and reload and resume the act. I have written in the readme file details of the areas subect to similar issues. Such adjustments may be different to mine according to one's PC features.

I hope to have the whole package released in a couple of weeks .

BTW Ted (smokeytc), you have volunteered to test the files but twice the package I have sent to you has been returned back with this message:

<smokeytc@295.ca>: maildir delivery failed: Sorry, the user's maildir has
overdrawn his diskspace quota, please try again later.

Let me know when the issue is settled so I can send you the updated template package.

Here are some additional pictures



















Will update later