Norfolk Southern's Pittsburgh line (Horseshoe Curve route), Oncoming template Options

[dgionet]

Hello to all,

As you have noticed, I have been rather quiet this Spring to take time to re-energize from a rough Winter regarding my mother's death in March.I have been sick for three weeks in May. I believe the stress encountered at the time finally caught up with me. Now I am enjoying more of the Summer with projects this and there, including being regularly present to my grandson and doing some short fitness workouts three times a week.

During that time, I have enjoyed more running the routes and templates I have done over the years. Following one payware Bonus release this Winter, it has tipped the scale, sort of, and convinced me to proceed with construction of Austin Yoder's Horseshoe Curve route. It took some time to look how the route's potential can be maximized.

Finally, after examining the route on every angle as possible, Construction of the templates have started a couple of weeks ago and are now finished. I have started testing the templates, making changes to refine its content. The package will involve four (4) railroads: The Norfolk Southern (NS), the RJ Corman (RJC) serving the Cresson Area, The Conemaugh & Black Lick (C&BL), serving the steel plants in Johnstown and the CSX which have access ( from the S&C sub, which starts at Rockwood) to the Cambria yard and the Gautier Steel plant.

Ten templates (10) will be part of the pack and around 150 serviceable sidings. Some of the engine downloads will require having the MLT's Norfolk Southern engine pack.In addition, the BLW's SW East pack 2 will be also required, more precisely one of the Bonus packs composed of two C&BL SW7's. They will be part of the C&BL templates, where a lot of work will be part of the C&BL templates. For those who don't have the SW set above, I will provide a TS freeware remplacement CON file ( from the pbnenw2.zip file) and even without using the freeware CON file, one can change the default CON file with the freeware locos with Conbuilder, Convoi or Route Riter.

Also it will require from the Streamlines web site the CSX C40-8 Freeware download.

I am providing some shots of already done acts generated by AG.















So that's it so far.

Will update as work progresses.

[dgionet]

Hello to all,

Continuing to refine the templates. Benny is sending reports with suggestions and improvements were done accordingly. Thanks Benny! For the ALTOONA and JUNIATA Templates, the user will have available a caboose to ensure protection at the back of the consists.

I am including some additional shots coming from the CBL (working around the Johnstown America plant) and EB templates.

















Also, I have written ( in the TS forum via PM) to Austin Yoder (aka ns4life), the route builder, to ask permission to add sidings on both ends to help with the mainline templates.Unfortunately, no reply from him yet.

I bet you could also make a Conrail template easily off the Norfolk Southern version.

Christopher

I am also happy to announce that a new template package has been done for Conrail. It took complex procedures, a lot of work and careful editing to convert from NS to CR since important changes to the engines and rolling stock were done to accomodate CR.

Timeframe had moved back to the early 90's. That was the time the Dash 8 engines were introduced and cabooses were no more required to be used in consists.The templates are exactly the same as for the NS and were checked each one to ensure they were working correctly. I have not written a README file yet for the package.

Download selection has been difficult, trying to minimize dependace on payware engines. Except for the BLW/ZT C&BL SW7's, The SLI Conrail sd40-2 trainset will be the only other payware required with all other freeware. All GP40's and sd40-2's will use the CR payware set for the shape file and use of three Dash 8-40CW will require MLT's freeware Dash 9, available in the MLT-Tigertrains site.Also a CR MP15 loco will be used for the JUNIATA template.

Here a first screenshot of the CR Altoona Template. You can compare with one for the NS above to see the difference between both templates.





Will update later as it progresses