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,

Refinements of both the CR and NS Horseshoe templates are still being done and am happy with the changes.

I am including the first set of images from the Conrail templates. Images are from the CR Gallitzin local and the CR WB mainline templates.





















Still no reply from Austin for updating the route with two additional sidings at both ends of the route.

In absence of the suggested update, I was having issues for the Mainline WB and EB templates as the number of cars in my consist was too low on my way to Woodvale (WB) or to Altoona (EB). To overcome the issue, the default player consist for both templates and directions has been changed to have at least 50 cars with the player engines. The number of cars to work with shouldn't be more than 15-20 cars for maneuvering considerations.

For example, the WB main enters Altoona with 50 cars, picks up 15 cars at Rose Yard, picks up three helper units before leaving Altoona. The helper units are left inside the Cresson area on the fly (less than 10mph). The train reaches Woodvale with 70 cars before doing more work before leaving for Pittsburgh, ending the activity once reaching 20mph.

Well that's it for the moment.

Will update later