Milwaukee Road Coast division 2, Template project started Options

[dgionet]

Hello to all,

In preparation for the release of the Milwaukee Road Coast division 2 route, I have received in late August from Moe Smith with Jerry's permission the route to start preparing the template project.Thanks again Moe for your assistance and to Jerry to allow me to start preparing the project! It took a few weeks to figure out the proper download requirements. After that, I have started to install markers on all serviceable sidings in all possible areas. Due to the heavy number of sidings in the Tacoma area, some sidings were omitted (not that many) to allow more performance in the area. The total number of serviceable sidings in the entire route is around 420 (around 300 in the Seattle-Tacoma corridor area alone)

Three railroads are involved: the MILW, NP and the UP (running between Seattle and Tacoma). Due to the presence of intermodal yards in Seattle and Tacoma. I have found among the downloads what I believe to be among the first container cars which started to run in North America in the late sixties. Timeframe of the template project has been set in that period, prior to the NP becoming the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) in 1970.There are 70 different regions in the SWLTDB file. Each siding has received its respective car attribute. Two payware (and all bonuses) from BLW/ZT downloads are required. They are the Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Road freight packs. They are the same packs used as with previous template projects involving some of the previous MILW route templates. The freeware downloads ( from CLW and TS) is around 27 to complete the count.

Among the downloads are one low-poly car string download which I have started using in some bigger yards to add some eye candy and railfill.

The first and only template done so far is the MILW WB main from Cle Elum to Seattle's Van Asselt Yard. On this one, there is only work in Cedar Falls to pickup or set out cars before reaching Seattle. I have yet to create and test the run from Cle Elum to Tacoma. On the Cle Elum-Seattle SLG-generated run, I have experienced serious traffic issues which took a week to find the culprit: a marker which has been mistakenly put to one siding in Maple Valley on which AI traffic trains pass along. That resulted in all AI trains stalling at the Indian siding. Problem solved!

I have also discovered how to use OR's dispatcher (CTRL-9) feature and will be very helpful with activity creation and to make sure of the position of trains in real time which is different when testing in the MSTS AE.

Due to the detailed nature of the route, I had to lower down some video settings in OR to have a reasonable performance. In maximum settings, some cars didn't show during passage of AI traffic trains. Had also to reduce world object settings from 10 to 9. I may be necessary in older computers to go even lower in these settings.

Here are the first pictures of the first SLG-generated and successful run from Cle Elum to Seattle:

MILWCOA2Image1 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
Meeting the North Coast Limited West of Easton

MILWCOA2Image2 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
Crossing the NP line West of Easton

MILWCOA2Image3 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
At Whittier where you can see the NP line above at Martin, near the Eastern portal or the Stampede tunnel and also seen above is the Switchback line with its 5% grade in most of the line.
A test run has been successfull along the switchback line with 2 Geeps,5 loaded cars and a caboose.
It is not guaranteed to make it through if you add more cars to the consist because of the limited length of one of the switchbacks.

MILWCOA2Image4 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
Meeting an EB at Rockdale. Behind you can see the access to the Hi-line which has been used prior to the construction of the Snowqualmie tunnel with grades up to 3%

MILWCOA2Image5 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
Cedar Falls

MILWCOA2Image6 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
Bagley Jct. Seen on the left is the MILW's Enumclaw branch and, across the bridge, the NP line towards Barneston.

MILWCOA2Image7 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
Maple Valley and the Pacific Coast railroad alongside crossing the MILW line

MILWCOA2Image8 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
Black River Jct

MILWCOA2Image9 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
All three Railroads (NP, MILW and UP lines) in Seattle.

MILWCOA2Image10 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr
Reaching the Van Asselt Yard

That's it for now. Will be posting later as the project progresses

[hminky]

Thanks for all your hard work.

Very enjoyable
Harold