Milwaukee Road Coast division 2, Template project started |
Milwaukee Road Coast division 2, Template project started |
Oct 7 2018, 06:07 PM
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#1
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Train Master Group: Members Posts: 1,017 Joined: 4-February 07 From: Canada Member No.: 21 |
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 -------------------- Denis Gionet
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Oct 8 2018, 07:19 PM
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#2
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Train Master Group: Members Posts: 1,017 Joined: 4-February 07 From: Canada Member No.: 21 |
Hi to all,
Thanks Christopher for the offer. No freight cars required but... Among the consists I have created for the template, I have added today one more for the template project: Northern Pacific's Mainstreeter passenger train, the secondary passenger train to the North Coast Limited which ran up to the Early 70's and taken over by Amtrak during that time. According to documents online, the Mainstreeter used a mix of heavyweights and streamlined cars and could contain 4 or 5 baggage cars since the US postage department used the Mainstreeter to carry lots of mail. Compared with the NCL, it takes about 10 more hours to cover the same route since it is more lucrative, making more stops to pickup of leave mail, packages etc.... I have been looking up for slumbercar sleepers which ran with the Mainstreeter but found none, except for one I have seen with BLW's North Coast limited passenger train pack. Any way to have one available for the template package Christopher? Thanks for considering. In the meantime, work is continuing for the MILW WB mainline. As mentioned, the only pickups and setouts between Cle Elum and the Seattle-Tacoma area is at Cedar Falls. In Seattle, destination is the Van Asselt Yard and I have decided to use the Union Pacific Yard at Tacoma Jct to make it a joint UP-MILW yard, a little like Seattle's Argo Yard which hosts the Northern Pacific and the Union Pacific railroads. That means the UP-MILW Yard will be the final destination for the Cle Elum-Tacoma run. I have considered the Tacoma intermodal yards but the problem is that the length of the sidings is no more that 9 cars per siding while at the UP-MILW, Jerry had stretched at the last minute to make it around 35-40 cars per siding and also the train must use the wye and move backwards towards the Intermodal yards. In that case using the wye could be done only with a shorter freight train. The MILW typical mainline can start with up to 50 cars at Cle Elum. However the Tacoma Intermodal Yards will be used since there will be local runs starting from the UP-MILW Yard working around, including the Tacoma intermodal Yards. I have started running a path which started at Cedar Falls toward Tacoma. From there, the user might encounter the following on the first minutes after leaving Cedar Falls as shown below: MILWCOA2Image11 by Denis Gionet, sur Flickr At Bagley Jct. with a NP small freight train using the MILW Enumclaw branch (shared trackage with the MILW) crossing the bridge toward Barneston. In regards to the OR Video settings comment said earlier, I wanted to mention what type of computer resources I have: a i5 processor with 8GB of memory with a Nvidia GeForce GT740 video card. After thinking over, the video card I have may be (...or maybe not) the cause of the lower performance since this card has been bought some years ago and today's video cards perform a lot better. Benny has volunteered to test the templates with me. Thanks again Benny for your help! That's it for today.Will keep updating later with progress to the project. -------------------- Denis Gionet
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