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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Dec 8 2018, 08:55 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 again,
I am happy to say that the whole template building is now finished as of today! The oncomning template package will include 34 templates and about 420 serviceable sidings. Only the Buffalo route template package had more (68). The Monon is now third with 29 templates. Some numbers now: 34 templates (170 template files),137 Path files, 157 service files, 34 traffic patterns and 63 different consists. I have started to work on the readme file for the template package and will require some time to complete due to its complexity. The template image for the Skyline templates page is now finished and will be presented later. Some additional words about the project as written in the oncoming readme file: Building the Template project has been a real challenge because of the complexity of the route. It has been built with Open Rails (OR) on mind. Traffic pattern has been very difficult to build and is not guaranteed to work at 100%. The user is highly recommended to use all possible features OR offers, including the Dispatcher feature (Ctrl-9 keys) and will require switching to manual (Ctrl-M keys) in many of the templates, using the Switch Monitor (F8) to help with switching. The route is hardware intensive. It has been tested with OR but not with MSTS. A lot of work has been done to add railfill in the main yards to add eye candy but with minimal inconvenience to performance. Use of low-poly string of cars has been used and is part of the required downloads. Will send to Benny later the completed template pack for additional testing. I am not sure all templates will be tested due to the volume of work done. Benny has sent me some reports and made some adjustments following his comments. Thanks again Benny for your reports! Will follow later with additional comments as it approaches completion -------------------- Denis Gionet
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