Roadwolf's Blog

I have decided to call the ‘Newfoundland’ Route, the SB&D, named after St Johns, Barrie and Dundas – 3 major towns on the route.

Work is progressing and so far about 120 miles of track are laid down.  About 60 miles of that is low speed mountain terrain.  The rest is all fairly high speed trackage, with wide curves and shallow grades.

There is a 20 mile spur line which services some mining facilities as well.

There are about 50 more miles to go on the mainline, and the chance for about another 30 miles of trackage on spurs.

When complete, I will be releasing challenges which tell the story of this railroad, on this website, for limited times.

Tags: Train Spotting, Trainz, Virtual Railroad by Nightbird
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I have begun work on the scenery on my Newfoundland Route.  So far I have done a nice job on the port town of Barrie.  Here are some images of the process.

As you can see, Barrie has progressed nicely.

I am working towards the East now with scenery, along my already completed route.  I also have a route made which is about 20 miles long, which diverges from the mainline a few route miles West of Barrie.  This tracks services a iron mine and a few other small industries.  It is out of CTC, and has no passing sidings, so it may only be serviced by one train at a time.

Tags: Trainz, Virtual Railroad by Roadwolf
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Well I got my copy of Trainz 2010: Engineers Edition in the mail yesterday.  I am happy to say that the integration and merge with my TRS2009 content was fairly smooth.  It took 2 content imports, and a re-committing of a bunch of content, in order to get my TRS2009 content to work in TRS2010.

This will allow me to work on my new route easily while using layers and speed trees.

Expect progress on this soon.. 

Tags: Virtual Railroad by Roadwolf
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Scajaquada Route Images and a sneak peak at the Newfoundland Route:

A local freight traces through the valley as it approaches Empire, on the Kachinahey Sub.

A Grade Crossing on the Scajaquada Line.

This is an example of the grass splines and detail level.

The Scajauqada Route is a made from scratch fictional route.  The route covers some 150 route miles.  About half of the route has completed scenery, however there were some inheriant design flaws in this route which made it undesirable over time.  One was the proximity to a large city right off the bat.  Trying to build a large city in Trainz is stressful to say the least.  Another was the lack of use of any track elevation techniques.  The trackbed is all set to 0 on the height index, and the land around the track is molded to look like it is rising or falling.  While this was a lot easier to do, it created a less challenging route.

I also used block scenery for this route,   I would dress up a section about a kilometer square and then copy and paste it to detail a large amount of land at once.  I would then go over the trackside features more carefully, and add telephone poles,  grass splines, and other such trackside features as desired.  This was a fairly efficient method.

I then got interested in Trains DEM, and for my first serious attempt at a DEM route, I choose the challenging terrain of Newfoundland in order to build a fictional route.  As you can see from the image below, the DEM terrain is a lot more realistic.  I am however waiting until I get Trainz2010 to begin to add scenery to this new route – as I do wish to use the layering system and speedtrees.

If you know Newfoundland well, and think you can guess where the image below was taken from, let me know

Tags: Virtual Railroad by Roadwolf
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I am currently working with TrainzDEM to produce a realistic, and challenging fictional route based on the geography of Newfoundland.  I hope to be able to assemble quite a large route, in excess of 300 miles with some branch lines as well.

The line technically starts where St. Johns Nfld is located geographically, and winds its way North West along a rocky coastline.  The primary industries will be iron ore extraction, forestry (on one southern branch line), coal, petrolium products, and plastics.  There will be one main port with a container yard, and an intermodal facility at about mile 200.

There will also be regular passenger services on the line.

The line will start out as a single tracked block controlled line with passing sidings every 5 to 10 miles or so.

Industries will spring up around towns which will focus on the manufacturing of iron, lumber, coal and petrolium, and the processing of these items into processed materials or consumer goods.  There will also be a small isolated cattle ranch which will utilize old cattle cars, as well as a single grain silo located down a branch line.

Gravel and other materials will also be collected and shipped via train, as will fresh food (sea food) which will require special rolling stock.  There will be a small autorack yard at one of the main towns as well.  Peatmoss and fertilizer will also be a natural resource.

We will be assuming that the land link portion of this line will connect to the mainland.  Therefore:

Incoming freight:

• Automobiles
• Some Grain and Food Cars
• Containers
• Some Chemicals

Outgoing Freight:

• Gasoline
• Diesel
• AvGas
• Coal
• Coke
• Gravel
• Containers
• Iron (Processed) / Steel
• Sea Food
• Plastic
• Peat Moss
• Fertilizer

There should be a yard located around the 50 mile mark, which will be close enough to the majority of the industries which it will be serving.  However several trains may have to head from the mainland to the yard, then back out again once their sorted to local industries that they passed on the way in.

Either way it should be interesting.  I am planning on developing this layout completely in Trainz2010 using speed trees and layers to assist me.

Tags: Virtual Railroad by Roadwolf
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