Railworks America

Jerry Conaway from SMMDigital has released the first public version of his Atlanta North District Route.
The route is not the final version, just the first part "Chattanooga", but it has everything you'll need for some operations (one scenario is included).

From the SMMDigital Site:

"Overview

The Atlanta North District runs roughly 130+ miles from Chattanooga, TN to Atlanta, GA. This busy rail line sees upward of 40+ trains per day, ranging from unit coal, auto-racks, and fertilizer trains to high-priority intermodal and Road Railer trains. Locomotive and car liveries from all over North America can be seen on a daily basis on this line.

The NS-AND mainline begins on it's northern end just east of the Debutt's hump yard. From there it winds it's way southward through the rural Appalachain foothills of North Georgia. Along the way, the tracks pass through several small cities, including Dalton, Rome, Rockmart, and Austell, finally terminating in Atlanta at Inman Yard. Industries abound as well, including a large bulk commodities transfer yard at Dalton, a branchline serviced coal-fired power plant at Coosa, and a large Intermodal transfer yard near Austell.

In the past few years, Norfolk Southern has invested big money in upgrading this line to handle future capacity. The line has been double tracked in several areas, new sidings have been built, and some old sidings have been made into "super sidings" to accomodate increased traffic flow.

As one of the Southland's busiest railroad lines, this route will be both a pleasure and a challenge to bring to the Railworks Railroad Simulator."


Here is the downloadlink: http://www.smmdigital.net/nsand.html

Thank you Jerry Conaway!

Thanks, downloading now.

I cannot claim to know anything about this route, but I have visited the areas at each end and Dalton several times in my lifetime and can attest to the [re-]growth of industry there. It is, indeed, a steadily growing economic area of the U.S. Tennessee has become a central distribution hub for destinations up and down the eastern seaboard, evidenced by the tremendous amount of truck traffic on the interstate highways radiating out from there. In fact, there is so much cargo coming east out of TN that there is a serious initiative to build a brand new railroad running northeast through VA to relieve the highway congestion. Just on theory alone, I think this route could become one of the most "happening" eastern U.S. routes for Railworks with the opportunity for a wide variety of activities/scenarios equivalent to any of the big U.S. west coast routes.

Jerry has also provided an excellent web site with plenty of information to inspire scenario writing and motivate drivers. My only suggestion to Jerry is to put the download link at the BOTTOM of the "readme" web page, lol. My experience is that it really does "work" .

Jerry, I noticed the screenshot of the train beside the Interstate highway... it looks like that narrow gorge along I-40 that is always suffering huge slides but instead it must be along I-26 (I think?)? Where exactly is that shot taken? It will be interesting to learn a little more about this area once known as home to the Cherokee Nation. Am downloading now.

Tori

Very nice Jerry. The scenery is awesome on what's done here, this is some real quality work.

Buzz

The route looks magnificent i LOVE detailed work. I have only one problem - the railtracks are invisible. , but I have the asset required - i have the low resolution of Rural landskapes, Scale roads, Scale rail.

skoda43531 wrote:The route looks magnificent i LOVE detailed work. I have only one problem - the railtracks are invisible. , but I have the asset required - i have the low resolution of Rural landskapes, Scale roads, Scale rail.

I and several other people guys had this problem also with some other routes.
For me the normal tracks disappeared on Cajon Pass.

So I verified the integrity of my game cache via Steam.
After that the tracks appeared again.
In the case of Scalerail a reinstall of the package might also help.
Also go into the world editor and check if the scalerail box is enabled.

And what you should always do after installing something, clear the blueprintcache.

Thanks for the help

An update to Part 1 is available at the SMM Digital website - www.smmdigital.net

Don

Taken off of: http://www.smmdigital.net/

AND Route Update wrote:As you've noticed by now, the link to the Atlanta North District route has been removed. Fact is, the Great Railworks Update broke several things on the route that are going to take time to fix. No developers preview was given out by RSC, so on the day of release, a few of us got caught with a bag of dead cats - models that don't work with TS12, glow like a neon bulb, or cause lots of SoBHH errors. TrainSimulator 2012 also has several new features that I would like to incorporate into the route, such as superelevation and block assets. The errors, new features, and relaying and scenery install on twenty new miles of track have prompted me to pull the route from circulation for the time being. I would rather it be right for the end-user than have to answer a million and one bug reports and read all the bad press on the simulation forums.

So for now, enjoy the NEC and Horseshoe Curve routes from RSC, and we'll be back after the new year.

b737lvr wrote:Whoa!!! New year!??!!?

Well, that's less than 2 months away!

I'm getting a little work done on the route every day, and the block assets are helping speed things along, so it may be sooner than stated. I just wanted to give myself enough time to make the necessary fixes and changes to the route before distributing again.

One important note that I haven't posted on the website is that the re-released NSAND will require environment, time of day, and assets from the Horseshoe Curve route. Since the route is default with new purchases of TS 2012 and most of us "old-timers" have it, I figured it wouldn't hurt to diversify the look of the NSAND with a few HSC components.

Well, that doesn't look good. Tried to but Horseshoe Curve while it was half price, but evidently my PayPal (or something) didn't work and I didn't end up with it. Now it looks like I'll have to wait 'til it goes on sale again as Tori has said she is going to use assets from it on her C&O also.

Be patient, and never pay full price for anything! There will probably be a Steam/Railworks DLC sale somewhere around Christmas, as the last one was in July. When I first purchased Railworks, I missed the free Challenger DLC promotion by one day. It was another year-and-a-half before I finally purchased it during a sales promotion.

SMMDigital wrote:Be patient, and never pay full price for anything! There will probably be a Steam/Railworks DLC sale somewhere around Christmas.

My wallet and shopping list is ready, lol. Take your time with the AND. Can't wait to download and play again.

41 days and counting....