Saluda Grade
Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2017 11:39 amHey guys,
Just uploaded to the library is Saluda represented in the late 1970s - early 80s when Southern ran mostly SD40-2 and SD45s up and down the mountain. It only stretches right at 8 miles but is plenty enough to cover: A) the area of Melrose and it's sidings with enough room where you can either take a non-stop running start with it (as was done in real life) with a mile long empty Unit Coal Train, or split your through freights up into 2 or 3 sections. B) the whole grade itself from the electronic timing section, Big Sand Cut, through the town of Saluda. C) west Saluda past Pace's Crossing towards Tuxedo where you can reassemble doubled/tripled trains back together.
This route doesn't use a whole bunch of DLC in the sake of keeping it simple (both for me building it, and end users) and therefore is not ridiculously unique with custom assets, but I think is a fair overall representation. The assets used are Feather River Canyon, Penn Coal District, Sherman Hill, and the US Assets. Again, in the sake of keeping it simple and being able to play with it easily (such as switching back and forth from sidings when reassembling trains), sidings are manual.
I had quite a bit of fun building this and want to thank everyone on this forum for reaching out and helping when I had questions. I've tested it a decent amount including all seasons, up and down the route with different locomotives. It should work fine for nearly everyone, I tried to keep it FPS friendly since I'm rocking an i5 laptop with a low voltage nVidia GeForce 940MX. It was mostly built just have fun on, since I started building it for myself wanting to run freights screaming uphill in notch 8 and nearly slipping back down with dynamics whining. I think it does a good job at that. Realism was focused location of signals, grade crossings, speed limits, different areas of the grade with varying grade amounts (ranging from 3-5%, averaging around 4.6%), siding lengths and elevations. This is as close as I could get to the prototype, piecing it together through quite a bit of references. The buildings themselves, homes, individual objects, etc. will not be prototypical as they are all close representations that I could find using the limited assets I chose. Again, I feel it does alright at giving the "feel" of the area.
Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I have building and testing it. I just wanted to play with the mountain after purchasing TS and when I found out it didn't exist for Railworks, started it on my own just so I could run it!
Kyle
Just uploaded to the library is Saluda represented in the late 1970s - early 80s when Southern ran mostly SD40-2 and SD45s up and down the mountain. It only stretches right at 8 miles but is plenty enough to cover: A) the area of Melrose and it's sidings with enough room where you can either take a non-stop running start with it (as was done in real life) with a mile long empty Unit Coal Train, or split your through freights up into 2 or 3 sections. B) the whole grade itself from the electronic timing section, Big Sand Cut, through the town of Saluda. C) west Saluda past Pace's Crossing towards Tuxedo where you can reassemble doubled/tripled trains back together.
This route doesn't use a whole bunch of DLC in the sake of keeping it simple (both for me building it, and end users) and therefore is not ridiculously unique with custom assets, but I think is a fair overall representation. The assets used are Feather River Canyon, Penn Coal District, Sherman Hill, and the US Assets. Again, in the sake of keeping it simple and being able to play with it easily (such as switching back and forth from sidings when reassembling trains), sidings are manual.
I had quite a bit of fun building this and want to thank everyone on this forum for reaching out and helping when I had questions. I've tested it a decent amount including all seasons, up and down the route with different locomotives. It should work fine for nearly everyone, I tried to keep it FPS friendly since I'm rocking an i5 laptop with a low voltage nVidia GeForce 940MX. It was mostly built just have fun on, since I started building it for myself wanting to run freights screaming uphill in notch 8 and nearly slipping back down with dynamics whining. I think it does a good job at that. Realism was focused location of signals, grade crossings, speed limits, different areas of the grade with varying grade amounts (ranging from 3-5%, averaging around 4.6%), siding lengths and elevations. This is as close as I could get to the prototype, piecing it together through quite a bit of references. The buildings themselves, homes, individual objects, etc. will not be prototypical as they are all close representations that I could find using the limited assets I chose. Again, I feel it does alright at giving the "feel" of the area.
Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I have building and testing it. I just wanted to play with the mountain after purchasing TS and when I found out it didn't exist for Railworks, started it on my own just so I could run it!
Kyle
