Montour Railroad Version 3

[Rich_S]

The Montour Railroad Beta Version 3 is now available in the file library.



What's new in Beta Version 3?

1) Scenery is now 90% complete.
2) Siding Markers have been added to all sidings and yard tracks.
3) The Slate dump, Russell, Aloe and Solar Mine tracks have been updated at Boggs.
4) The Morris Mine complex has been updated.
5) The Alleco and Slater sidings have been added in Bethel Park.

Regards,
Rich S.

[glenn68]

Also to add to Rich's post I have 3 standard scenarios written for the Montour.

[BNSF650]

Thank you. Anyway to replace the track to make it look better?

[harryadkins]

Great work, Rich. Thank you for sharing with the community.

Harry

[Rich_S]

Thank you. Anyway to replace the track to make it look better?

The Montour was a third class coal hauling short line in the Pittsburgh, PA area. The track I used represents the run down, hand me down look of the Montour. Because of the track condition, the prototype had a 15 mph speed limit on the main line track and 10 mph on all sidings. The Mighty M was not a fast railroad, but hauled a lot of coal over it's saw tooth main line

Regards,
Rich S.

[Rich_S]

Great work, Rich. Thank you for sharing with the community.

Harry

Thanks Harry for the compliments For years the Mighty M was an important first link between the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania and the steel mills and power plants of the nation. My hope is everyone enjoys the "V" scale Montour as it appeared in the late 1960's through the mid 1970's.


Regards,
Rich S.

[BNSF650]

Ah ok rich

[glenn68]

Up untill the mid 70's the Montour ran with 90 lb rail then under the complete control of the P&LE went to 115 lb rail.

Glenn

[Rich_S]

Ah ok rich

If you would like to change the track on your copy of the Montour, here is a tutorial that may help?

http://www.rstools.info/tutorials/Replacing_Track.pdf

You may also want to read through this thread.

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?f=315&t=110190

Regards,
Rich S.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Thanks, Rich. This route goes nicely with the P&LE which only has Montour yard and a short stretch of the rail line.
I installed your supplied assets first, then the route. Ran RW_Tools over it and got a few error messages:
see the box below, but this doens't prove fatal.

Montour_error_RWTools.jpg

There is indeed no TemplateRoutes subfolder.

Upon running the check selected route function, my install only seems to miss: sr_otto_pink\tunnels\sr_133w1_mtun.bin, a track item missing from the file tracks.bin?

Started the supplied free roam scenario and noticed the switches have the missing texture mark over their crossties.
You used US mainline light for track rule? After some mishaps with the infamous O. track changers perhaps a few files too many got deleted when trying to reverse.

[jamesphh]

Installed today and no problems. Only file missing was some houses, easily corrected. One suggestion is it sometimes seems a little barren and could use some grasses and shrubs. Although I signaled a clone to test, it might be possible to run AI using siding markers and wait commands. Not sure this method would work for shunting work at mines and yards.

[glenn68]

You need otto's us-wood-ties-tracks files if you have the missing texture markers over the switches.



Glenn

[Rich_S]

As Glenn mentioned above, Otto has removed his us-wood-ties-tracks from his file library. They are available for download here:

https://www.sugarsync.com/pf/D6076927_67352075_78481

I'm not sure why the missing file is not part of the assets.zip file? Even though his readme file does not mention anything about not being able to distribute his us-wood-ties-tracks.rar with my routes zip file, Adding it would have put me over the top so to speak for Hawks file library file limit. Also I'm not sure if Ed wants to open that can of worms?


Regards,
Rich S.

[Rich_S]

Installed today and no problems. Only file missing was some houses, easily corrected. One suggestion is it sometimes seems a little barren and could use some grasses and shrubs. Although I signaled a clone to test, it might be possible to run AI using siding markers and wait commands. Not sure this method would work for shunting work at mines and yards.

Hi James, The East end of the route is still a work in progress. I'm also trying to balance the scenery verses frame rates, but once I've finished the East end, I'm planning on going back through the route and adding a few more weeds and shrubs along the ROW.

Unfortunately, for those who enjoy a lot of AI traffic the Montour may not be the route for them. In essence the Montour was more of a back woods switching railroad that only had a few trains at a time on line. The nuts and bolts of the operation of the Montour was pretty much getting empties to the mine, green coal to the prep plant and processed coal to the interchanges. A typical day on the Montour would have been, grab 70 empties from the main yard, head to one of the mines, drop the empties in the empty yard, pickup 44 loads and head to the prep plant. If you still had time, the dispatcher may have you take processed coal to one of the interchanges or may have you take more empties to another mine. The only deviation from this routine was on the East end. Montour #10 at Library had it's own prep plant, so loads from Library when straight to the interchange, which usually was the Union Railroad at West Mifflin, but not always.

Regards,
Rich S.

[Rich_S]

Thanks, Rich. This route goes nicely with the P&LE which only has Montour yard and a short stretch of the rail line.
I installed your supplied assets first, then the route. Ran RW_Tools over it and got a few error messages:
see the box below, but this doens't prove fatal.

Montour_error_RWTools.jpg

There is indeed no TemplateRoutes subfolder.

I'm not sure why either the packager or RW_Tools does not package the TemplateRoutes subfolder? I'm attaching a copy to this post if you'd like to add it to your installation of the route.

TemplateRoutes.zip

Regards,
Rich S.