Cabin Creek Railroad

[Shortliner]

I've been debating whether or not to actually release information on the route that I've been working on for the past month or so, mainly because I have ADD, and I get distracted with shiny things. Anyways, I've been working hard on the route for the past month and I got a good momentum built up, and I don't see it ending anytime soon. So, here is the introduction for the proto-fictional route that I'm working on for RW.

Background:

When I was a little kid, I had a HO scale layout in my room, it wasn't anything really fancy, it was a simple loop with a siding and later I added a roundhouse and turntable. That was pretty much the extent of the layout. However, I loved to run my trains on the simple loop, and it became known as the Cabin Creek Railroad, because one of my uncle got me a coal hopper that came with a loader that allowed you to dump coal into the hopper. On the side of it said "Cabin Creek".

Fast forward to now, I've been wanting to revive my layout, however I don't feel like I have enough room in my current living quarters to do it justice, and MSTS route creation was....well it was daunting to say the least. Which is why I'm glad we now have RailWorks, it has an awesome route and scenario creation, and I am now in the process of bringing my layout back to life, but on a 1:1 virtual scale. Cabin Creek Railroad is created in the same spirit that Virginian and Ohio was created in, a proto-ficitional route.

Route Background:

The route is set in the mid 1990s.

In the 1800s, railroad lines were being laid all over this country, from mainlines that connected major cities, to logging and coal routes that were either operated by the same logging and coal companies, or by a shortline operator. In the early 1900s, Southern Railway started buying up shortlines situated in the Appalachia and connecting them to create a branchline in order to reach the coal deposit. The branchline was also used to connect small mountain towns to the outside world.

However, in the 1970s, the Class 1s railroad were struggling to stay afloat, and began to consolidate, Southern Railway began to run less trains on the branchline until they just stopped completely. The rails were about to be ripped up in the mid 70s, until a business brought the branchline from Southern Railway, thus Cabin Creek Railroad, an Appalachia shortline was born. After making needed repairs to the line, they pushed the line further south to connect to CSX and to the west to connect to Conrail (Southern Railway was connected to the East).

Today (today being the mid 90s,) Cabin Creek Railroad is a thriving shortline, offering a more personal service with the industries, towns, and the coal mining company on it's route. It's also able to offer efficiently ran Transfer service to the three Class 1s it connects to. Cabin Creek is probably one of the more busier shortline you'll ever work on.

Pics will come soon. :)

[micaelcorleone]

Today (today being the mid 90s,) Cabin Creek Railroad is a thriving shortline, offering a more personal service with the industries, towns, and the coal mining company on it's route. It's also able to offer efficiently ran Transfer service to the three Class 1s it connects to. Cabin Creek is probably one of the more busier shortline you'll ever work on.

Pics will come soon. :)

Can't wait to see the first pics of your little RR utopia.

[Shortliner]

Can't wait to see the first pics of your little RR utopia.

Thanks! Right now, I'm working on one of the steepest grade on the route yet, so far it's around 3%, and I'm trying to keep it around there.



The route map so far. I've done the CSX Interchange yard and now working my way up North towards the "hub" of the route.

[Toripony]

Just FYI...... Cabin Creek, WV is in the heart of coal country; perhaps that was the source of the name on your coal loader.

Tori

[Shortliner]

Just FYI...... Cabin Creek, WV is in the heart of coal country; perhaps that was the source of the name on your coal loader.

Tori

I actually did find that out when I was doing research for this route. :)

[Shortliner]

So here are some pictures of the route. I was testing the new grade that I created and whether or not the SD-40 would actually make a decent helper locomotive.

Train coming out of the CSX Interchange Yard



Cruising along




A Horseshoe curve, there's a reason why 35 is the limit.


Beginning the climb


Rounding the curve during the climb


Just to show how steep this grade is.

[RedRiverTransfer]

Cant wait to see more
Keep up with the great work.

RRT.

[dogmouse]

Very nice shots, SL. Im really liking something in that 4th shot. Cant wait to see how this progresses.

Keep us posted!

~R

[arizonachris]

I like that livery. Had to do a quick Google to find out what MARC is. Fantastic looking route so far!

[Shortliner]

I like that livery. Had to do a quick Google to find out what MARC is. Fantastic looking route so far!

the MARC locomotive is a placeholder for now. I plan to do a Cabin Creek RR repaint of the GP38-2 as well as the SD40-2 helper.

[jpetersjr]

Looks almost like the hills from the movie The Atomic Train.

Looking good.

[Shortliner]

Looks almost like the hills from the movie The Atomic Train.

Looking good.

It's a 3-4% grade, which was needed because at that part of the route, the mountains created a bowl, so in order to climb out the bowl, the tracks ran alongside the edge of it and then tunneled it way out.

[Shortliner]

There's little progress on The Creek this week, mainly because I had an operation on Tuesday, and I'm currently recovering from that. So there's no progress update for this week, but hopefully I can start laying down tracks again on Monday, we'll see how I feel.

[arizonachris]

Hey, take your time, get better, I think this place will be around for a while longer, and we can wait. And I still like that MARC livery.

[Chessie8638]

Being a fan of shortline/switching routes in Railworks/rail sim's, can't wait for more updates and a future release.