Feather River Canyon Route Extension

[dleeboy]

I am going to extend DTGs Feather River Canyon Route. I will extend it from where DTG left off in Quincy and take it to Portola California. It is going to include the Williams Loop along with The Spring Garden Tunnel and the Western Pacific Railroad Museum Yard in Portola.

I am only going to use DTGs Feather River assets no other assets are going to be used. Obvious only people with DTGs Feather River Canyon route will be able to run this. This way I am keeping in DTGs guidelines and not breaking any laws. Here is a link to my PhotoBucket site to see screen shots of my progress. http://s37.photobucket.com/user/dleeboy ... 0Extention

I contacted DTG and asked if I could extend their route without breaking any laws and here was there response to me.












Hi David,

Thanks for getting in touch. Train Simulator comes with a built in editor which allows you to customise the content we release. You can even share it if you wish. i can't offer support on how to use the editor but you won't be breaking any laws at all by editing the game content.

Kind regards,
Jack
Dovetail Games Support

My progress from Quincy is coming along nicely. If I am lucky I should have everything in up to the Spring Garden Tunnel by March 1st.

The Williams Loop has been tested and it works great. It is close to the height of the real Williams Loop It may not be perfect. But I think I came close and it does at least make a representation of the Real one.

A little facts on the Spring Garden Tunnel it is 7,344 feet long. Somewhere along the progress of the route I will need a little help with adding Route markers to the existing Route markers that are already there for the Feather River Route. In my past of route making I have had difficulty figuring this out. Adding marker to an existing route. And also I will need someone to make some scenarios for the route. My specialty is putting down scenery.

[dleeboy]

I will try to keep this extension set in the 1970s like DTG has. I am using Google Overlay to lay the track. Once I get to the Portola Yard I will use an older Diagram to make the yard. A question for those that know is the Yard much different now than back in the 70s.

[imnew]

Looking good

[Ericmopar]

This will be cool.

[dleeboy]

I made a video of my progress. The video starts at the Williams Loop and goes to the Spring Garden Tunnel.
I put in the Mountain sounds but for some reason you don't here them until the end of the video. This should not be a problem because when everyone runs the route the major sound will be coming from the Engine anyway.

I added the Kuji base assets everyone has these. I haven't used any of them yet but I will. For some reason the Feather River Canyon Route grass is yellow only. And I would like to put into the route some green grass also. I am going to go through the Railworks America Freeware Assets and pick some to use on the route. I will make a list for everyone to see what I am using. And If you don't have that no problem you can just get it at Railworks America. As I have stated before I am not going to use any other Payware Routes for this project. Only The Feather River Canyon Payware Route.

Here is the link to the video. https://youtu.be/LpMbQADm2tQ

[Ericmopar]

That's looking good man.

[dleeboy]

I want to make an apology to everyone. Like I have said twice now I only wanted to use only one Payware route. The Base Feather River Canyon Route. But for some reason they only use dried grass witch looks yellow. I tried to use the Kuji grass but I don't like it. So I had to pick another Payware route. I decided to use Donner Pass because it is like the Feather River area. I hope this does not bother people I tried. And if I don't like my work what is the point in doing it. So I hope everyone understands this. Here are some screen shots with using Donner Pass Green Grass and Feather River Yellow Grass.

[Ericmopar]

Cool. I'm maybe going to add the Feather River Route assets to Donner.

[ssbobz]

Looks great so far.

[dleeboy]

Ericmopar thanks that makes me feel better. I am pretty sure most people that want this have Donner Pass already. And if not there are always sales.

[gtrtroger]

Cool. I'm maybe going to add the Feather River Route assets to Donner.

You know, when I first saw FRC, I was thinking the same thing about some of the ground and rock textures and how they could be used on DP.

BTW, I lost all my Davis Yard changes when I reloaded your P2 update again (long story). Your going to have to tell me how and which Content files I need to backup if this happens again....like how you packaged P2.

[Ericmopar]

Cool. I'm maybe going to add the Feather River Route assets to Donner.

You know, when I first saw FRC, I was thinking the same thing about some of the ground and rock textures and how they could be used on DP.

BTW, I lost all my Davis Yard changes when I reloaded your P2 update again (long story). Your going to have to tell me how and which Content files I need to backup if this happens again....like how you packaged P2.

That would be the tracks.bin file in the networks folder. I smoothed some curves between Colfax and Truckee, because the super elevation was improperly implemented so that's why you lost the yard changes...

Some areas like Cape Horn might benefit from the Feather River assets. The Gold tinted rock for instance.
It already looks far better than it did and given the length of Donner, I'm going to have to draw the line somewhere.
Some of the Feather river assets might make for chunkier terrain in some areas, but I think the rock color is wrong.

dleeboy.
The grass in that part of CA is only green during mild winters and spring. They made comments to that affect in one of the DTG videos, so maybe the FR grass is green in spring?
I don't own the route yet so someone else would have to look into that.
The grass doesn't change during the seasons on Donner so I opted for a green spring look.
Actually it is greener for longer at altitude.

[hertsbob]

The terrain textures you want to use are the SNOW prefixed ones. Feather River has two sets of assets, one set for the southern end where it doesn't snow and the SNOW ones where it does.

Snow.jpg

Good luck with your endeavours.

Cheers

Bob

[dleeboy]

Thanks for the input on the grass. With that information I won't use Donner Pass now. Back to only one Payware FRC witch is the base route. All of the other assets will be freeware. Witch I can package up for everyone. Here are some screen shots of the different Seasons.
The third screen shots is with both Donner Pass and Feather River Canyon grass together. But after I took Donner out just FRC grass now.

[dleeboy]

Here is a little work today.