A New Project

[ENR3005]

Good evening,

I have been working on a pilot project for the past few weeks. A small fictional / prototype railway set over on the isolated Sunshine Coast North of Vancouver in the 1980s. I have named the railway the Sechelt & North Coast Railway which is an isolated BN branch which runs 30 miles from Williamsons Landing to Sechelt. There is also a 4 mile spur to Port Mellon where it connects with a real world industrial railway at a pulp mill. Interchange to other railways is by car float at Williamsons Landing and Port Mellon. The design of the railway is heavily influenced by prototype railways here in the Northwest. The Seattle and North Coast Railway a former Milwaukee Road line, SP’s Tillamook branchline in Oregon and CP’s Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway here in BC are a few that have fueled the building of this route so far. BN was chosen as the owner of the line for the variation of motive power it could provide.

I have attached a copy of the route map which lays out the path of the line. For those of you that have been over to the Sunshine Coast, the scenery is rugged with tall coastal mountains, dense forests and a permanent rain cloud over the area which only seems to let up during the summer months. These features create somewhat of a roll coaster profile for a railway with grades up to 2.75% percent requiring lots of power even for short trains. The line is made up of several large wood and steel trestles, light rail on pit run ballast, tight curves and a 15 MPH speed limit. The railway serves a dozen or so customers with woodchips and paper being the anchor traffic for the railway. Propane, lumber, forest fertilizer and the odd load of scrap metal round out the remaining traffic which all together totals 3,500 cars a year. The power for the line is made up of older BN power such is GP9s and F units (hopefully some SD9s will be available in the future). A trio of units are used to operate the line, which operate a mainline freight Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A local is run Tuesday and Thursday to service the remaining industries with two or three of the units.

So far all the track has been laid and I am now starting to work on scenery. I am also starting to work on building my own scenery objects many reused from my vast library of MSTS objects which I never got a chance to use will hopefully find a home on this route and future projects. You will find a new post every now and then showing my progress as time permits.

ENR3005

[NDORFN]

This reminds me of a Canadian Pacific line I saw in a book a few weeks ago. They took a GP-9, 5-6 cars and a caboose over to this island on a barge once a week. When I read about it I thought it would be awesome to model in RW. Good job. Looks good so far

[Chacal]

Another Canadian route!

[jpetersjr]

Sounds good, what kind of scenery will you be working on by the way.

I have been putting scenery in the game for a while now so if you need any help with the blueprints I can make that easier for you.

[ENR3005]

Sorry for the late responses It has been a busy few months for me and time has been tight for route building. I however had a bit of time this past weekend to start work again. I am hoping to continue over the next few months as things calm down a bit. Hopefully the following screen shots will answer the questions some of you had.

Chris

[ENR3005]

A few more shots of work in progress on the route. Thats it for now.

Chris

[thecanadianrail]

very cool! i suppose that you have switched the main RR to BC Rail instead of BN now?

[ENR3005]

I just borrowed the equipment for these screen shots. The route is sticking to a BN theme for now, but I have to admit BC Rail looks at home on it given the real main is less than 20 miles from this line across the bay. SD40-2s are a bit heavy for power however being out of touch with the sim for the last little while I downloaded some very nicely done BN SD7s which look at home on the route.

Chris