New York Division-Bergen Line - Part Deux!

[AmericanSteam]

Missing stuff. Sliders set to max. Deleted and reinstalled. Any thoughts? AMiddletown start.

[minerman146]

American Steam,
I don't think I have pushed and update out with that much raw, unfinished scenery in years. Your settings are A-Ok, what you are looking at is the extent of scenery done to this time. We'll get that filled up in future!
(Geez, looking at that makes me miss doing scenery- its been 5 weeks!)
MM

[minerman146]

Good job as always!
What about passenger trains?

LuisA, that can be a big question. What are you looking for, and what time period?
MM

I think around the 60s

For the 1960s we have the same commuter traffic we have today. Its just with much older equipment. Nothing fancy, Geeps, RS-1/3s, some E8s and very very old coaches. I like to use an E8 and string of Erie Heavy Weight Coaches from the Gold Age of Rails Site.

Some day, were gonna have 2 routes. The today route and the "Erie" route I keep doing stuff for. But you can run the old stuff right now at all stations except Secaucus, which didn't exist!

I hope that answers your question. Otherwise keep askin!

[minerman146]

April 1st is one of those interesting days as far as my work here is concerned. So, I had a couple of choices on a topic to write about.
1. April 1st marks the end of the 5th full year of work on the Bergen Line - so much territory to cover. Alas, I am happy to do requests (drop me a line)
-OR-
2. April 1st also marks the death of the Erie Lackawanna and its absorption it to one of the greatest political hack jobs of all time: CONsolidated Rail.
This should tell you what kind of mood I'm in. On the EL facebook site, some completely un-selfaware person posted a "happy birthday CONjob" (I changed rail to job )underneath all the other posts lamenting "the end" So, instead of talking about the criminal operation that was the Penn Central, I thought I would take you on a quick trip to my child hood, just about this time too, and tell ya why I repaint now.

I used to save up my snow shoveling money, and head to Racines, this hobby shop in my little town. Back in the 1970s, all of us would be meeting at the hobby shop and club meets and not on this cool labor of love, Railworks America site. (please don't hate me for how I am about to suck you in ) Anyway, I would cruise Racine's looking for some EL stuff, hopefully a diesel, but really anything. And then, like today, you had nothing but BN, ATSF, UP, SP all day long. EL? Yeah good luck with that. Remember, this is a long time ago too, and your choice of brands was TYCO, BACHMANN and if you were lucky some ATHERN. I think they kept ROUNDHOUSE and ALTAS on the top shelf, so us grubby kids wouldn't get our dirty mitts and drool all over their stock. You know, I just wanted something to hold on to the memory, just a little while longer. Very rare to see EL anything, I use to wonder why the most great and scrappy, customer lovin RR of all time wasn't lovingly portrayed in plastic. I contented my self with an oval on a 4 by 8 with my Santa Fe, UP and BN gear and hoped for better time.

So, one day, I got about 4 bucks on me, gosh I think it was a $10 my grandmother gave me for my birthday. A Box Car in HO was about 1.85- 3.10 then. Im walkin through town, Got about 9 bucks on me, I bought a soda, some life savers and a balsa wood air plane, so I still had plenty of dough left. I remembered, oh my gosh! I had enough maybe for a cheap switcher. I burst in to Racine's, into silence really, all you could herar was the hum of the florescent lights and your foot steps. I am all hot, because I am excited. So, FINALLY I see an EL box car! (not this exact boxcar, this is the newer Bachmann boxcar - same deal with them).

BachmannEL.jpg

Seriously? This is actually very good for Bachmann, the one I saw was worse in the store that day. So here is the deal. I could, at that time, walk out of Racine's, cross the street, go into the Grand Union Parking Lot and see THIS on the darn ERIE MAIN.

RealErie.jpg

Maybe you cant see the difference. But I can. I hemmed and hawed. Paced and thought about it long and hard. I could drop the two bucks and have something that someone half heartedly was trying to push off as an EL 50ft Cushioned Box car or I could wait for something better that had some respect for the subject. I walked out of the store WITHOUT that box car. A few years later, I found out about Athern Undecorated Box Cars, Champ Decals and what ever the hell that shiny clear coat stuff you had to put on your box car to preserve the decals, and I had my genuine EL Box Car.

And this my friends is why I now repaint. And this is why I have built this thing.

Your dealing with someone who has wanted to do this for 43 years. THAT is my dedication to a time, place, people and company that I care for dearly.
Yeah, Happy Birthday CONjob!

[minerman146]

Whew, I made it through another April 1s without totally bad mouthing the two mating snakes and their blue spawn!

I continue to refine my efforts with the box cars. This is my Mark IX version. I am doin all kinds of crazy stuff with texture, color, heck I'm even spray painting stuff. If there is some reason you guys are so darn silent with the repaint thing here, I want to know what is up. Its like a tomb in here!

20190404085842_1.jpg

20190404085915_1.jpg

Don't think I am keeping all this to myself. I know a guy - these will be published, in a week. I am trying to bulk up the package with any many as I can squeez in, but technical ** GEO issues, been slowing me down.

Carry On!

[mindenjohn]

Quality is always worth being patient and this is.

[RudiJaeger]

Minerman, the more you tone-down (darken) the white, the better they look (more road-worn / realistic). Looks like you're getting into weathering too. Speaking of which, it's also nice to tone-down any default dynamic-number textures whenever possible; you can even add a weathering layer. I usually increase the size of the weathering pixels when doing dynamic-numbers, so they'll better match the over-all weathering on the car-body, once they are applied in-sim. With increased weathering, you might try tinkering with the alpha layer (darken) to reduce the shine on the car bodies; something I wish I'd discovered before I started doing repaints. An interesting discussion here; https://www.trainsimdev.com/forum/viewt ... f=13&t=344

Looking forward to running your repaints; some fine paint-work in those shots.

[minerman146]

Mindenjohn, Yes, patience is everything is doing these. I know nothing, just started do in this. The motivation is high to bring some 40 footers into the world to get the 1960s flavor I am yearning for. I go back and forth from Gimp to TS to see how it looks in game as I work on it. There are probably dozens of adjustments on just one of these. Plus I work around the burned in numbers and try to make it look natural. And thank you for responding to my request for feedback.

Rudi! The lettering is interesting - the photos I see for the EL the white is pretty bright, and appear to repaint the lettering instead of the entire car. Not disagreeing with toning the white down. Im adjusting contrast and taking 10% of the opacity away. I really look photos. The model train pages represent like brand new cars and the lighting is like from an office not outside. You so right about the numbers - these are mine and took about 4 hours or so to tune and import. Its a pain to touch 10 images! I will try to get to that. Last, you brought up a key point. So what the heck is this glossy bumpy 'stuff' all over the cars. And why does it look that way. I need something matte. Is this the last alpha layer that is added in Before the image gets converted to RGBA? Or is the alpha the one on RGBA you can mess with?

These area just the beginning of the 40 footers and obviously the EL units are getting the love. BUT, if I have a good clear photo, even in black and white, I can go town on that too. Next up is a pair of D&H cars, I am dying to get to! I also have been going back to the first models, like the EL one here and reworking them. You can tell from the previous pictures. The hardest part, I would say, is finding a model with good number placement and spacing and getting all the textures to show up.

I do spend a lot of time just staring at the finished product - its very relaxing!

[buzz456]

If you are saving these opening them with DXTBmp then you can manipulate the alpha layer in any way you want before you save them as a dds assuming you are doing it that way to get whatever shade of shiny-dull finish that you want.

[minerman146]

Buzz! I am using the RsBin Tool to import, covert to dss, then Gimp, import the dds and then save as to overwrite the file.
I recognize DXTBmp for when I tried to repaint 4 years ago. Do you use DXTBmp exclusively for your work? And last, I see your models, like the coal cars your working have a nice matte finish - that is what I am looking for. Its seems the texture that I am using by default is brown, it darkens everything too!

[RudiJaeger]

I see ther's been some conversation since I started typing this reply, but I'll post anyway in case it may help someone:

Minerman, I see you're using GIMP, whereas I've been using Paintshop Pro 7; an old proggie I know, but I'm used to it and never had a need to switch. I'm not sure if the repainting process is the same, so I'll just describe how I deal with the alpha channel.

1. I use RSbin Tool to identify which textures require editing, then export each one to an "export" folder I created just for doing repaints.

2. Then I open the exported texture in DXTbmp, and send the image to my editing program (Paintshop Pro 7). When editing is complete, I update the image in DXTbmp and save (it automatically knows the format and overwrites the existing file in my "export" folder.

3. Going back to RSbin Tool, I import the texture from the export folder, and save. This automatically updates the texture in the sim's folder.

4. Check the texture in-sim to see if anything further edits are required. If I notice any excessive "shininess", I repeat the process until I get to step-2 (DXTbmp) and observe the alpha channel preview. Except this time, rather than sending the main texture to PSP 7, I'm going to send the alpha channel to PSP 7 and make it darker, then update the alpha in DXTbmp and save. Then repeat the import-save process with RSbin Tool. If it's still too shiny in-sim, I'll repeat the process until the alpha is almost entirely black. I've also found that pixelating (or adding noise) to alpha, will help to achieve a more textured matte finish. Just be sure when editing the alpha that you use the same color-value found in the original; all you really need to do here is use the "darken image" feature; and that's all there is to it.

Although I should mention, that it helps to make yourself a panel-finder that you can super-impose over the textures during the repaint process, to help identify any elusive parts on the model and help with aligning pinstripes and such. Usually a set of multi-colored cheker patterns, or lines, will do the trick; you can even superimpose letters or numbers to aid in the identification process. Then you simply take screenshots in-sim, and refer to them in your paint program to get everything lined up and in it's proper place.

About the white's brightness; yes, it's probably just a personal preference. I've always been drawn to the repaints where it's been toned-down or desaturated, because it looks more natural to my eyes while in-sim.

Hope that helps.

[buzz456]

Going along with that I do most of my painting in Paint.Net and the same procedure Rudy uses is what I use. Additionally in the DXTBmp on the alpha tab you can choose 'Create Alpha Template'. I have started doing this before I start a paint if I have a image that doesn't have any lettering on it or even if it does it's easy to wipe it off in the editor. That way I have a nice alpha Channel to manipulate lighter or darker to get whatever shine or no shine that I want as well as making colors brighter or more faded looking.

[minerman146]

Quick Post - I am reading
Buzz I like this in the front end - simple "Additionally in the DXTBmp on the alpha tab you can choose 'Create Alpha Template'.
Rudi- My steps are similar (except 4 - I need to study that) and using the DXTBmp.
Thank you both for some very detailed explanations.

Repainting - Harder then route building - just sayin!

[buzz456]

Quick Post - I am reading
Buzz I like this in the front end - simple "Additionally in the DXTBmp on the alpha tab you can choose 'Create Alpha Template'.
Rudi- My steps are similar (except 4 - I need to study that) and using the DXTBmp.
Thank you both for some very detailed explanations.

Repainting - Harder then route building - just sayin!

Sez you.

[Pwelt]

Hi
I am trying to run a Erie heavyweight passenger from Carlton Hill Sta. to Hoboken. I tried to place a marker at Carlton Hill station to enable a station stop. I am doing something wrong as the train stops at, Carlton Hill at 00 mark but when I press T nothing happens. This is in a simple scenario I created. Love the route Thanks