ozinoz wrote:Tori...
Have just had a watch of the slideshow of your screenies - and just one word - AMAZING.
You have captured the feel of the line and the modeling and teraforming is wonderful. I love the use of wooden ties, which means steam will slide in there quite comfortably and was blown away with pic 22; I don't know the line, but it looks like a stabling point and the service tracks and the ground surrounding have dirty ballast and a well worn feel. It looks just wonderful and I am looking forward to its release.
For those not familiar with the line - any chance of a gradient profile to go with the track diagram?
Super job, thank you for your efforts in bringing this to the community
from Down Under
Grant
Apparently, I have more to learn about Photobucket; I will work on that. I thought it reduced everything by default. Does anyone know how to make RW save screenshots as jpgs in Windows 7?
Grant, that shot is of the signal right in front of my house where I've lived most of my life. As a kid with nothing to do in an Appalachian railroad town in the 70's, that ground was just like my backyard. We crossed the tracks there to go to the river. Every night I watched those signals while I lay in bed falling asleep. Later, after high school years, Dad would toot the horn as he passed by in his hi-railer on his inspection run to say "hi". If there weren't any cars stored in the sidings, sometimes I would run over with something extra for his lunch box. And occasionally, hop in for a ride. Things sure were different in this country back then.
I have learned things from building this RW route. For example, I never laid eyes on that turntable across from my house. That patch of ground was always treacherous to walk on because of big (to a child) chunks of cinders laying on top of the gravel and coal dust. And there was some old broken and chipped concrete sticking up here and there. Not until I was looking at old track maps did I realize that there was once a turntable there. Although the C&O used the big articulated steamers into the early '50's, they had enough power and fuel to run straight thru from Hinton to Clifton Forge and never needed turning in Ronceverte. Also, the Greenbrier Branch was using a diesels by then, so I'm guessing now that they tore out the turntable during the '50's.
That's a lot of what this hobby has become for me... about learning the history of my hometown area. I've mentioned before that I don't actually drive these trains much like you guys do (although I like collecting the steamers), but learning about how the railroad operated (I never knew; Dad was MOW and I just watched the trains go by) and how it influenced our town has been fascinating. I learned that the first year the Ronceverte Depot opened, 65,000 passengers passed through there! That is about 2 times the largest population that Greenbrier County has ever held. The Martin & Jones Hardware building was once a produce distributor and had the first indoor loading track west of the Alleghenies. As a matter of fact, the C&O created the town of Ronceverte. Because of the sawmill, logging, the Greenbrier Branch, bustling industry and general terrain, they needed a town here. There was a smattering of residents here since the mid-1700's but the C&O bought the land, laid out the streets and sold the first lots to the new citizens of the new town of Ronceverte. Several other nearby towns were built the same way.
Having the railroad come to your town in pioneer America changed everything!
Tori
Tori
