C&O Alleghany Mountain - Coming soon

[ozinoz]

At first I thought: He's talking about March and then he says the Winter comes?
And then I realized that you "Come from a land Down Under, where women glow and men plunder..."

We have alternate lyrics to that - "where women glow and men chunder" (dont know if that translates to anywhere else, but is a euphemism for the ol' technicolour yawn, usually from too much beer )

Has been the wettest start top a year on record (you may have seen the floods in Queensland and Victoria) but even where I am it has been a wet start (we had an inch on Sunday and it has been raining on and off and will do till Friday) March is usually a great month for weather, with some hot days still. If you have any Aussie wine in storage hold it as this vintage is not looking good, because of the rain - either fruit degradation or physically too wet to harvest.

Cheers from Oz

G

[Hawk]

"Come from a land Down Under, where women glow and men plunder..."

Isn't that supposed to be 'men thunder'?

[petebauer]

I can add a little more bad news. While planting trees on the logging division I fried my dual NVIDIA 9800GT cards! I am without a machine for about a week while I upgrade to a liquid cooled NVIDIA GTX580, bigger power supply, and 240GB of solid state disk. Until the upgrade is done I am holding up the logging part of the development.

Pete

[micaelcorleone]

Isn't that supposed to be 'men thunder'?

Ehh, no! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbsfupH8W1o Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover!

[Hawk]

Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover!

I stand corrected.

Down Under.jpg

[Toripony]

Recent view of the BLC terrain (that's Bauer Lumber Company), the newest COA addition 10 miles north of Caldwell on the Greenbrier Subdivision of the C&O.....

BLC.jpg

Bauer Lumber Company is our representation of the Henderson Lumber Company which existed at Anthony, WV from 1903 to ???? (my guess is 1920'ish). According to 1903 WV state records, the company had an invested value of $60,000 and a crew of 55 men with a monthly payroll of $1522. Henderson Lumber had a medium sized (for the area/era) producing sawmill requiring their own 497 foot siding off the C&O Greenbrier Sub for shipping out lumber. In 1904, they had built their own 36 inch logging railroad and were the first owners of B-20 Climax locomotive #532 (ran as #999).

BLCSawmill-WIP.jpg

Innumerable logging and lumber companies were started along the Greenbrier Sub after it opened in 1901, but HLC would have held some advantage with its location. Situated at the mouth of Anthony Creek, the company held a prime water location for log floating/landing and its private railroad had access to at least a couple hundred square miles of virgin timberland, though I cannot find any records indicating it ever grew that large. I also wonder if they hauled out logs for other companies that may have located further up Anthony's Creek but again have not found any records of such... yet.

BLC_1007.jpg

All of the work you see posted about the Bauer Lumber Company logging railroad is Pete's routebuilding work. My charge has been only to build the Greenbrier sub up to Anthony and provide a siding. That track is laid but little marking/signaling or any other form of scenery is done there yet. While the Greenbrier "scene" will be more of a 1950's setting, the BLC area is being depicted as it may have looked around 1910-20. The concept is that as you leave the C&O mainline set in a 1970-80 period heading north on the Greenbrier, time will wind backwards. The goal is to provide an appropriate (proto-fictional) environment to run earlier steam and shay locos and equipment.

BLC-Camp1area.jpg

The one asset I am really missing for this part of the route is some U.S. "flag" signaling. Sorry... that's what I grew up calling them; never heard the word "semaphore" until recent years.

[micaelcorleone]

Mhhh, I love it. So much detail everywhere.

[Chessie8638]

Wow! As the Micky D's commercials say "I'm Loving It." Lol. Keep up the great work. Can't wait to run this new branch.

[ozinoz]

The detail is amazing. Thanks for all the hard work, this is a super route, just love it.

Cheers

[Toripony]

The 3rd beta was nice to look at, now this version will be fun to operate, too! The signaling and track marking has been fully developed to permit the easy development of complex scenarios. Add new Standard Scenarios of driving and switching action, the 12 mile extension of The Greenbrier Subdivision with 5 (6?) passenger stations set in 1900 era surroundings, miles of very challenging mountain logging railroad at the Bauer Lumber Company, and some new custom content (with wheels!), and I hope you will find the long delay worthwhile.

While I won't set a date, I am working toward releasing beta 4 this month.

Regards,
Tori

[Samwolf]

While I won't set a date, I am working toward releasing beta 4 this month.

Regards,
Tori

[ozinoz]

Hi Tori,

Allow me also to

This is a fantastic route and I am so looking forward to the new version. Have managed to secure a few additional days off after Easter and I know what I would like to be doing

Thanks again for all your hard work on the super project

Cheers from Down Under

[Toripony]

In anticipation of the pending beta 4 release of the COA, I want to share some prototypical information about the route to spark the imagination of scenario writers. I will start with the COA Operations Manual which comes with the route:

Traffic control on the Alleghany Division is maintained with an Orders system and ABS. In all cases, a stop signal overides Orders. Dispatch phones are located at each signaling block to obtain further Orders.

All freight traffic is limited to 40 mph on the Alleghany [sub]Division. Freight trains descending the eastern grade are limited to a maximum of 35 mph. Loaded trains over 100 cars must stop at Alleghany and set 6 lbs of brake pressure before descending the eastern grade. This brake pressure must be retained until consist is yarded at Clifton Forge. Dynamic braking should be used to further control the train speed. Under these conditions the train must be headed by at least 3 diesel units or 2 units with 1 unit trailing.

Passenger traffic is limited to 50 mph throughout the Alleghany division, however for passenger comfort there are several curves that advise slower speeds down to 25 mph.

6-axle locomotives are PROHIBITED on the following tracks:
-White Sulphur Springs (WSS) Industrial Spur, yard, and coal trestle
-Martin & Jones Hardware spur in Ronceverte
-Ronceverte Ice & Produce (RIPCO)/Coca-Cola bottling plant spur in Ronceverte
-Mullican Lumber leads and sidings in Ronceverte
-Bendix stub in Ronceverte
-Fullen Fertilizer stub in Fort Spring
-Alderson Farm Supply stubs in Alderson
-ALSO NOTE: ALL locomotives are PROHIBITED on the coal trestle at WSS. Deliveries and pickups to the trestle track should be made with an empty car between the engine and the car to be dropped/picked up. Ordinarily, these switching duties fall to the local yard crew in Ronceverte that is familiar with the procedure.

Mainline locomotives with deliveries for those tracks will drop the cars on a nearby team siding for the local switching units to deliver to their final destination.

Under normal conditions, westbound traffic will operate on the #1 (northside) track and eastbound traffic will use the #2 (southside) track. Manifests and other thru trains should NOT cross to the opposite side to perform switching work (excepting Snowflake/Frazier quarries). Each town has sidings where any cars can be dropped off for the Local to deliver. Local delivery trains run WB on Monday and Thursday and run EB on Friday. A Local pickup runs WB on Wednesday and Friday and EB on Thursday.

Ronceverte yard switchers are responsible for movements within Ronceverte, Snowflake/Frazier, Caldwell and WSS yard tracks as well as move cars to/from those yards to/from sidings that are accessible by larger thru trains. However, larger road engines are permitted to do their own switching in the Ronceverte WB yard, Snowflake yard, Frazier yard, and the sidings around Caldwell.

Eastbound traffic will usually take precedence over westbounds at the Ronceverte-Rockland single-track.

Eastbound coal drags of 100 cars or more will stop at Ronceverte for pusher assistance to help prevent breaking and breakdown of trains on the mountain grade.

Do not use the Snowflake sidings as a thoroughfare for access to Frazier freight.


***** These rules were taken (loosely) from the Rules and Regs manuals of the C&O and Chessie System of the 1970's and 80's. Due to the grades and short lengths of some sidings (which are prototypical), 4-axle locomotives are required for switching and local delivery even in Railworks. If you don't own any 4-axle engines, obviously the 6-axle units that came with Railworks will do but will be a bit cumbersome to maneuver in the limited space of some sidings on the C&O Alleghany. They could also derail easier.

[JackD]

TORI,

Thanks very much for the COA rules of the road. They make your route even more interesting and enjoyable & give us something to memorize while waiting for the update.

Best regards,
JackD

[Toripony]

Time for an update on beta 4 progress.....

Running a little behind... nothing new there. Am hoping to send out the first tests of beta 4 this weekend. If all goes well, it will be posted for general release next week.

There is a new download page in place now (only has beta 3 files for now); if anyone experiences problems with it please let me know.

Tori