The ALRR is a ficticious high desert mainline between the urban center of Arlington, CA, and the industry town of Lewistown, CA. Two smaller towns, Sunrise and Oasis, are along the mainline. Each town has a station and a few sidings for local freights. The route is only 24 miles or so-- end to end runs will only take 30 minutes or so.
This route is not particularly about a challenging drive or fantastic scenery, it's more of a laid-back simple route for testing your new locomotives. The max speed limit anywhere on the line is 50 MPH, but there are some sections where you travel slower to keep you on your toes (Slowest mainline speed is 35). There are only two gradients on the entire route: a 1% grade south of Lewistown which you should never have to climb unless you want to derail, and a 0.2% grade north of Lewistown which should pose no problems.
Even though I've set a loose timeframe --1991 ATSF and SP-- I recommend driving anything on this route. Steam engines and older EMDs might look out of place considering the modern cars, but current-day ES44s and SD70ACes will look fine. For the "Accurate" results, I recommend Dash-9s, SD40-2s, SD70Ms, GP20s, and SD45s in SP or ATSF paint (For extra fun, toss a Kodchrome, DRGW or UP engine in the mix). For passenger operations, any Phase III Amtrak works perfectly.
Pictures:
On the northern end of the line we have the city of Arlington. Passenger trains are the only trains that regularly stop here, there's not many industries that ship by rail in this point in time. Beyond the station the line connects to other rail lines in the Salton sea area.
A shot of downtown Arlington, facing the station. Note the abandoned siding on the right side of the picture.
The line heads south along the Starlight Sea. This picture actually faces north-- the sea would be on your right side if you're going south. I tried to keep in mind that deserts aren't completely barren by adding grass- but as you'll see later
it's hard to make 100% sandy areas look 3-dimensional in Railworks.
Oasis is the next big stop on the line. Most freight trains will pick up or drop off cars here, since the town is a major industry hub for boats travelling across the sea.
There's even a bit of streetrunning in this town! Granted, not much goes on here since the curves are too tight for most modern cars to travel around. 40 ft cars might work, though.
Still going south, the line hugs a valley area and a hilly region. There's actually no grade here to ease in driving.
More desert. . . a lot of these empty areas of the route need detail scenery.
Here's the town of Sunrise. Barely any trains stop here except for the occasional switcher picking up cars from the two sidings. Most of the town is captured in this picture.
The area south of Sunrise is very green on account of the small creek running next to the tracks. Farms used to grow their crops here, but most have since moved due to the recent droughts.
The last stop on the line is Lewistown, which is bigger than Sunrise, but not quite as big as either Oasis or Arlington. The powerplant here takes shipments of coal regularly, which provides the bulk of traffic from the ALRR shortline.
Looking towards Lewistown. Behind the camera, the line begins to climb the mountain range which borders the entire route. The line will then continue south to Yuma AZ.
Here's the 2D map.
Now for the dependencies!
-Pacific Surfliner
-Default US/EU content (You should have this if you played the game before TS2013)
-RWA Donationware route
-RCAP
The basic route which I'll upload first won't have any scenarios except for a few free roams, quickdrives and an introductory scenario. I plan on releasing a scenario pack later with era-appropriate rollingstock. The reason I haven't included these scenarios to start with is to keep the amount of DLC low, so you don't need to buy $100+ worth of DLC to simply drive the route.
If you want to take advantage of the labor day sale to get a head start, these are the dependencies for the scenario pack;
-SP SD45
-SP SD70M
-SP GP20
-Donner Pass (For the engines only)
-ATSF SD75
-UP SD45
-Amtrak F40PH
-Along with other freeware that I'll specify when I finalize which ones I'm using. Please note that this list can change.
