Lets take a ride now on the Mundelein shuttle as it navigates the 8 mile branch from Lake Bluff to Mundelein. Our car is waiting at the shuttle platform, adjacent to the old Shore Line route, (abandoned 1955 to passenger traffic), and underneath the Chicago and Northwestern.
The train leaves Lake Bluff and makes its way up the hill to briefly join/cross the Chicago-Milwaukee mainline at Green Bay Road.
The car slows to 15 mph as it crosses a second C&NW line, this time at grade. This is also the point where the west leg of the South Upton wye joins the branch, allowing local trains from Chicago to terminate at Mundelein.
2 miles west is Rondout, where the North Shore passes on an embankment over the Elgin Joliet and Eastern (who also interchanges freight with the railroad at this location), and the Milwaukee Road.
And further west of Rodout, our train passes under I-94, one contributing factor to abandonment of the railroad.
This is Thornbury Village, 2 stops west of Rondout.
This just shows the massive valley that the right of way descends into to cross the Desplaines River. There are few kinks to work out here yet, but I'm pretty happy with how the grade turned out.
Libertyville was the largest town the railroad passed through between Lake Bluff and Mundelein. It was a stop for every train in both directions.
Continuing west from Libertyville, the train veers left and into a cutting prior to reaching Mundelien a few miles South and West.
And this is Mundelein, the most Westerly point the North Shore reached. Further down beyond the station was an interchange with the Soo Line.
Car storage at Mundelein was the Southbound track beyond the station. Cars are lined up here as well as on the stub tracks at the station, ready for the next days morning rush.
And so concludes a Westbound (Northbound by timetable) journey on the Mundelein Branch. I shall attempt to keep updates somewhat regular as construction progress is made.There are few technical things that may have to be worked out for any potential rolling stock (see below), mainly with the elevated system in Chicago. The North Shore changed from Overhead wire to 3rd rail for the run into Chicago, and I've come to the conclusion that it can be replicated in Railworks. The track is no big deal, I can easily change that from overhead to 3rd rail, (You may notice that there is catenary AND simple wire. That was a little trickery with the track rule, making one shape referece to 4th rail electrification), but the rolling stock would need a bit of finagling. It has been proven that it does work in the Railworks game engine, (look no further then the Class 377 electric supplied with the now default London to Brighton route), but I'll leave wiser, more knowledgeable souls to work out the technicalities of that.
And I'd like to kind of make a small request of the community. I'm currently looking for a source for a few structures for the route, to hopefully make the route more accurate. Catenary towers and line poles are high on the list, as well as a couple unique structures along the line. I'm also hoping that this route construction will inspire someone to create a proper Interurban car suitable for the route, or any traction route for that matter. You may notice that I am already plodding about the route in a North Shore car. That is a MSTS model that Jim "Sniper" Ward had converted over to Railworks a few years ago, when it was still Rail Simulator. The car was, (and still is) a great MSTS model, but it does look rather dated in the Railworks environment.
So thank you for reading, and look out for more updates as construction continues on the Road of Service!
Zach
