Railworks America

New product announcement: https://live.dovetailgames.com/live/train-simulator/articles/article/fabulous-and-famous

Sweet! Credit card ready. Thanks for the article. Some really nice shots of the Clinch in there Gary. A must buy route for me.

It has been a long time since a new route announcement has quickened my pulse. Looking forward to this one!

Anybody know who is doing this? Looks lovely.

buzz456 wrote:Anybody know who is doing this? Looks lovely.

How about HighIronSimulations? Dolzalls business?

No plain SD40, SD45, SD45-2 or U36C’s, Clinchfields main motive power ...
https://www.thedieselshop.us/Clinch.HTML

_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha wrote:

buzz456 wrote:Anybody know who is doing this? Looks lovely.

How about HighIronSimulations? Dolzalls business?

No plain SD40, SD45, SD45-2 or U36C’s, Clinchfields main motive power ...
https://www.thedieselshop.us/Clinch.HTML

So in other words you don't know.

I for one, am really looking forward to this! My kind of Diesel power.....and hoping for a couple of Cabooses! I do also hope that the locomotive sounds for the SD40/GP38's will be revised.....but who knows! Still, a very welcomed addition!

R/
Galen

buzz456 wrote:

_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha wrote:

buzz456 wrote:Anybody know who is doing this? Looks lovely.

How about HighIronSimulations? Dolzalls business?

No plain SD40, SD45, SD45-2 or U36C’s, Clinchfields main motive power ...
https://www.thedieselshop.us/Clinch.HTML

So in other words you don't know.

Kanawha is simply guessing (as usual). The route is being developed by the DTG team.

And as stated in the article, the power to be included with the route includes the CRR SD40, GP38, GP7, and F7A/B.

As for the comment on "main motive power" .... CRR owned seven U36Cs which it swapped to SCL after six years for the eight SD45s ... hardy the "main motive power" of the railroad in either case ....

So I take it DTG has lost interest in making long routes? The railroad itself had 276 miles of track and they are only doing 42. And on top of that, it will likely be $40, which is almost a dollar per mile. If you’re gonna represent a railroad, do it right. An American freight route should never be this short. Or any route for that matter. You get your train to track speed, sneeze and your already halfway there.

Fireexplorer249 wrote:So I take it DTG has lost interest in making long routes? The railroad itself had 276 miles of track and they are only doing 42. And on top of that, it will likely be $40, which is almost a dollar per mile. If you’re gonna represent a railroad, do it right. An American freight route should never be this short. Or any route for that matter. You get your train to track speed, sneeze and your already halfway there.

TS2020 = TSW confirmed

Funny I did this one last year.

Spent my High School years in the Spartanburg SC area and watched the Clinchfield engines work the locals in Beaumont Yard with other ACL/SAL trains. Was the first railroad I actually took a liking too. I will look forward to seeing this interpretation of a classic route......

PS: We have some fine Clinchfield Challengers and hopper cars in the RWA Library just waiting for this Route!

Thanks for making my decision so much easier not to buy this route a full price. 'being developed by DTG team' is hardly a reassurance, given their QA and very variable quality in offering USA prototype railroads, or most often 2/3 of a railroad or even less of the logical and prototypical division.

Given no new motive power (perhaps a plain SD40, without the porches, but it has to be really better than DTM's usual offering), a very short stretch of one of the most interesting Eastern mountain railroads, I'll gladly pass.

It seems the DTG Clinchfield is positioned in the first to second generation transition era, also 1970's, a more detailed look at the Diesel roster shows the prevalence of SD40, U36C/SD45, SD45-2 at 45 pieces as mainline road power, versus 10 GP38, which might perhaps have served the branch lines and coal mines, together with the remaining first generation units. According to http://www.clinchfieldcountry.com/resou ... roster.htm a lot of F-units were traded in to EMD against SD40 and SD45-2.
The Clinchfied GP38's were all painted into Family Lines by the end of the decade.
We don't have GP38, SD40 and U36C currently in the game. The U36C's ran for 6 years, a substantial period, and these were iconic engines, much photographed tokens of the might of The Clinch.

The 6000-6045 series GP38-2 and 8034-8232 series SD40-2 arrived from 6-78 on the property, probably displacing the last remaining first generation motive power.
In what colour scheme were those Dash-2's delivered: Family Lines with CRR reporting marks.

Wasn't Clinchfield featured extensively in Model Railroader long ago? I remember an awesome series of articles and therefor the announcement had my attention piqued to be able to drive over 'The Clinch' in virtual scale.

There are some only shady offering on eBay and commercial sites of Clinchfield track charts and timetables, but 1958 and 1982 copies can be found on multimodalways. These show relatively simple linear layouts at Elkhorn City and Dante, with a single track mainline with passing sidings connecting these stations. Prototypical operations on single track is called for also, including automated meets with AI trains

Some information can be found on CRR's signaling and CTC systems in use on the heavy duty mainline Elkhorn City - Erwin: https://www.jonroma.net/media/signaling ... 0Route.pdf , which also sheds some light on prototype operations in the 1950's, when there was still passenger service. One would assume these signals were still in use in the time frame modeled.

So despite the limited route length, lots of possibilities for DTG to get it right, to provide buyers with a different and true-to-prototype trainsimming experience.

Now let us wait for the first independent reviews.

I seem to remember DTG stating that they were going to stop producing routes for the TS games, yet they obviously haven't. I feel like that may be a comment on the success of TSW...

Regardless, route looks nice and 4 locomotives for one offering seems almost generous for DTG. Classic routes are what's keeping me around, so I'm happy to see this.

DrewG wrote:I seem to remember DTG stating that they were going to stop producing routes for the TS games, yet they obviously haven't. I feel like that may be a comment on the success of TSW...

Regardless, route looks nice and 4 locomotives for one offering seems almost generous for DTG. Classic routes are what's keeping me around, so I'm happy to see this.

I agree. Besides we can get one of our track laying maniacs (hint hint Walter) to extend it is we want more.