Railworks America

I purchased the Lakeside Route in early December, it has quickly become my favorite Train Simulator Route. Having grown up on the Manistique Subdivision of the Wisconsin Central (ex-Soo Line, present day CN), I feel like I am at home when I run on the route as the scenery and feel closely matches the line between the Soo and Trout Lake. Most notably the many fields between Waterton and Adkins resemble what the locals called the "prairie" which was a stretch of track between Rudyard and what was Dryburg/Fibre (between 4-7 miles west of Rudyard).

Shortly after I started running the route, I decided to make Waterton an interchange with the DSS&A, while the interchange in Riverside is with the Milwaukee Road. This essentially creates a bridge line between what would prototypically be the DSS&A West Yard in Marquette to the Milwaukee Road interlocking in Sidnaw. With the interchanges decided and the RW&A being a crucial bridge route, I made up a train symbol list and corresponding descriptions of each train to be run. In total I came up with 28 trains that could be run on any given day, with seasonal traffic that could grow to as may as 34-36. Pretty impressive for a 14 mile long short-line.

After running trains for a few days I decided to modify the route and come up with a backstory for the railroad's motive power.
Most of the modifications I made involved re-laying switches and widening curves in order to accommodate Smokebox's magnificent FEF-3, as well as larger six axle diesels such as the RW&A SD9s.

Although the FEF-3 is too heavy to service Michigan Paper, Hillman Lumber, and U.P. coal, I decided to re-lay those switches in order to make them more realistic.
I also added water columns at Riverside near the platform, one in Adkins lumber, and an RW&A water tank near the switch lead going into Gogebic mine. All major cross-overs, as well as the siding and spurs in Ridout were relaid with more generous switches.
I plan on modifying the route some more as I see fit, as well as adding the train-symbols and locomotive roster to the file library sometime this week.

Looks real good!!!!

These are exactly the kind of mods we hoped to see for this route. On my own version, North Adkins has morphed into a lumber branch line called Camfor. And the Atlantic to Gogebic route represents a portion of a north/south electric interurban line with a back story to explain how it came to acquire running rights over a short section of RW&A main.

I am looking forward to more updates from your project.

I admire your Camfor modifications, particularly the trestle bridge and the sharp paint scheme you've adapted for your 44 toner. Around the turn of the century the Keweenaw Peninsula had an extensive interurban network that lasted until the 20s I believe. In multiple locations the interurban line actually crossed over the Copper Range Railroad, as well as the DSS&A. Due to wire clearance they found it more effective to bridge over the mainline roads rather than build a diamond crossing at grade. You could try and incorporate that into the backstory as it would be historically correct.
I'm hoping to add some sort of extension to add more industry. I have tried many attempts at route modification/building in the past, up until this past week working on this version of the Lakeside Route, I always ended up frustrated and gave up. Now that I understand what I'm doing, I hope to have more updates within the coming weeks. Rudyard had a brick factory once upon a time and I was thinking of incorporating a brick industry along the Atlantic branch. Along with that I am thinking of adding a large Milling Company somewhere around Riverside, it would take incoming grains from the many fields along the line.

I tried to upload these to the file library without luck.
Attached below are the train symbols I came up with for the Lakeside Route along with their descriptions. This was made for fun and is meant to be guide to help anyone out who wants to make Lakeside operation more prototypical. The locomotive roster summary is based on my modified route, and includes the backstories as to why the RW&A chose the power they did.

Uploads need to be in ZIP, RAR or 7zip compression. DOCX will not work. Read the upload instructions for more info.

Is there some way to combine different modifications to the same route? Between Wayne's vegetation mod, the LSW extension, and Rudyard's modifications as well as others, this would make for one large upgrade!

Neat! I have made MANY versions based on the passenger version of the route.




This is a shot I took of one of my long gone projects. I modernized and double tracked the RWA as a subdivision on either the BNSF or CN. I do believe I called this spot "CP Asriel"

RudyardRailroader wrote:I tried to upload these to the file library without luck.
Attached below are the train symbols I came up with for the Lakeside Route along with their descriptions. This was made for fun and is meant to be guide to help anyone out who wants to make Lakeside operation more prototypical. The locomotive roster summary is based on my modified route, and includes the backstories as to why the RW&A chose the power they did.

RW&A Train Symbols.docx

RW&A Locomotive Summary.docx

Looks like you used Microsoft Word to produce these documents. It will also save them in PDF form: select Save As from the File menu and select Save As PDF.

Yes, PDF is better, not everyone uses MS Word.
Then just zip the files and upload the zip.