Rio Grande Southern

[gtrtroger]

Rio Grande Southern

It begins! The terrain has been created. The route has been surveyed and graded. Track laying crews have begun at Durango and Ridgeway; both headed towards a Silver Spur Ceremony in Rico.

In summary, the route will comprise the entire 162.4 miles from Ridgeway Colorado to Durango Colorado. The time period has been a little hard to pin down as there were so many mines and lumber companies started, closed or failed along the route, but, I plan on the period 1890-1930. This covers the "important" periods. As this is a Narrow Gauge route, it will require both the DTG and Milepost Simulations Clear Creek Narrow Gauge Route and the Durango Railroad Historical Society and G-TraX Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Route, as well as all of Britkits Narrow Gauge products, and Marc Nelson's 3D Trees and such. Maybe others, but it's too soon to tell yet....

How long will this take....who knows. Creation of this route is a long-time ambition of mine, so I won't be quitting on it anytime soon. This post will be where I can post updates as the route progresses. So, stay tuned. (Yes, I will backup often!)

[ozinoz]

Los Pino trestle on the Cumbres & Toltec

As an aside, the Friends of the C&TS are doing another RGS photo charter 3 day event on Sept next year (in conjunction with the Narrow gauge convention in Denver at the end of August) DRGW 463 will be painted as per the pic above and there si the possibility of a Goose from Ridgeway and a genuine RGS caboose. I have already booked my flights from Oz )

That will be a monster project - best of luck.

[RAILSOHIO]

I applaud you for your effort! The RGS is my favorite Colorado 3 footer,so I will be watching your progress. I just purchased Clear Creek on the Autumn Sale,so I will have some of the assets. I will have to pick up the Silverton,sometime. You may know there are a few DVD's out there that capture the RGS in its last days. Best of wishes!

[gtrtroger]

Thanks for the support. It's a big project, but I have nothing but time.

[gtrtroger]

Diary Entry #1
Dear Diary,
I began laying track this week and it became immediately apparent that using just the SRTM data, Google Earth imagery, and a marker file with just the various towns, landmarks, etc., was just not going to work. Unlike normal prototype routes, you can't just start laying tracks on top of existing track images. Why? Because there aren't any tracks visible - they have been gone for about 50 years! The only thing remaining are very low resolution scratches on the ground that give you some indication that the track "might" have been located there. So, I've had to pull out my copies of "The RGS Story Rio Grande Southern" (the 7 volume set) and a couple of other maps. I'll have to use these and Google Earth to create some "series" marker files for the route location and import them so the track can be placed properly, and not just guessed at.

Lesson learned!

[RAILSOHIO]

I knew it would be a major undertaking. Much of the route I have been working on for the past 7 years has been gone for 35 years. And I have trackcharts ,that help a lot. I do not know if they are available for the RGS,but I would look into it. I have gone back and made MANY corrections on track placement.

[gtrtroger]

I have good track maps......