Sierra Northern Railway

[CArailroader]

For the last few days I have been re-creating the Sierra Northern Railway, Sacramento Division in Train Simulator 18. The division goes from Woodland to the Port of Sacramento, via West Sacramento a little over 16 miles. I feel I'm now I'm at a point where I can show some screenshots of my work so far. I only have a portion of Woodland scenery done on the North side of the tracks from the end of the line to just passed the Road 102 crossing. The Sacramento Division started out as the Woodland Branch for the Sacramento Northern Railroad. Eventually it went to UP through the UP-WP Merger. In 1991 the Yolo Shortline Railroad was created and bought the Woodland Branch from UP. In 2003, the Sierra Railroad merged with the Yolo Shortline to create the Sierra Northern Railway. Today the Sierra Northern has three Divisions: Sacramento, represented here, Oakdale, which runs along the original Sierra Railroad RoW tup to Jamestown, and Mendocino, which is commonly referred to as the Skunk Train Route, a route which can be found here on the RWA Library by David Elsner (dleeboy).

Today the Sacramento Division handles freight on the weekdays and passenger trains on the weekends. There are several industries in Woodland, interchange with UP in West Sacramento, and switching at the Port. I plan to recreate the line as faithfully as possible using google maps overlay. Unfortunately, the terrain data is completely wrong (I triple checked the coordinates) and is causing me to do it by hand. The route is slow moving, but lots of switching to do. Max speed on the line is 10mph.

The end of the line, MP 16.67, looking to the East. These are all used as storage tracks

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The E Street Crossing and East end of the Storage Tracks.

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The Passenger Car Spur, main, and run-around tracks with the cannery behind the passenger cars

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The shop track

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Pioneer Ave

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[CArailroader]

The Prime Lead

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This is Prime Conduit, maker of plastic conduits.
The left track is a company that repairs mechanical reefers, the center track is prime, the left track is just a spur.

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Private crossing

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Road 102 Crossing

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[ET44C4]

Great work so far!

[CArailroader]

Great work so far!

No thank you! You've created the first SERA repaint! Soon it'll be a matter of time before we have the whole fleet!! (which isnt that large.) I will try to work on a repaint here and there in between route building. Still need do the RSC GP9 and DTG genset in our "Bumble Bee" colors. The Santa Fe G-trax passenger cars into our Rivertrain blue and gold and while not accurate I think I'll do the DTG GP40-2 in the blue and gold as well. It's supposed to be a GP7 low nose but we don't have one and I really like the model.

[ET44C4]

My pleasure my friend! Can't wait to see how your repaints will turn out. The SERA has some interesting paint schemes.

[jpetersjr]

I have a lot of good freeware assets located on my website.

I think some of them would look great on this route.

[bloodonfire3]

Great start on this route. I myself started this route in TS2017, but abandoned it after I switched back to ORTS. Track work are spot on, the roads could use a little more work (not your fault) and a fantastic start to the scenery. Keep it up!

[CArailroader]

I have a lot of good freeware assets located on my website.

I think some of them would look great on this route.

I will definitely use some of them. Especially the tractors once it comes to the many farms the railroad passes by.

Great start on this route. I myself started this route in TS2017, but abandoned it after I switched back to ORTS. Track work are spot on, the roads could use a little more work (not your fault) and a fantastic start to the scenery. Keep it up!

Thank you. I know the roads aren't the best but I do what I can, and the roads aren't the focal point so I'm not totally worried about it. Woodland and West Sac will take the longest. Everything else is farm land so that will fly by.

The great thing is anything I miss on Google maps, I'll see when I work the train.

[bloodonfire3]

Thank you.

You're very welcome.

I know the roads aren't the best but I do what I can, and the roads aren't the focal point so I'm not totally worried about it.

I totally understand.. My comment about roads was more about touching on the lack of accurate road scenery, but I digress. This is a train simulator, after all, right?

Woodland and West Sac will take the longest. Everything else is farm land so that will fly by.

Take your time, don't rush anything. Track first, roads and scenery later. Speaking of track, about how much have you done/plan to do?

The great thing is anything I miss on Google maps, I'll see when I work the train.

That's so very true! That's the beauty of this simulator (or other simulators, for that matter - at least the ones with somewhat usable editors) is that there are multiple opportunities for vantage points to figure things out.
Anyways, have fun!

[CArailroader]

I haven't had much time to work on the route lately. And today I wanted to make the passenger consist (to the best we got for now.) Using the ATSF lightweight coaches by G-trax, I repainted them into the Sacramento RiverTrain's Blue and Gold. I used only the coach and the diner. Since we don't have open air cars, the coaches will do. Once I get the Chicago Racetrack, I will repaint the low-poly gallery car into the Hi-Level diner. I thank ET44C for repainting the ATSF GP20 into the SERA 48 and 50.

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[bloodonfire3]

That is nice work on those coaches! As for open air cars, I would use 40-50 foot gondolas as temporary filler cars. Keep it up!

[ET44C4]

Great work!

[bloodonfire3]

It's been a little over 7-8 months since an update, but are you still tinkering with this? Just checking in.

[CArailroader]

It's been a little over 7-8 months since an update, but are you still tinkering with this? Just checking in.

No update and I haven't worked on it in a while. The route isn't totally dead. However, I'm now an engaged man (that took some planning) and then we've been planning and preparing to move into our new apartment which will happen at the end of the week. And on top of all that there is something called a wedding we've started working on.

Life is great but a little hectic right now. I'm hopeful that once we get settled in, I can get back to it.

[bloodonfire3]

I totally understand where you're coming from. Things are hectic for me as well (isn't it the same for us all?) as I recently started working for Greyhound Lines, Inc. Good luck on your plans, buddy!