C&O Alleghany Mountain - Coming soon

[Toripony]

Apologies then Tori, I jumped the gun a bit (false start - 5 yard penalty), so, I'll wait patiently like eveyone else and look forward to early next year.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

No, MY apologies... for another delay in a string of many.

Tori

[Toripony]

My pic of the day......

[RSPaul]

Dear Tori,

I never normally post on forums, but wanted to break my rule to congratulate you for this great route. I have followed your progress for a while.
Thanks so much for your support we really appreciate it.

Paul Jackson Esq OBE
CEO RailSimulator.com

[ozinoz]

Congratulations to Tori - it is a fantastic looking route and I am looking forward to running some heavy mallet hauled coal drags up the grades. Was pleased to see in the route diagram that there are remnants of the steam age still present - turntable, ash pits etc. Really looking forward to this one...

If it is not out of place, would also like to say a big colonial to RW's owner - RSPaul. It was good of you to pass on your thoughts on this route, given all fo the RW bashing that unfortunately invades these places (although thankfully not so much this one). There are some amazing things comming to the non UK world of RW, through the hard work and dedication of a handfull of enthusiasts. This fantastic route, the P&LE and Big Horn Sub routes just keep getting better and better with each release and there is Dick Cowans ever growing stable of US steam, including 2 truck Shay on the horizon, not to mention the great work of the RW team of artists (but the less said about diseasels the better ) Thanks for your belief in the product.

from Down Under

G

[Toripony]

Thank you for your post, Mr. Jackson. I am truly honored that my work attracted your attention and is deemed worthy of such unexpected praise. I do hope it will contribute to the continued growth of Railworks in the US.

Sincerely,
Tori

[landnrailroader]

Looks like it is going to be an excellent route. I had played with this one when RW first came out as a learning experience, and
I am glad somebody that has a lot of skill is bringing it out.

Jerry's run is mentioned. In one of the history books I have, I believe it is one called "Yonder comes the Train" there is a good
explanation of this location. The construction engineer was well known for his ability to build bridges by simply looking at the
location and mentally computing the requirements. Likewise he could look at a cut or fill, and estimate within a few cubic
yards how much material was required to fill, or be removed for a cut. During the War of Northern Aggression he was a
military engineer assigned to a CSA irregular, John S. Mosby, I believe it was, and as he took his last breath, his old commander
was at the bedside and said, "he has built his last bridge".

I've been over the route by passenger train, the "George Washington" a number of times between 1965-1971 when as a
Southern employee, I had a C&O business pass good between Alexandria, VA and either Cincinnati or Louisville. However, we
passed this area at night either way. Today's Cardinal operates through here, at least in part, in the daytime and there
has been a number of recommendations that a dome car should be used, at least during the fall colors periodd. I have also
driven in to the east portals of the twin summit tunnels, which is easy to do by paved road, off I-64 right at the state
line. I-64 also passes over the line just a few meters west of the west portal of White Sulphur Springs tunnel.

One of the oddities of this line was that it took less power to move loads east, than it did to move empties west as the
eastward grade was about 1/2 of the westward grade.

One minor error. The tunnel indicated as "Rockland Tunnel" is called "Second Creek Tunnel" in the 1/08 profile. This
group of three tunnels is fairly new. East to West they are Second Creek (2078'), Ft.Spring (2078') and Manns (919').
Second Creek and Ft. Spring are double track, while Manns is two seperate parallel tunnels. Second Creek and
Ft.Spring and I believe one of the Manns tunnels were built during the 2nd World War to expedite material, and used
government labor. If you examine this area in Google Earth, it is easily seen that there is an old right of way that starts
at the east portal of Second Creek Tunnel and winds around two bends of the river, crossing it once, and then aligning
with the northmost tunnel at Manns. When the other tunnels were bored, the track then ran straight through the two
bends of the river, with the north track aligning to the north, or probably the old, tunnel at Manns, and the new line
going straight through then new 2nd tunnel at Manns.

Just east of the summit, at Lewis Tunnel, there also used to be two tunnels, with the east portal of one much further
east than the presently used one, but one of these has been abandoned.

J. H. Sullivan
(aka landnrailroader)

[Toripony]

Looks like it is going to be an excellent route. I had played with this one when RW first came out as a learning experience, and
I am glad somebody that has a lot of skill is bringing it out.
..............SNIP.......................new 2nd tunnel at Manns.

Just east of the summit, at Lewis Tunnel, there also used to be two tunnels, with the east portal of one much further
east than the presently used one, but one of these has been abandoned.

J. H. Sullivan
(aka landnrailroader)

You know the route very well! The amazing story of the Jerrry's Run fill is certainly lost outside of a couple of books. Thanks for reminding me of the tunnel names; saves me looking them up. Looking toward future work, do you happen to know if the scales at Riffe/Wolf Creek are located on a siding or on the #2 mainline track? My track chart isn't clear on that and I don't remember.

You've explained why I was puzzled by my terrain data when I was grading the route at the east end of the Lewis tunnels. It didn't appear there was room for two tunnels and I had to widen the cut to give the proper seperation between them. I now remember having ridden through the old long tunnel once (as a road) and seeing that length difference. I probably won't undo what I already have, though.

The grading of the route was the most influencing factor with the route's alignment, however, I'm not so sure the west grade requires LESS power than the east. Pushers were never needed on the east side to return empties. Typically, I see about 2/3's the power on a westbound as on an eastbound loaded coal drag, plus those westbounds often contain more hoppers per train. Though most of the traffic and breakdown problems occur on the slow winding climb of the west slope, they did used to have the occasional hangup on the steeper 1.3% east grade.

I mentioned future work... if I EVER get the scenery done on this section (the first beta is still missing a lot of vegetation), version 2 of this route will include the east slope through the Clifton Forge yards. The Westvaco paper mill at Covington will get special attention. Version 3, if I survive that long, will finish the west end of the division and continue through the yards at Hinton.

Thanks to Michael Stephan the route now has brand new weather and distant terrain blueprints that eliminate the distant white mountains while keeping gorgeous blue skies! Hmmm.... I seem to remember someone at RSC saying they could not do anything about this problem.... ???
Combined with the coming higher detail distant views in RSC's "Technical Update" the quality of the view in the mountains should be much more satisfactory.

Here's a shot of the river crossing area between Second Creek and Ft. Spring tunnels that you spoke of. Indeed, where the floods of '85 and '94 didn't wash it away, you can still see the old roadbed and bridge piers of the original alignment. Many people have walked these tunnels and bridge to/from Ft. Spring to Ronceverte, a five mile level walk vs. a 7 mile hike over a mountain.

And, a new night-time shot..........



Tori

[micaelcorleone]

Hmmm.... I seem to remember someone at RSC saying they could not do anything about this problem.... ???
Combined with the coming higher detail distant views in RSC's "Technical Update" the quality of the view in the mountains should be much more satisfactory.

The Technical Update will among other things render a much greater area of terrain around the player. So I think this'll be the solution to the distant mountain problem.
By the way, nice shots.

[Toripony]

uhhmmm... whadaya think, guys... is this exceeding load restrictions? Hey, I didn't load it, I'm just driving the train!

[arizonachris]

uhhmmm... whadaya think, guys... is this exceeding load restrictions? Hey, I didn't load it, I'm just driving the train!

LOL, I think the chap running the loader needs to be sitting upright, not laying down taking a nap.

[Toripony]

Hey, does anyone know why this pic I posted is loading so incredibly slowly? Like all my others, I posted it at Photobucket and linked it here using the [Img] tag. The only thing different about this pic is that I used the tools at PhotoB. to crop it first. I can't see why that would make it behave this way, but it's my only conclusion ??????????

Tori

[Hawk]

Probably because it's 743 KB. That's rather large for an image, especially one that's only 686 X 458.

Try re-saving that image as a jpg on your computer instead of a png and then re-upload it to Photobucket.
See if that helps.

I downloaded the png and using Irfanview I saved it as a jpg at 80% and it's now 63 KB on my computer. That's quite a difference.

jpg is a much better compressed format than png, especially when posting in a forum or on a web site.

[Toripony]

Probably because it's 743 KB. That's rather large for an image, especially one that's only 686 X 458.

Try re-saving that image as a jpg on your computer instead of a png and then re-upload it to Photobucket.
See if that helps.

I downloaded the png and using Irfanview I saved it as a jpg at 80% and it's now 63 KB on my computer. That's quite a difference.

jpg is a much better compressed format than png, especially when posting in a forum or on a web site.

Ok, it sounds like the problem is the way PB is saving the edited file. Wonderful editing tools they have there, but I guess I won't be using them again. Sighhhhhh....

Longing for the world that used to WORK,
Tori

[Toripony]

Ok, fixed the picture. Just trying to goof off a little and created more work.... sighhhhhhhhh

ROUTE PROGRESS NEWS

Well, packaging has been a frustrating 5 day experience which (of course) turned up a couple of issues that I didn't like. It would have worked but I don't want to put something out there with junk in it that I can't troubleshoot and support. So, I am now about 3 days behind schedule. GOOD NEWS, though is that I now have it cleaned up, loaded and running in my test/live environment. I just learned of the new SMM signals (yea, I've had my head buried, lol) and have decided I need to upgrade them. There are only a few so if all goes well I should be able to relax and drive/test the route for a day or two starting tonight.

Right now, I am guessing I will have it ready Wednesday or Thursday this week. Sorry, but I would rather do this right than to meet some inconsequential deadline.


Tori

[Hawk]

498 KB is better than 743 KB.

You did notice that the right side of the image got cropped off, didn't you? That's because you linked to an image that was 1023 pixels wide. The forum software automatically crops images larger than about 800 wide, but folks can right click on the image and click on 'View image' and see it full size.
If you attach the image to the post from your hard drive, the forum software will resize the image but not crop it. Then folks just have to left click on the image to view it full size.