Smokebox: Central Pacific Railroad #60 "Jupiter" 4-4-0

[harryadkins]

I would love to see a modernized version of your 4-4-0. Due to weight restrictions, the Southern Railway ran their 4-4-0's until the end of steam on the Mobile Division.

Harry

[mrennie]

I would love to see a modernized version of your 4-4-0. Due to weight restrictions, the Southern Railway ran their 4-4-0's until the end of steam on the Mobile Division.

Harry

That would be nice, but it would have to be an entirely new model and there would need to be a route for it to run on.

[PickeringLumberCorp]

A good Southern Railway route has not yet been done (I already know about Saluda, which is a great little route, but I’m thinking of longer routes). Basically untapped potential. And the Southern had some of the most beautiful steam locomotives of the twentieth century.

Okay, I’m gonna get back on topic for now

[trainboi1]

Thanks for the patch; I enjoy the new freight car views. Something of a lost perspective, compared to modern trains.
A couple things that the general public may find interesting:
First, Stanford's private car is now in the NSRM's restoration shop, and they've stabilized the car, rebuilt the end platforms and removed some of the sheathing where it is most damaged. I do not recall offhand the era to which it will be restored, but whatever the case it's one of the few surviving cars that was at Promontory and so it's really special to see it preserved.
Second, though I still don't have the complete list of what was at Promontory (the list is in the archives at the CSRM), I've been made aware that not only were the Jupiter and 119 in attendance but so were the Storm and an unknown one of 119's sisters. With these two packs, therefore, we have four of the seven locomotives on site on the day of the line's completion.

As for a modern 4-4-0, those would have to essentially be new models. An example: to model the Jupiter ca. 1902 as GLG&N No. 1, Mike would need to enlarge the tender tank, add counterweights on the rear driver, build new domes, stack, and smokebox front, extend the smokebox, build a new pilot, add air lines (which would change the cab setup pretty notably, and in ways that varied from loco to loco), add locomotive brakes, and (in the case of Jupiter) model antelope antlers for the headlight. Even on what is literally the same locomotive, that amounts to replacing almost every superficial part of the locomotive as well as some vital ones. For SOU prototypes it would be another story entirely. I may put a couple of my more modern/more fitting 4-4-0s in eventually (in my time I've built YV Nos. 21 and 23, respectively an ex-Wabash locomotive of the late 1890s and a 1907 ALCo) but even these would need a pretty extreme rebuild to accurately resemble the loco shown.

[buzz456]

There is a old route in the library called "Decatur Junction" that while it says it's CSX and NS I believe it depicts part of the old Southern Railway.

[harryadkins]

Thanks for your response, Michael. I didn't realize the Southern Railway model would be a totally new model. Thank you for your excellent work and your involvement on this forum. Best of luck with your future projects.

Harry

[mrennie]

Thanks for your response, Michael. I didn't realize the Southern Railway model would be a totally new model. Thank you for your excellent work and your involvement on this forum. Best of luck with your future projects.

Harry

Thanks Harry, I appreciate it very much

[Juxen]

Hey all,

Just wanted to say I finally bought both the Jupiter and 119, and they are superb! I've also tried to install trainboi's reskins, but I keep having an error with the pilot. Maybe the texture is wrong on my computer? It's on both the reskin of the Jupiter & Co, and the reskins for the extra CP & UP engines. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[mrennie]

Hey all,

Just wanted to say I finally bought both the Jupiter and 119, and they are superb! I've also tried to install trainboi's reskins, but I keep having an error with the pilot. Maybe the texture is wrong on my computer? It's on both the reskin of the Jupiter & Co, and the reskins for the extra CP & UP engines. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I've tried it myself just now and it shows up ok:

20181007235935_1.jpg

After extracting the files, you should have Jupiter's reskinned textures in the following folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RailWorks\Assets\Smokebox\Jupiter\RailVehicles\Steam\Jupiter\Default\Engine 2\Textures

and the ones for the pilot should be like this:

pilot.jpg

[Juxen]

Ah, I found the issue. Files were correct, but the antialiasing option was not. As a general note, leaving your settings on 4x anti-aliasing for the textures results in my messed-up picture. 8x allows the textures to work as intended.

[mrennie]

Ah, I found the issue. Files were correct, but the antialiasing option was not. As a general note, leaving your settings on 4x anti-aliasing for the textures results in my messed-up picture. 8x allows the textures to work as intended.

That's odd, I use 4x AA. Maybe there's something strange going on with your video card drivers?

[Juxen]

That's odd, I use 4x AA. Maybe there's something strange going on with your video card drivers?

I wouldn't doubt it; this laptop's been weird ever since getting it in January. Oh, well. Still, at least RW looks prettier with these settings.

[BalloonFish]

Hello everyone,

First off, I just need to add my appreciation to Smokebox for his trio of 19th century American locos and the route to go with them - some of the best and most enjoyable content for TS that I've experienced. To add on to that, more thanks to everyone involved in the Cheyenne expansion route to run them on. Both the engines and the routes are an incredible achievement of historical research (something I do have some experience of!)

I'm just here to say that I downloaded trainboi's Jupiter reskins this evening and am having exactly the same texture problems with the pilot as Juxen experienced. Unfortunately none of the anti-aliasing or texture filtering settings make any difference at my end. For some reason all the reskins work fine (pilot texture aside) except for #84 'Gazelle', which just makes TS lock up and irretreviably freeze when it is placed into a scenario - it's done this each of the three times I've tried it.

I'm pretty sure this will be some driver/other issue at my end, but I thought I'd report it and see if anyone had any other thoughts.

[BalloonFish]

Hello again,

I've been having another crack at sorting out the pilot texture glitch I've been experiencing with trainboi's repaints, and I think one of the actual texture files is corrupted.

The textures display fine apart from the new red-painted pilot, which appears black with white/coloured flashes between the bars.

This is how the three pilot texture files appear (as thumbnails) once converted to .dds:



Comparing them with the original blue pilot from Smokebox, there's something very different (to say the least!) about Jup_Pilot_nmc. In .dds it looks like this:



and when converted to .bmp it looks like this:



I don't know the ins-and-outs of how the sim goes about applying the textures, but I think it's reading Jup_PIlot_nmc and applying it as mostly black.

The winter version of the red-pilot texture works fine. I've swapped Smokebox's original blue pilot textures into the folder for the repainted engines and that also displays perfectly (but blue, of course...).

I have re-downloaded the UP/CP repaint pack and trainboi's repaints of the original Jupiter/Storm/Whirlwind/Leviathan quartet and in both cases the textures in the zip file turn out the same way - with Jup_PIlot_nmc ending up looking squashed and scrambled when compared to its equivalent in Smokebox's original, and his equivalent textures for UP119 and the Ten-Wheeler (where Pilot_nmc appears to be the same as Pilot_nm).

[buzz456]

Just as a FYI if you have your settings on high your computer will be looking at the nm version and it won't matter what the nmc looks like. I'm not at what point if looks at the nmc as you turn your graphics settings down.