Powder River Basin

[sykartracer]

Was checking out this forum (heard about this route from Anthony Wood of Searchlight Simulations), and I have to say that compared to the level of detail in your Cajon-Mojave Route, tomcat, this looks absolutely amazing. You could honestly put some of the current partner programmers on notice with how good this looks. I have to wait til next week before I can buy Tehachapi so that I may enjoy this route, finally. Though, I do have a question for you tomcat, regarding the four files you posted on page 33 for phase 6. If I install the three files, am I alright to install the 02212020 file as well, or do I not need to? And are future route updates installed on top of what's already been installed?

[Tomcat]

...Though, I do have a question for you tomcat, regarding the four files you posted on page 33 for phase 6. If I install the three files, am I alright to install the 02212020 file as well, or do I not need to? And are future route updates installed on top of what's already been installed?

Thanks for the kind words. In regard to the 4 files on page 33 you only need the first three which includes everything I had done up to that date, the 4th file was for folks who had already downloaded a previous release so they would not have to download a full 3 gigs again.

I don't know exactly how the next phase will be released yet. The problem is the terrain folder which is 98% of the size of the route. Since page 33 I have touched a great number of the terrain tiles, so an update might turn out to be almost as big as a full release. I'll see how it turns out and if the size is smaller than I expect I'll do an update, which you can just install over what is already there. If, however, the size turns out to be comparable to the full route then I might as well just do a full release again, which can also just be installed over the existing installation if you already have it.

FYI, next release is later this year when I have all the track infrastructure in place.

PS Let me know if you have any problems with Mediafire. One person did a couple months back and I put up a temporary file on another hosting service. I did not have a problem downloading from Mediafire at that time but I did experience an error a couple weeks later and then it mysteriously worked a few days after that.

[sykartracer]

Thank you Tomcat for answering my question. I installed the three files like you said (then added the scenarios found on RWA for extra fun). And I tried the supplied standard scenario just to see how it is...and sweet mother of railroading! if I didn't know any better, I'd wager you are/were a railroad employee who has driven around Powder River and Cajon-Mojave. But I did have a question regarding the Reno Junction Bottleneck: When approaching the KMC CTC point, The track profile shows a signal, but I didn't see one in front of me. I don't know exactly how to add a photo to my post for reference, so I don't know if I explained it well enough.

[Tomcat]

...But I did have a question regarding the Reno Junction Bottleneck: When approaching the KMC CTC point, The track profile shows a signal, but I didn't see one in front of me. I don't know exactly how to add a photo to my post for reference, so I don't know if I explained it well enough.

I know the exact location you speak of. There is no signal there in real life but I had to add a signal that I buried a few feet underground in order to get the AI to behave. There are many other places that would require the same treatment but since I'm not convinced that I have the best solution, I have avoided signalling those until I get all of the track work done for the entire route. If you come to a stop and then wait till the AI service is about 100 feet past the switch you'll see the points align for the player train and it is then safe to proceed. It takes a bit of time to get the player train moving from a stop so even if you start moving as soon as the AI clears the switch you'll have plenty of time for the points to align before you get to the switch.

Never worked for any railroad. Everything I've done comes from Google Earth, track charts, timetables or sites like "railpicturesDOTnet".

[Tomcat]

Working on the Southern edge of Nebraska's Pine Ridge before moving onto to the farm land that makes up a sizable chunk of the scenery on the way to Alliance.

Screenshot_Powder River Basin_42.50293--103.29920_15-38-49.jpg

[gtrtroger]

Be still my heart.....

[BoostedFridge]

Working on the Southern edge of Nebraska's Pine Ridge before moving onto to the farm land that makes up a sizable chunk of the scenery on the way to Alliance.

Screenshot_Powder River Basin_42.50293--103.29920_15-38-49.jpg

Great stuff! The scenery on this section of the route looks fantastic! You make it hard for someone to have a favorite part

[CN2899]

i ve not drove the whole route yet and yer adding more it looks spectacular

[chrisreb]

Seems to be getting better and better

[Tomcat]

Thanks all!

You make it hard for someone to have a favorite part

I can't decide either so I'll just say that whatever I'm working on at the moment is my favorite part.

A bit of terrain painting and detail work in the same area.

Screenshot_Powder River Basin_42.50900--103.30298_07-47-59.jpg

Screenshot_Powder River Basin_42.50631--103.30479_07-50-46.jpg

Screenshot_Powder River Basin_42.50666--103.30383_07-51-21.jpg

[inn1964]

Merry Christmas and thanks for all your hard work!

[Tomcat]

Merry Christmas and thanks for all your hard work!

Thank you and Merry Christmas to you as well!

[Tomcat]

It has been quite some time since a meaningful update, so to let you know that I'm still plugging away...

Union Pacific's Powder River Division is almost done though it has been the most frustrating time wrestling with the easement curve bug that breaks the track - on just about every single curve on this division. Screenshot shows the 9 mile gap I have to connect before it's done, then it will be on to the signals and track markers for this division.

And in relatively good news I've managed to get a good 'distant scenery' run done for the first time in over a year. Ever since every error was put in the "Out of Memory' category I have not been able to successfully complete the 'Distant Scenery' function without the OOM error cropping up in the first 10 to 15 minutes of a run. This was starting to really annoy me as some of the terrain should be visible out to a couple dozen miles on the UP's Powder River Division and BNSF's Valley sub and there were far too many places where the terrain on the horizon looked as is someone had taken scissors and cut off chunks.

Originally I had thought that maybe I had not extracted terrain out far enough from the tracks but upon flying towards these areas the 'missing' terrain would render as I got close so the only remedy would be running the 'Distant Terrain' function to have all of the extracted terrain show. So for the past year I have been running the Distant Terrain about once a month just to see if I would get lucky with a complete run with no success until last week when I stumbled upon a Steam forum post about another problem where someone suggested upping the paging file size in WIn10. After a bit of research on Microsoft forums I decided to give it a try. I was surprised to find out that the default paging file size in my Win10 installation was set to only 4 gigs so I upped it to a starting size of 40 gigs and a max setting of 140 gigs. First try at distant scenery after the adjustment took 1hr 35min and completed with no errors and with no odd things happening to the textures as had been the case in the past even with successful completions. Not bad for a route that encompasses around 12,000 square miles.

Almost.jpg

[gtrtroger]

Amazing as always!

[AmericanSteam]

Thanks for the update. I try to run this at least a few times a month.