Mason City Traction

[cnwfan]

I was a little hesitant to post this, but here it goes. After watching a YouTube video on the Iowa Traction Railroad the other week, I thought how cool it would be to run vintage steeple cabs under live wire hauling modern cars like Trinity hoppers, center beam cars, and ethanol tank cars. And, have interchange traffic between the class 1 Canadian Pacific. Steeple cabs and AC4400's... talk about a space time continuum. I thought to myself, this is a route that's begging to be modeled. And the prototype is only 90 minutes from the house!

So let's see... I've got the Sac Northern route... that covers the "under wire" side. The modern stuff can come from any number of the different routes out there. I've got a Google account for the overlays along with Google Earth and Google Maps. So ding ding... introducing the Mason City Traction route. A route that will be almost prototypical, but not to the point that it will strangle development. I changed the name of the route in case Progressive Rail (owners of Iowa Traction) decide to hold me in irons for using their trademarked name and likeness without proper licensing.

20211130194742_1.jpg

First task was to figure out the route origin. After looking over the maps, I decided on the car barn west of town. There is also an interchange with a scrap dealer there. For scenery, I'll just import the low res hgt files and modify as needed. Laid down the main track and aligned with the Google overlay, and it's off to the races. The real issue came down to making the overhead wire convincing. The G-Trax crew did a great job on the Sac Northern route, and my hope was to recreate a reasonable prototypical look with the Sac Northern route assets. And thanks to Rick's help from G-Trax, the above shows my initial test catenary section with a switch. And it actually somewhat matches the Google maps photo.

20211130194941_1.jpg

The above shows the track arrangement around the car barn. It mostly follows the prototype within the constraints of the Train Simulator track system. But it's got the maze of tracks with tight curves... just what every juice jockey wants in an interurban route. The scrap dealer is just above the car barn, and the Canadian Pacific main is above that. From what I can tell, the overhead wire ends at the street between the car barn and the scrap dealer.

My plan is to rough in the anchor assets (track, roads, some buildings for reference) and keep building out in both directions. I didn't realize just how much rail traffic was in the Mason City area until I looked closer at the maps. Both CP and UP have yards there, and there is an abundance of ag related industries connected to all the railroads in the area. So it will really come down to just how far I want to go with this. I have decided early on that the overhead wire will be the last thing to lay down in an area as it is a real pain to work around wire.

So the journey begins. With any luck, in a few years you will be enjoying shoving modern cars around with a steeple cab under the wide open Iowa skies.

Railfanning guide to Mason City
https://railfanguides.us/ia/masoncity/index.htm

YouTube video inspiration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah7LdHi782k

[goddrauG]

The fact that the Iowa Traction Railroad exists the way it does is astonishing to me. Truly a step back in time, with touches of the present.

I think interurbans have always been neat operations and I'm pumped to see where this goes.

[Mbartels50]

This is awesome! I live in Iowa as well and I can not wait for this!

[cnwfan]

Differences in Google Maps

Something I discovered by accident this past week is that there can be image differences between the satellite view and street view within Google Maps. Here's a couple of samples I found while researching the Iowa Traction shop area.

2021-12-11_13-48-43.jpg

Above is the satellite view of the area... I believe circa 2018. This corresponds with the Google overlay in the route editor. Notice I have a couple of areas marked with a 1 or 2. We'll start with position 1. In the satellite view, there is that sharply curved track that ties into the track next to the shop building.

2021-12-11_13-54-20.jpg

Here's the corresponding street view from June 2021. A tank car unloading facility now occupies that space, and it looks like it originates a siding that use to terminate east of the facilities.

2021-12-11_13-58-41.jpg

Here's the corresponding street view from June 2021 for position 2. There is an extra spur next to the main track... for storage I assume. There is also an additional team track between that spur and a fuel / chemical unloading facility. Neither of these are present in the satellite view.

The only reason why I even discovered this is because I wanted to see a street view of the scrap yard entrance... specifically how the track and fence line were laid out. I'm glad I decided to turn around look what was behind me. I just wanted to bring this up for all the route designers out there just in case. I'm glad I did as I now have additional switching opportunities for that little steeple cab.

[cnwfan]

20211219142325_1.jpg

Looking for some assistance. I'm trying to track down trestle bents for the above bridge. The bridge, abutments, and track are from the Stevens Pass route, but those bridges are setup to use steel girders under the wood supports. For this bridge, I do need individual wood trestle bents. I've looked through the assets for Stevens Pass, the SN route, the Maritime Route, along with Sherman Hill. If it comes down to it, I'll build them myself, but if someone happens to know a route that has this type of asset, it would be most appreciated if you could point me in the right direction. Thank you!

[buzz456]

Did you look at Great Northerner bridge assets? It seems like he had something like that. This is from memory.

[cnwfan]

Did you look at Great Northerner bridge assets? It seems like he had something like that. This is from memory.

Thank you Buzz. I looked into his bridge and trestle assets. Couldn't find something that would work with the configuration I had, so I used his 20m open girder bridge with a straight abutment from Stevens Pass. It's took bad that the abutments shown in my prior screen shot are not available separately. Between the ballast embankment and the concrete wings, it was a good fit.

20211220110449_1.jpg

[buzz456]

Let me poke around. I remember them being really tall (wherever I got them from) but I just stuck them way in the ground. I'll see what I can find.

[NS349]

look into the NRD assets, I believe you can find them still in the file library under models or search "NRD".


picture shown with bridge I believe is Stevens Pass asset bridge.

[cnwfan]

I will check into NRD. Thank you for the tip!

[buzz456]

The 'wooden trestles' scenery was what I was thinking about.

http://golden-age-rails.com/rwscenry.html

[cnwfan]

Thank you Buzz. I did a quick look, and while I didn't find separate bents, there are some trestle bits that will come in handy in other places.

[cnwfan]

20220106204720_1.jpg

Built out some quick trestle bents based on an Southern Pacific common standard plan I found on the internet. I was hoping that I could just get by with just the bents and the Stevens Pass bridge, but looks like I'm going to need bent caps and stringers. Took me a bit to figure out how to export out of Blender using the Briage exporter, but it seems to be working. It's been a year or more since I've brought any assets into TS20xx, so there was a bit of a relearning curve. And I haven't touched 2.83 in awhile as the tutorial modeling I'm going through uses 2.93 and 3.00. I really like this Stevens Pass bridge and fits the route nicely. Just need to apply some more "kitbashing" and I think it will be workable.

20211222205634_1.jpg

Also been doing doing a little scenery on the route, concentrating on the scrap yard north of the shops. I'm not that good at scenery (actually pretty bad) and I know that practice makes perfect. I can lay track and roads, but when it comes to scenery I'm all thumbs. So let's keep the laughter to a minimum. As the great minerman146 would say with a little bit of creative license by me, "That is all.. for now".

[goddrauG]

It's looking pretty good!

You seem to have a good grasp on ground textures, which is pretty important for route building.

[cnwfan]

Thank you. There's been a lot of trial and error, but it is getting there.