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Route Builders Journal - Version 2.0

George Lucas, creator and proprietor of the Star Wars franchise, once said that movies are not finished, they are simply abandoned. The same could be held true for any MSTS route (or model railroad) that has ever been built. No matter how much you put into it, there is always something more to be done. Maybe it was a road that was not quite where it was supposed to be. Or maybe a model was not up to snuff, but you had to leave it because there was nothing else available at the time.

When I first started the W&A Sub for MSTS over two years ago, I was a bit overwhelmed by the complexities of building a route. I pretty much rushed through it, laying 50 miles of track (with no scenery) in just a few days. What I ended up with was realistic as far as the rail-route goes, but everything else was mess. I was constantly having track database errors and Route Editor crashes. About three months after I started, I scrapped version 1.0 and walked away from route building altogether.

Last December, I started playing around with the idea again of building my "home" route in MSTS. A better computer helped matters a bit, and then things really got rolling when Windows Vista came out. Despite all of Vista's bad press, it did do one thing for MSTS - make the Route Editor more stable. I could now build mountains and lay tracks without half-a-dozen crashes per hour, so off I went on the route-building oddessy. However, there still was one eight-hundred-pound gorrila in the room to be contended with - MSTS II. At the time, I figured I had to get the route pretty far along in a short amount of time, because when MSTS II arrives, what would be the point in building the route in the old version of the software?

This time, I took a bit of a different approach than with the first version. Number one, I built up the roads and scenery along with the track. It takes longer, but it helps to keep you focused on the details of a particular area. Number two, I would release routes and patches as I went along. This would at least get some of the route online and distributed before II, and I could get feedback and improvement suggestions at the same time. Most importantly, I decided to move away from using only MSTS default objects on the route and either custom build objects or find acceptable substitutes from Train-Sim.com.

All-in-all, the route building experience this time has been much better, and for the most part, i've gotten lots of positive feed-back from end users on it. However, there are things that I wish I had done differently. Some things I had no idea that they could be done much better at the time the route was being constructed. Take roads for instance. Just about like everything else in MSTS I, the default roads are pathetic. However, I resisted using an add-on like New Roads because it adds so much more to have to keep up with in the Route Editor and it's another add-on that the end user will have to install to run this route. But, in the end, it just makes plain sense to "upgrade" the route to New Roads. The W&A route is heavily intertwined with highways along it's 138 mile length, and the roads will be seen in a lot screenshots. So as of this writing, the route is being stripped bare of the default roads and redone with the New Roads shapes and textures.

The route is also being stripped of all signals and interactives at this point. Those will be checked to insure the proper signal type is being installed for each location (i.e. permissive, absolute, searchlight, type-G, etc). The crossing signals are also being reworked. CSX and it's predecessors used several different types of crossing signals, so some crossings do not have the same signals as others. Milepost are being reworked and replaced on positions as known on the prototype.

The old saying goes "the devil is in the details". While frame-rates make it hard to be to concerned with detail in MSTS, there are some things that I am going back into on the route and changing. A few structures around the Calhoun area have default object substitutes that I am changing to custom made objects. Then there are the small things, things you may not even notice such as fencing, traffic lights, road signs, and such. To most, these things may not matter, but overall, they contribute to the overall atmosphere and placement of the route.

Last but not least, version II, as i'm calling it, will be the definitive version for this route. No more Beta's, no more upgrade patches to deal with every two weeks. This will be the core route, running at just over 70 miles (excluding the Cartersville DTC), from north of Tunnel Hill to the south end of Emerson siding. There may be minor tweaks from time to time, or update patches to fix a problem if required. However, releasing the W&A as a full version is not the end of the story. There are still 63 more miles to be modeled. I'm planning to do these as part of "expansion packs", twenty miles or so at a time, every month to month-and-a-half. I don't know if the route will make it to Tilford Yard (Atlanta) before MSTS II, but for now, the route will keep on rolling!

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Route Builders Journal - Trackwork

For a free-lance route, trackwork is pretty straightforward. However, for a route that emulates a prototype railroad, things get a bit more complicated. Techniques for laying track vary by builder to builder, but here is the technique that I like to use.

First off, i've got to get some references to the prototype area i'm wanting to model. I've rail-fanned for years along the Western and Atlantic route, so i'm pretty familiar with the scenery, the lay off the land, and the trackwork along the route. Anything gaps that I have in memory about specific areas are made up by photos of the prototype area.

Next, I go to online resources, such as Mapquest and Google Earth, to get info on how the tracks are routed. Google Earth is an indispensable resource for route builders. You can take measurements of straights and curves and get topographic information that will allow you to fill in the tracks and surrounding scenery.

As i'm laying down the tracks, I have Google Earth open (on another screen) so that I can take measurements on the fly. I try to stay as close as possible to the length-wise measurements on the prototype to keep the route length to real world size. If it takes 30 minutes to run a section of the route on the prototype, it should take 30 minutes in the simulator. For curves, I use simple geometry to make decisions on what curved sections to use on a particular curve. Again, the length of the curve must match the length of the prototype, so sometimes you have to use a combination of curve radius pieces to get the proper length. Although it doesn't always work perfectly, I may also overcompensate or undercompensate a curve to get the route pointed back in the right direction if I am off course.

Hills, fills, and cuts are a bit tricker to decide how to use. Google Earth does not give precise track elevation, as it get's it's data from topography maps that are concerned mostly with the lay of the surrounding areas. It's in the area of building fills and hills that first hand knowledge of the route is invaluable. It also helps to get advice from someone more knowledgable, such as someone who works for the actual railroad you are working on. For instance, from a road driver's perspective, you would never know that Hall's Hill even exists. However, an engineer for CSX told me that that is one of the hills that engineers really have to stay on the throttle to make up without stalling.

Last, after the tracks are in place, I use them (and any nearby road sections) to emulate the topography surrounding the tracks. One of the major shortcoming of MSTS is that when you lay a track piece, it is flat on the ground. Anyone who has been around railroads for any length of time knows that most railroads are elevated on the ballast, anywhere from four to sixty feet on the W&A. So, I try elevate the tracks to give it a more realistic appearance. I use a 45 degree angle for fills, 25 degree for areas where I want the tracks only slightly elevated above the surrounding areas, and 5 degree angles for "flat" areas like towns and cities. Cuts are basically the same angles, only in reverse.

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Route Builders Journal - Building Bridges

As a railfan, next to sunny fall days with clear blue skies, there is nothing more exciting in prototype railroading than railroad bridges. There is just something about seeing thousands of tons of moving steel crossing over a river or gap on tiny paths of metal suspened high in the air.

Granted that there are none as spectacular as the New River Gorge or The Ten, the Western and Atlantic route has more than a few interesting bridges of it's own. From the "cobbled together" look of the Resaca rail bridge to the 250 meter span of the Etowah River bridge (south of Cartersville), the W&A has plenty of action for the bridge affeciando.

For the route, bridges such as the Etowah River bridge are pretty straight forward in their construction. Two 15 foot tall I-beams make up the main truss, with photo-realistic textures coating the outside. The deck is made of individual boxed rectangles, also photorealistically textured to look like a rail-tie that CSX commonly uses on it's bridges. The decks on these bridges usually have ballast on them, so no special construction is needed to simulate bridge tracks. The bottom trusses and laddders are flat ploygons that employ alpha painting to simulate the steel pieces and the spaces between them. And finally, the piers are simple boxes that are tapered at the top and textured with photos from the actual bridge.

In addition to the plate-girder type bridge, the W&A also has small concrete bridges (for crossing small streams and culverts), and Interstate Highway type bridges that look more like a road-traffic bridge than anything a railroad would use.

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Route Builders Journal - Cartersville

Protoype Info: Cartersville is vitually a railfan's paradise. Located at the mid-point between Chattanooga and Atlanta, Cartersville sees around 40-60 trains per day. Also located in or near the town are three wye's, three small rail yards, and north of town is an important junction with the K&A Subdivision (better known as the Etowah Subdivision). There are two industrial areas to the west and south of town, and plenty of industries to keep the local switch crews busy, including Plant Bowen, Trinity Rail Car, and Budweiser Brewery.

The W&A Route: Cartersville takes plenty of time and patience to model in order to get the look and feel of the town. About five trips in all were made to pick up textures of the downtown area and get a general feel for the placement of buildings, roads, and vegetation.

On the route, the town is sure to tax even the best computers and graphics card. Over three hundred buildings populate the tile on which the town is built, as well as around 500 other scenery objects and roads. Unfortunately, due to the fact that i'm trying to stay within a 1000 object per tile limit in the most populated areas, Cartersville will never really be "finished". I believe though that through realistic textures and custom built scenery, the look and feel of Cartersville is quite realistic.

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