FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress

I think I am approaching the 50% mark. Almost all the track is down, starting to place eye candy. I'll let the FRISCO expert Mr. Coonskin explain and comment on the screen shots.

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FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress [View All], lfriddle, 11:52 PM, Oct-02-02, (0) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-03-02, 00:18 AM, (1) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-03-02, 01:58 PM, (2) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, IcyFire, Oct-03-02, 03:26 PM, (4) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-03-02, 06:17 PM, (5) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, enocell, Oct-03-02, 03:09 PM, (3) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-03-02, 06:22 PM, (6) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, lfriddle, Oct-03-02, 07:46 PM, (7) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-03-02, 08:28 PM, (8) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, sniper297, Oct-03-02, 10:49 PM, (9) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-03-02, 11:22 PM, (10) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, lfriddle, Oct-04-02, 00:52 AM, (11) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-04-02, 01:50 AM, (12) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, lfriddle, Oct-04-02, 12:27 PM, (13) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-04-02, 01:31 PM, (14) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, sniper297, Oct-04-02, 01:57 PM, (15) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, lfriddle, Oct-04-02, 11:03 PM, (16) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-05-02, 01:41 AM, (18) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, CGW409, Oct-05-02, 01:10 AM, (17) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, lfriddle, Oct-06-02, 03:59 PM, (19) RE: FRISCO Fort Smith Sub..More Progress, Coonskin, Oct-06-02, 11:46 PM, (20)

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YeeHAW!! Can't wait 'till my next beta CD!!What you guys are looking at is what the Frisco men referred to as "The Alleys". This was a tough switching area right next to downtown Ft. Smith. Once you left the main to enter The Alleys, there was no runaround trackage, and both facing/trailing point spurs along with a switchback to contend with. John Allen's "Timesaver" ain't got a thing on this section of railroad.This will be the one of the haunts of Sacremento Locomotive Works upcoming Baldwin VO1000 for MSTS, for during the target era I model ('69-'70) The Alleys were always switched by a nimble and sure footed Baldwin VO1000. As for the types of industries to be found in The Alleys, here's a listing from my trackage/customer charts:Lewis Oil No. 1
Lewis Oil No. 2
Gunn Distributing Co, Inc. (vegtables/produce)
Consolidated Poultry Co. (poultry industrial supplier)
Walt's Produce Co.
Sears-Roebuck & Co.
Ford Wholesale Grocery Co.
Williams Hardware
Ft. Smith Paper
Allied Distributing.
O.K. Transfer & Storage
Woods Mfg.
Speer Hardware
Berry Dry Goods
Checkered Transfer & Storage
McKesson-Robbins (pharmaceutical distributor)
Ft. Smith Tobacco and Candy (what a combo)
Two States Janitor Supply
Armour & Co. (meats)
Eads Bros. Furniture (Store)
Eads Bros. Furniture (Warehouse)
Swift & Co. (meats)As you can see, there was a fair amount of business in The Alley's "back when". I was privileged to ride with the crew one night as they worked The Alleys. It was quite an experience to be on that VO as it threaded its way down between and around/amid the brick canyons that then existed.Sadly, today all of the trackage is gone. Also said is the fact that some of the historical buildings are now gone because of the F4 tornado that hit Ft. Smith in the mid 90's. Well, through the efforts of Larry on the route, SLW's Baldwin, and the magic of MSTS, I will once again be able to ride a Baldwin down The Alleys. Thanks Larry!!Coonskin

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And here are some shots of the Arkansas River bridge. The train is headed north. In the first shot, you can see part of north Ft. Smith in the background.Second shot, you are looking north toward Van Buren, Arkansas. The train is nearing the Missouri Pacfic diamond. The Frisco mainline is the top most set of rails. Van Buren is up and around the bend.The third shot takes a closer look at the Mop x-ing area. As a side benefit, there is to be enough Mop trackage installed so that the daily Mop Ft. Smith Drag can be run... hence the reason I'm painting Mop geeps! Also, enough terrain is DEM'd to actually model the Mop from Van Buren west to their "Greenwood Junction". From Greenwood Jct, the Mop line can be laid across the river bottoms to cross the river into Ft. Smith via Mop's own bridge! More bang for your buck!Enjoy!Andre "Coonskin" Ming

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Andre, If i become a frisco fan because of this, Im coming after you!.. to thank you

Hangin' In there with no MSTS
Mobo, case ordered
Fan of the CSX river line
Shawn "Icy-Fire" Kenselaar
ShawnSSK@Yahoo.com

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Me?? What did *I* do? It's LARRY'S fault! HE'S the one building the route... I'm just the dummy on the paintbrush!Still a long ways to go... but like the worm said "inch by inch, it's a cinch". Of course, that's easy for me to say, I'm not the one laying track!Andre

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LAST EDITED ON Oct-03-02 AT 03:14 PM (EDT)

This might look even better if only the rails would be visible. I have used this "effect" in my route, it definitely makes industrial trackage look better(or worse!). Of course some clutter, bushes, weeds and trash will make it look even better.It already looks very exciting.If you need drive-in buildings, you can use the ones from my route(names starting with '7').

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Buried rail:Neat idea enocell! (i.e. railheads only being visible.) That would really set off this scene!How is that done?Drive-in buildings:Well, we don't need a drive-in building here at this location, but up at Johnson, there's a cold storage cave that had rail service into the inside. (Not very far inside... couple or three car spots.) The cold storage entrance actually needs a building FRONT only. The back and sides of the building would be the mountain!How would one go about doing that?Andre

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Thanks. I had picked out one of your 7 series buildings to use as the cold storage cave at Johnson. My idea was to bury the building in the mountain and leave one face with the entrance on the cliff face. Should work just like a tunnel enterance. Once you are inside you should be able to look around at the loading docks and so on. Should be good.Good idea on sinking the track in the alleys. I never thought of that. That is what it really looks like. There are still some areas left with the track visible. The Fort Smith trolly museum is running a trolly on some of them. All I have to do is sink the elevation a little bit.One thing I sure could use are some triangle shaped 4 to 8 story brick buildings. They set where the track enters a block at an angle clearly meaning they were built after the FRISCO had placed the track. I ended up filling with small store fronts, but that doesn't match the real thing.
10,50,100 and 500 meter brick wall sections about 5 meters high would be a good addition to the files in the download section. I was going to build some after I finish laying track to go around the Nat Cem.Larry

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So Larry, are you going to try to sink the track into the street?If so, that would really be a neat touch!I know, I know... go make a CD of some Frisco engines.(scampers off to the CD writing program...)Andre

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"sink the track into the street"? How could you possibly BEAR to hide that beautiful ballast? Guy that made that track texture musta been a real artist! Hee-hee, seriously, it ain't that hard to do, I just place a 10 meter straight section over the existing track, raise it up 0.1 meters, and hit the Y key.


Then I delete the track section I used as a terrain sculptor, of course. If all the track you're burying is level it's pretty easy to hold down the control key (so it stays at the same height), slide it along the track hitting Y as you go, and burying long sections. Kinda hard to see, but the thing to look for is the wireframe lines for the track section aren't showing above the railtops, you could probably raise it even higher, 0.2 or whatever, to hide more of the rail sides.
Haven't been down there in a long time, but the neighborhood they called "Goose Island" here in Chicago had some industrial trackage running down a lot of streets like that. Can't wait to try a few "Dutch Drops" on that route, looks like fun!

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> sink the track into the street"?... <snip>LOL! Right you are! That track texture is on every route that I use.Thanks for the quick tutorial on sinking tracks! It's going to look SOOOO good once that's done!Long time no chat with 'cha.. hope you and yours are doing well.Andre

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Well you still have 133 miles of track to enjoy the texture on. Guy that painted that must be a nut. Tonight has been one of those Route Editor nightmare nights. I got home and started working to cover the track bed. Came to a Y switch I wasn't happy with and clicked to select it, boom, crash, bang. Route trashed. Reboot, do it again, crash. Again, crash. Again, crash. Fortunately since I've been working on this thing for over a year (will I ever get done?)I keep backups, backups, backups. One reason I gave Coonskin a copy was so that now I have copies off site!!! Thought I'd take a break and go to the forum. My IP provider's line was busy ALL EVENING until 11:30. I've had it. Tomorrow has got to be a better day.
I toy with the idea of editing the Y out of the track database rather than trying to find a backup made before I placed it. Anyone ever try that? I don't have anything to loose if I have to restore anyway!
Larry

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Sad to hear that Larry. Hopefully, you'll be able to restore the existing route. Where is the wye switch that you're wanting to replace?While we're talking about restores/backups... how do you back up a route? Do you back up ALL the files one at a time onto CD, or copy the entire folder to another location of the hard drive, what? I don't have enough RAM to load an entire route in one pass onto a CD, right?Suggestion: If you get the route back via restoring... take a break like you said you were going to do. You've probably got so much more added that the next upgrade I receive will likely keep this boy running trains for a long, long time! With my copy I now have, with no runaround and short tracks at FS yard, I'm pretty much toast insofar as actually getting to use that location for operations. Guess I could try my hand at track laying... but may wait until I've played trains long enough with it that I'm ready to tackle such.Anyway, if you've got the main yard and the South Yard in, then all the way down and out to the alleys... my oh my... we can play with that for a loooong time! BTW, got another O&W F unit ready to burn onto CD for you. This will now yield this total for you:F7A #18 (black and yellow)
F7A #34 (orange and white)
F7A #36 (o&w)
FA1 #5210 (b&y)GP7 #543 (o&w)
GP7 #571 (o&w)
GP7 #573 (b&y)
GP7 #632 (b&y)For our Mop train:GP7 #234
GP7 #222 (will make it tomorrow evening, likely)Have a good'un!Andre

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Don't worry, nothing is lost. This kind of thing is just SOP with the route editor. The Y switch is as I first enter the alleys. When I tred it out with a consist the other night the engine had trouble going over it so I was going to replace it with a 10 degree switch. I backup by zipping the entire route folder and all files into a zip file. I keep 7 zip files where I overwrite the oldest each day with the latest changes. Then once a week I copy the route to CD. Your amount of RAM shouldnt be affecting how large of route you burn on a CD. A CD will hold 640 MB (80 min disks more)and our route is 400 MB right now. It is larger than it will be when finished because it contains objects that may not be used and tons of backup files that will be taken out when finished. Your computer does have to be able to read your hard drive and get data as fast as it is writeing it. You may have to slow down to a slower record speed if you have one of those new 24x write speed drives. My computer is old and I have to use 4x write speeds or I will have a buffer over run, meaning the computer isn't reading data as fast as it is writeing is. You should have a test mode to check for this first. Secondly make sure you defrag regurally. A defragged drive reads faster because the files are in one place and the read head doesn't have to be repositioned all over the place.

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That's GOOD news on the route. I haven't seen an obvious way to slow my new 32x writer down. Any input as to where I need to delve deeper to set those parameters? BTW, you can add orange and white F7A #39 to the above list now. That'll make you a total of 9 DIFFERENT Frisco engines... plus the pair of little Mop Geeps.The hits just keep on a'comin'! Andre

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It's never actually been confirmed, but in the early days there was a lot of suspicion that there was some kinda bug in the wye switches. I quit using them altogether until I wanted to put a wye in the coal mine and needed to make one without dynamic track, and then used just that one, I think all the rest of the wyes use regular 10D manual switches.One last thing to try, delete all the track pieces connected to the wye switch first, save, exit, reload, then try selecting the isolated wye switch and delete it. Also remember when you're changing track that broken paths can cause crashes too, so deleting the test activities that go thru that section and writing new ones may be necessary.

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I think the cause was that I deleted the section of track leading up to the Y from the main line first. This is only the second time I used a Y. I tried everything I could think up and finally did a restore. That wasn't bad because I had only placed about 3 buildings the day before. This time I deleted the Y first and everything went ok. I ended up puting it back in. The problem I was having with the engine was too tight of radius on dynamic track joining one leg of the Y. I backed up 20 meters and was thus able to increase the radius of the curve.
BTW when I tried to rebuild the track DB it went through all 133 miles of track and crashed when it reached the Y with the error message: "Track Database Error: "Remove_End_End" One Non-vector, one vector". Clicking OK got the debug message. When I tried removing all peices of track attached to the Y, I would get something along the lines that the piece couldn't be selected because it wasn't attached to anything. DUH. Why is the Y the only piece that has to be attached to something before you can select it?
Anyway all is well now.
Time for some R&R. I moved freight down the alleys. It was quite a challange to figure out which cars had to be pushed and which ones pulled in order to spot them in the alleys without getting yourself blocked in! Eat your heart out Coonskin.
PS: Be warned..If you drive up begging for the latest copy of the route, I stayed home today with the flue

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lfriddle gloated:"Eat your heart out Coonskin."Oh yeah? Well... well... I'VE got FRISCO engines... so there.Then blurted out:"PS: Be warned..If you drive up begging for the latest copy of the route, I stayed home today with the flue." Must the week for that. Glad you got back most of your hard work on the route. I put together a new engine folder in preparation of starting on a Frisco switcher for us, but alas, it's got some funny ways. Either the switcher or the box car has a soft end (ooo... that didn't sound right) when nose coupling. I'll spend more time with it and see what I can figure out. We need a decent Frisco switcher, I'd say.Yes, it's tempting to give you a holler an' head your way tomorrow for a CD exchange... but we'll have to see on that one. Maybe Monday.Will you be doing anymore route work in the near future, or are you pushing back for a while? How far south does the main go now? Is the Mop trackage in? Have you started on the line to Paris? Don't forget the KCS trackage into Ft. Smith. When will you...... Andre

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Larry
looks real good,sorry to hear about the RE FUBARing the route on you(been there done that)
BTW I posted a couple of track bumpers about a week ago you might be interested in, crossed & buried ties and a Hayes style bumper that might work out better than those default UK jobs.

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Thanks for the offer. Usually what I see around here though is just a pile of dirt at the end of the track. I do want to thank you Gary, and also Jim and Teemu for the great objects you have provided to route builders and the fact that you aren't asking for credit every five minutes. In my opinion that is the mark of a true professional. If you are good, people will know your name. Without your objects the route would be very dull. I'll see to it that you guys get a CD when I finish.Coonskin, I'm drawing the line where 255 (Wheeler Ave) ends at Baldor Electric. Everything in between, that is on my maps, is in.Right now, I'm going to lie down. My temp is down to 100.8 from 102 yesterday but I still feel like crap.

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Understood on the Wheeler Ave. Once I get your final verison in my hands, I may take it at least to the wye and do Whirlpool. I saw an auto assembly plant in the Files Library that would make a great stand-in for the huge Whirlpool complex. Fascinating switching possibilities there, and with a wye, no front coupler use issues. If Erik is successful at getting some of the things settled on his Baldwin VO1000 and gets it released... it will definitely be nice to switch Whirlpool again aboard an orange and white VO.Sorry to hear you're under the weather. Hopefully you'll be up and going again soon. I'm Tulsa bound tomorrow for a critical injury situation, and it looks like I may be at the FS hospitals on Tuesday... if you're still down and out I'll try to stop by.Coonskin

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