Branchline Railroading on The E&N

Thought I would post a couple of images of my E&N route before I take off out of town again. I had a couple of hours this weekend to add details to the Wellcox Yard and some other spots along the line. I have even finished half of the hull for the self-propelled rail barge Haida Transporter which I hope to finish along with the barge slip when I return. I am going to have to get a laptop one of these days so I can do some of these projects while on the road.

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RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, gfbeat, Sep-06-04, 07:08 AM, (1) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, Curt, Sep-06-04, 09:05 AM, (2) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, EMD_GE, Sep-06-04, 10:20 AM, (3) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3005, Sep-06-04, 12:27 PM, (4) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, FURX, Sep-06-04, 06:20 PM, (5) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, davereage, Sep-06-04, 08:38 PM, (6) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3005, Sep-06-04, 10:37 PM, (7) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, Steven, Sep-07-04, 01:10 AM, (8) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, cp6024, Sep-07-04, 01:21 AM, (9) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3005, Sep-07-04, 01:48 AM, (11) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, henry3, Sep-07-04, 12:52 PM, (12) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, johnf, Sep-07-04, 08:41 PM, (14) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, Robber Baron, Nov-17-04, 09:11 PM, (16) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, mmartin51, Sep-07-04, 01:38 AM, (10) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, CPR_Malice_96th, Sep-07-04, 03:33 PM, (13) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, westerngy, Sep-08-04, 01:09 AM, (15) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3870, Nov-18-04, 00:24 AM, (17) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, Mattaf, Nov-18-04, 03:54 AM, (18) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, 37209, Nov-18-04, 08:53 AM, (19) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3870, Nov-18-04, 02:46 PM, (20) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3870, Nov-19-04, 06:42 PM, (21) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, Jonatan, Nov-19-04, 07:36 PM, (22) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3870, Nov-20-04, 02:58 AM, (23) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, Jonatan, Nov-20-04, 06:51 AM, (24) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3870, Nov-20-04, 02:28 PM, (25) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, Robber Baron, Nov-20-04, 10:34 PM, (26) RE: Branchline Railroading on The E&N, ENR3870, Nov-21-04, 03:38 AM, (27)

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Wow... that route looks fantastic!!------------------------------
Jan

German ALCO/MLW-Fan
Jan's MSTS Addons

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Excellent job! Looks great so far. BTW, where'd you get the McMillan Bloedel thrall boxcar?

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LAST EDITED ON Sep-06-04 AT 10:25 AM (EDT)

All i can say is "WOW"!!!That's some fancy track laying work ya got going on there...nice job!Looks good enough to be payware...and then some ,as a matter a fact looks better than some payware routes.

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LAST EDITED ON Sep-06-04 AT 12:30 PM (EDT)

The McMillan Bloedel thrall boxcar is a repaint that I have done from a photo that I found. The other two in front are also repaints. Vancouver Island operations had some very unique freight cars. Besides having several hundred 40 ft boxcars painted for the E&N there were small fleets of unique cars that were not usually seen elsewhere across the system. Some of these small fleets where ex Milwaukee Road boxcars used for paper hauling and where still painted in their original livery with the numbers painted over. Most of them stayed in their original livery until they were scrapped in the mid 90s. A lot of Southern Pacific boxcars would also find their way over to the Island. There were so many SP cars in the Wellcox Yard at times during the late 80s and early 90s that it almost looked like SP had taken over E&N operations :d All these cars are going to be in a package that is dedicated to the E&N. Along with the cars, there will be a small fleet of engines. This package will tie in to some activites that I have completed based on prototype operations.

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Man, I cannot wait for this route!!!
Any ETA, or should I not ask?I'm going to love running this route...BTW...how are the frames??-Jeffrey

Courteous Future Engineer
NKP 2-8-4 #765. www.765.org
Chessie System Historical Society. http://moosevalley.org/cshs/
My Website; www.xanga.com/csxd765
MY Pics;
www.picturetrail.com/gp30rdmt

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I think the train-sim community should take up a collection to buy you a laptop so you can work on this gem while you're on the road! Looking great!Dave Reage - Beta Tester
Halifax, Canada

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LAST EDITED ON Sep-06-04 AT 10:40 PM (EDT)

Sorry but I accidently deleted my private mail by accident. If you have sent me mail please redo it - thanks.Two of you had inquired about the barge operations and what sort of track arrangement I had done and what the barge looked like. The below two images show the track arrangement for the slip and barge along with the rough hull for the barge. My route has used default track only in order to minimize the amount of system crashes. I had attempted to use Xtracks on the first version of my route and ended up having a ton of system crashes for some reason. Using the default track and roads hasen't caused any problems at all and it is very rare that the editor crashes now. By using default track I have had to sacrifice the prototype barge and slip track arrangement. The barge tracks are close to the prototype but the slip is not. Part of the problem is that even with Xtracks there are no working 3-way switches. So instead I have modifed the slip arrangement to match a BN arrangment in downtown Vancouver where the real Haida Transporter is loaded and unloaded these days. The modeled slip will also have to be a bit wider than the prototype. Close will have to do for now.The barge was built using plans from the January 1998 Mainline Modeler for the Haida Transporter. I am nowhere near done with it at this point. The barge was also made about 10 feet wider than the prototype to accomodate the default turnouts. A the default wye was too wide and I ended up replacing it with an offset 10d turnout with some tight radius dynamic track to compensate for the lost curves. If you look closely in the images below you can see what I mean.As for the release date, I am going to say I have a goal to do at least a partial release around the Christmas holidays. But all this depends on how much I get accomplished with what little time I have. And for those of you worrying about frame rates - don't. I am running this on a three year old P4 2400Mhz system with 512MB of ram and a ATI Radeon 9700. I am getting between 21 and 47 FPS on the dense areas (Cameron Lake) of my route with all sliders maxed out while running 50 car freights with light traffic.

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There will be working 3-way turnouts soon, a little bit of clean-up remains on the shapes. I don't know if that will change your mind about Xtracks, but who knows...
StevenStandardized \global\tsection.dat file now at build #27.

LMRR - Lower Mainland Railways (of BC)
Track: 1080.12 km
Roads: 1228.27 km

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ENR3005, that definitally looks like one of the best freeware routes I've seen! Keep it up!

Andrew

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Thanks for the kind comments on my work guys Steve,All my track work is complete and I am not sure if I want to start messing around with Xtracks again at this point. I just consider myself lucky that I haven't had any problems - so far. I may consider using Xtracks for version 2 of the route - yes there will be a second version of the route which will have the rest of the line South of Nanaimo along with the CN lines in the Cowichan Valley and Victoria. Well I am getting a little bit ahead of myself as I still haven't released anything yet and I have a plane to catch early tomorrow. I will be back in a couple of weeks/

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Remove the word "freeware", and I'll agree with you totally.You can really tell when a route builder *knows* the terrain first hand....Henry

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First off your route looks great, secondly if you wish you can contact me by private Email $jafowlis@shaw.ca just remove the $) I can help you with some details and information on the barges and ramps at Nanaimo and drawings of the barges that frequent the ramp then and now. At my day job I look after those barges from an engineering standpoint. Sadly the Haida Transporter is no longer in service as years of hard labour have worn her out. Barges that did service rail in Naniamo included the KN 10, Seaspan 930, Coastal Express and the Rail ferries, Haida Transporter, Carrier Princess, Trailer Princess, Seaspan Doris, Seaspan Greg, Princess of Vancouver, Princess Superior.The rail plans on the barges differs from the Ferries and you are correct in assuming that thought not 100% prototypical using a BN style ramp would be easier to configure in MSTS than the CP style.now here is a fun fact after the first 20' of track on deck of the Haida Transporter the rails are actually 2" soild steel flatbars welded to the deck.

john fowlis
CPHS

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I remember going from Nanaimo to Vancouver and vice versa on the Princess of Vancouver a few times, and I remember for at least one of the crossings having to be there at 3AM or something like that. The cool part was it took you right to downtown Vancouver. It felt kinda weird parking on the lower deck in amongst the boxcars...

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Man, I can't wait for this one! Great work. Looks like it's time for an new video card and bigger hard drive.

Mike
Galesburg, Iowa

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Keeps gettin better !!LaterTim Kent – 96th_Malice - Winnipeg CanadaProud member of the - NO TRAIL CN SD60 - club !!

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Its going to be so much fun with the route when it comes out.I remember going down to the yard and watching the old Baldwins work the slip or make a run down south.Then the Gp's came along.My brother in laws Dad was the road foreman of engines on the E&N and I had an uncle that loaded the barges so even if it was payware I would get it.
Thanks Chris for recreating the line.
Just Rollin Down The Tracks

Dale

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LAST EDITED ON Nov-18-04 AT 00:55 AM (EST)

ENR3005 sent me a copy of the route on CD, to test on another computer. It runs great, I've got a P4 2.2GHz 80 GB Hard Drive, and a 32MB Video card, FPS is a little lower than what he's getting, open areas such as Nanaimo I get up to 30 FPS, and forested areas like along Cameron Lake, as low as 6 FPS.
I'm still loving the route, once the rest of the Victoria Sub is done and the CN Cowichan and Tidewater Subs are done it'll really be something. I've run everything from GP9's to Dash 9's on the line(glad rail weight and track conditions don't factor into MSTS), on the real E&N, those D9's would snap the rails like twigs.
I don't have a good shot of the barge slip at Wellcox, but IIRC, the apron is single track, with a three way switch on the slip, tracks on the slip, the barge has 4 tracks, the switch for the 4th track is on the barge. I'll have to check it out the next time at Wellcox, if I don't get chased away by the rent-a-cops. The last photo below shows the barge slip and slip trackage at Wellcox, posted to the Vancouver Island Railfan.net forum by "Cody".

Tyler W.
Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway
1884-2005

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That route looks great! I guess I'll be taking a North American loco down there at some point!

www.seaviewforums.ne1.net

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oh my god!!!...i cant wait for this route!!!!i'm gonna start stock pilling cp locos and cars right now can anybody recommend any web sites dealing with cp operations etc?marcus, england.

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LAST EDITED ON Nov-18-04 AT 02:48 PM (EST)

http://forums.railfan.net/forum.cgi?board=VancouverSeveral disscussions on E&N operations are located there. CN operations on the island too. In 1988, the year that the route is set in. the E&N had the Dayliner, Uptown Switcher, Parksville Turn, Courtenay Turn, Duncan Turn, Victoria Turn, Victoria Switcher, and the Port Alberni Turn, the Port Alberni turn being run 6 times a week, the Victoria Switcher ran 5 times a week, the dayliner ran daily as it does today, the Victoria Turn ran 3 times a week, the Duncan Turn ran twice a week, and the Courtenay Turn ran weekly. Current operations on the E&N are the Dayliner, Uptown Switcher, Duncan Turn, and Parksville Turn. The Dayliner runs daily, the Uptown Switcher runs Wednesday, Thursday, the Duncan Turn runs Tuesday and Friday, and the Parksville Turn usually runs on Monday. Regular freight service to Victoria, Port Alberni and Courtenay was dropped in 2001.

Tyler W.
Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway
1884-2005

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Up until the RailAmerica take over the E&N would sometimes run an extra Port Alberni Turn. During the CP days there was a limit on how long the trains could be, no longer than 45 cars, IIRC. If they had 50 cars for the mills in Port an extra was run, usually following the regular Port Alberni Turn. When RailAmerica took over, there were no restrictions on the length of the train, and sometimes you could see 4 units pulling about 45-50 cars.
Here are some shots of an extra Port Turn, meeting the Uptown Switcher at Superior Propane and the other Port Turn at Wellington. 1) The Uptown Switcher at Superior Propane, shoving loads into Superior Propane. 2) From the cab of the extra Port Turn, the southbound Port Alberni Turn at Wellington. 3) Another shot of the meet at Wellington. The lead unit on the regular Port Turn was 3004, the 3005 was trailing on our train.

Tyler W.
Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway
1884-2005

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Hmmmm... tall trestles... lottza trees... branchline. Yep, this'll be used as a steam logging route when I get my boney little fingers on it. /JonatanSteam rules!

Train gifs from Dans Railroad Gif RoundhouseNever trust computers. If you do, they will betray you.I'm the steam freak, ph34r me!!

My E-mail jonatan.gronoset@telia.com

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>Hmmmm... tall trestles... lottza trees... branchline. Yep,
>this'll be used as a steam logging route when I get
>my boney little fingers on it.
>
>/Jonatan Be fore-warned, the E&N is a very urban route. IIRC, there are at least 500 grade crossings between Victoria and Courtenay, the Victoria Sub runs through the major cities on the east coast of the island. You could get away with the logging railroad on the Port Alberni Sub as it doesn't have nearly the same amount of crossings, and is more isolated. The Lake Cowichan Sub would be the best for a logging railroad, as most of the traffic on the Lake Cowichan Sub were log trains, but I don't know if ENR3005 will be adding the Lake Cowichan Sub as it was abandoned in 1984. But if you could find some CP D10g 4-6-0 steamers, you could run the late steam era E&N. Though Wellcox didn't exist until 1953, 4 years after the E&N was dieselized. Wellington was a huge steam terminal, it's just a siding now, and in 1988, the year that ENR3005's route is based in.

Tyler W.
Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway
1884-2005

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Well I think the route would be good for Cornerian Rail operations. They use diesels AND steam! /JonatanSteam rules!

Train gifs from Dans Railroad Gif RoundhouseNever trust computers. If you do, they will betray you.I'm the steam freak, ph34r me!!

My E-mail jonatan.gronoset@telia.com

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LAST EDITED ON Nov-20-04 AT 02:49 PM (EST)

Almost forgot the Comox Logging and Railway Co in Ladysmith. They ran from Ladysmith up to the Nanaimo Lakes area, one of only 2 logging railroads that survived into the 1980's. They ran steam until 1960 when they bought an ex-US Navy Baldwin VO-1000. But I don't know if ENR3005 will include the CL&R when he does the southend of the E&N. Also, the Port Alberni Sub is being used for logging right now, Alberni Pacific's ex-CP RS3 and even their 2-8-2T have been used to haul logs from the Summit to Port Alberni for Canadian Pacific who still have timber rights in the Alberni Valley(was not included in the deal with RailAmerica). Just thought I'd add some shots of the real E&N. At Wellington, the siding in my screenshots above.



At Superior Propane

Tyler W.
Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway
1884-2005

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Also, the Port Alberni Sub is being used for logging right now, Alberni Pacific's ex-CP RS3 and even their 2-8-2T have been used to haul logs from the Summit to Port AlberniGet outta town! From where to where exactly?

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>Also, the Port Alberni Sub is being used for logging
>right now, Alberni Pacific's ex-CP RS3 and even their 2-8-2T
>have been used to haul logs from the Summit to Port
>Alberni
>
>Get outta town! From where to where exactly? From near mile 25 to the Smith Road Crossing.

Tyler W.
Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway
1884-2005

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