LAST EDITED ON Apr-28-03 AT 05:25 AM (EDT)
Well,here's a sort-of diary of the last weeked Dakota Eastern Route progress. I had a lot of fun building it - not even a TDB crash could not hold down my joy.April 23
Woke up about 3:10pm, just in time to see re-runs of "Picket Fences". Once that was over I turned on the PC and started working. Having been away from DEAR Project for a short while I opened it up and started working. The trackage to Howard had been mostly laid down, but the yard itself was missing.So I flew to Howard SD (actually the town on the route is about four miles east of it's real location) and put down a couple of skyscrapers to mark the "Do not lay track beyond this" spots and started working. The Vilas Sub, a 10-mile branch, extends from Vilas to Howard. There's only on grain elevator siding (double siding) along the way. I started laying down the track and worked out the layout while on it. It turned out pretty good, although a bit short (only about 4.000 feet).A wye track, siding, and a number of spurs. Grain elevator track that swings north from the main, goes around the depot and then rejoins the main track. The USA2 Shelby station got a new coat of paint and was renamed as "Howard South Dakota". I was starting to work on the scenery, when I decided to add another spur to the west end of the yard. It swings northwest and crosses the state road (with derails on both sides of the road) and then stops 600 yards north of the crossing.I laid down the road that parallels the tracks between Vilas and Howard, before starting the scenery. A couple of dozen add-ons later I had a fairly decent though incomplete scenery.
April 24
James Valley Yard has been on the "to do" list for some time now. But first I had to rework the BNSF crossing at Huron. For some reason the track configuration causes a crash when the DEAR main track switch is lined for BNSF south yard. I added a couple of switches there and banished the crashes. I haven't tested out if it works from the BNSF direction as well (most likely it will crash...)The north yard at Huron as well as a short storage trackage was quickly laid down. The tracks run straight through the town, and the siding there seems like a short section of double track, some two miles end-to-end. Huron has two small yards, grain loadout and a roundhouse.Extending west to James Valley Yard site was a no-brainer. Not much of gradient to talk about. The JV started forming out as a simple pyramid yard, but at the last moment I reversed the west end and made it a diamond yard, with body tracks being about 7.300 feet each. Equipment maintenance facilities, RIP tracks and fueling tracks were placed at the west end.
April 25
Dad phoned and asked if I was coming over for the weekend. The idea of having a bath and sauna ... but I said no and returned to South Dakota (at least on my PC). I started working east from Huron, adding roads to complete those railroad crossings. I also decided to replace the "Positively Non-Standard Railway Signs" (by yours truly) with "Positively Standard Dakota Eastern Signs". After about an hour in TSM I had a set of all sorts of signs prepared.Laying out steel ... sorry ... asphalt commenced seriously at Iroquois, when I attacked Route 14 and paved it all the way to De Smet, adding railroad crossings about 3.000 feet apart. Take my advice: if you plan a fictional route, do not stare at the prototype maps like I did (but I liked it).On the same I smoothened out the rugged track: at worst the tracks split from 0.750-degree ascend to -0.600-degree descend(!). Lazy me, now I had to pay the price.
April 26
Manchester SD was born in about two hours, given the problems I had deselecting one stubborn track piece. It is really the Small Town USA: just a dozen of buildings, ancient service station and a general store. And the mandatory graveyard.After Manchester I attacked the Lake Preston municipal road network (De Smet will have to wait a little longer). I also re-graded much of the track between Manchester and Hetland after the dirt was dumped at Lake Preston. I threw in a couple of buildings, just to make it look like it is a town, not just a spaghetti of dirt roads.
April 27
Planning out your own SimTowns is fun - sometimes. Sometimes it just seems to take too long. But I laid out some further scenery along the line.Not even the track database crash could spoil my fun. I just removed all the back-up files (I kept the master files and did a rebuild). All the crossings I had placed remained there (and they activated when the train approched).Some further re-grading, and then I hopped onboard Dash-9 and ran the main line west to east. With 40 loaded autoracks and two C44-9W's on the point the speed averaged somewhere arounf 60 MPH (being 86 MPH at best when going downgrade). From starting out James Valley and stopping on the siding at Aurora it took about 1h 50min (not obeying the speed limit).I must say that the plain tracks out there do not seem much, but thinking that I have laid about 180 miles worth of track and it looks fairly good... I'm happy with the result --- especially when the re-grading is done. Screenshots later, when the route is in good enough shape.Cheers,
TVRail
President & CEO, Dakota Eastern Railroad
Member of Yonder Locomotive Works
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