CNW Chicago Division Progress - 2021

[eric]

Yes, this project has been going for more than ten years, but I did take a long four year break...

The previous updates can be found in the following threads:

2016: https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...-Progress-2016

2015: https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...-Progress-2015

2014: https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...-Progress-2014

2013: https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...-Progress-2013

2012: https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...-Progress-2012

2011: https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...rogress-Report

2010: https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...UP-Harvard-Sub

[eric]

Yep, you're not stuck in a four year time jump...

River Forest Metra platforms...



I've mentioned elsewhere that as part of my TSRE Bootcamp, I am re-doing some track that no longer matches up to the Google imagery. This week, it was M19A to River Forest. New track alignment is now a 95% match to the ground images on that six mile stretch of track.

O'Hare presented a bit of a challenge... Google imagery reflects the new track alignment and runways, and I'm trying to keep this in the 1970's from a track perspective.... That arc of track to the left is the new alignment, which I don't want....



With TSRE's in-editor paint capabilities, that's now been properly backdated.





Looking ahead a bit, there's a bunch of the West Line that needs to be re-done, shifting the track by 5-10m to match imagery, but also to correct some curve geometry that I might have forked up in my haste to get track out to Rochelle. That repair work will continue thru the end of the month.

[CSXCorp]

Looks great Eric! I have an old Trains Magazine from 1979 whose main article is over the fast freights that would run at passenger speeds over the Chicago and Iowa Divisions, and it caught my interest in the C&NW. Really hope to see this project when it's finished!

Cade

[qballbandit]

Eric, great to see you and TSRE playing nice in the sandbox. I will enjoy watching your progress posts.

[eric]

New imagery loaded for all of the CNW Chicago, including some from Google and some from MapBox. A few sections of the Google imagery was taken in either winter or fall, and all of the farm fields were dirt. MapBox had greenery, so I mixed and matched.

Word of caution doing this -- on first load, you notice the MapBox resolutions can be a little lower, but once I compressed the base images to DXT1, the differences became negligible in the game engine.

Rather than do road pieces, I'll probably be placing RDB lines directly down on the terrain. Since the grade crossings can be made to look more realistic by doing minor height map modifications, it will look a lot more realistic than using pre-built road sections...







Eventually, I'll go in and brush-stroke the edges with ballast to clean up the edges... each one of these takes about 60 seconds to raise and smooth. Not a huge investment but I suspect will be eye candy in the end. Worst case, I can cover them up with road sections or crossing scenery objects...

[jonpd]

To create RDB lines for your roads, I think the only way to do this is lay road pieces then delete the shapes from the world files?

Jon

[eric]

That's one way, and the other way would be to alpha out the road textures.

There's also an experimental feature to translate a ruler path into a RDB line.

[jbtower]

That's coming along really nice Eric!!!

[eric]

More West Line cleanup....

Fit check of the IHB bridge at 40th Street...




Near Oak Park, the CTA runs on the old CNW ROW for a couple miles... which means brushing up on my third rail objects...



Biggest area of new build will be Proviso:



A limited number of intermodal tracks will be present....



I don't think I can take on the main bowl, but the car shops and engine shop leads might squeak in eventually...



On the east end, there will be some sorting and holding tracks... but again on a limited basis as I did on the north yard a few years ago...



As for the road pieces... that's what I use to line up the power lines via WorldFileHacker... the road sections will eventually be removed, leaving the towers and lines behind...



Since power lines dominate the scene from the cab, it's essential to get the wires lines up. I've got several versions of 100m/150m/200m wire lengths, and in a straight line, the wires always come close to being perfect...

[qballbandit]

Eric, this is a stupid question from someone who doesn't build routes -
Are you able to create the illusion of the bowl tracks with dummy track? Would dummy track even show up in TSRE5?
Would be cool if it did because I'd think users could fudge up placing static cars, or something of that nature. Beats me, just wondering.

[GokuMK]

As for the road pieces... that's what I use to line up the power lines via WorldFileHacker... the road sections will eventually be removed, leaving the towers and lines behind...
[...]
Since power lines dominate the scene from the cab, it's essential to get the wires lines up. I've got several versions of 100m/150m/200m wire lengths, and in a straight line, the wires always come close to being perfect...

Do you know that instead of making dozens of different shapes and using WFH you can just use one shape and auto placement with two point rotation? Super fast solution for making wires etc.

[eric]

Eric, this is a stupid question from someone who doesn't build routes -
Are you able to create the illusion of the bowl tracks with dummy track? Would dummy track even show up in TSRE5?
Would be cool if it did because I'd think users could fudge up placing static cars, or something of that nature. Beats me, just wondering.

It's possible, but time consuming....

One benefit of TSRE is you can add track without writing it to the TDB, so you get the visual benefits without taking the performance hit of hundreds of track vectors that never get used.

[eric]

Do you know that instead of making dozens of different shapes and using WFH you can just use one shape and auto placement with two point rotation? Super fast solution for making wires etc.

I've seen the feature, but no documentation on how that works.

"Super fast" is relative. The shapes I use have been in my library for about ten years. Once I have a shape built in Sketchup, it takes on average 30 seconds to make a length variation, including the time to export to a .S file... Placing almost three miles of power lines took me about ten minutes including running the script thru WFH.

[jonpd]

Where were you able to find 3rd rail track pieces? I have never come across them.

Jon

[eric]

Where were you able to find 3rd rail track pieces? I have never come across them.

Jon

That's the magic of WorldFileHacker.... It's Scalerail track with a matching third rail static object created that shares the same axis and geometry as the track sections.

Based on the staticDetailLevel of the track object and a 1:x cross-reference file read by WFH, they get lined up perfectly.