Whatever's Locomotive Reskins

[pwillard]

Glad to help out even in small doses.

[Whatever2006]

I tried to blank out the cab side numbers differently, I don't know how the results turn out, it looks decent but I'm thinking it needs more work.

Also, I did try out Pwillard's DRGW Roman Numbers font (thanks for the fonts, Pete), I did adjust their size to match the numbers on the base texture itself.

An update to this, I pretty much did DRGW 5371 with the 'patch' I made transitions/blends into the map texture, I use the clone stamp which is a suggestion by BurlingtonNorthern11, one thing I missed is I didn't do the dithering on the numbers before I applied them for the cabsides.


I will start the process over again to make sure I didn't forget to do the dithering but I will do it later, and again, I will thank Pwillard for the Rio Grande roman number fonts.

[Whatever2006]

And because I'm modeling the locomotive to represent around the 1970s to the 1980s prior its specification changes in the 1990s, the fonts on the number board would be inaccurate per se, I will have that changed once I find the appropriate font for that.

Links to the two images of DRGW SD40T-2 5371 in 1978 and 2000 with the courtesy of the images goes to their original authors and the site, Railroad Pictures Archive (link below):

DRGW 5371 in image 1: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/sho...spx?id=5620589

DRGW 5371 in image 2: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/sho...aspx?id=346709

[pwillard]

The earlier release used the font closest to RRNUMBER5 located at my website.

http://railsimstuff.com/fonts4.html

[Whatever2006]

This is going to suit my needs there, thanks Pete!

I can patch the numbers on the numberboards and cab sides as I already applied the numbers, so perhaps it's not too bad.

I will work on the latter again to sort out the missing dithering effect on the numbers, for the former, there's no need for dithering, just the changes of fonts.

[Whatever2006]

Alright, with Rio Grande Railroad SD40T-2 No.5371 finished, I can move into the other locomotives from the DRGW.

Again, I'm saying my thanks to pwillard for the railroad fonts and logos along with him creating the DRGW Roman Numbers based on my request.

It wouldn't hurt for the font to be up in RailSimStuff, but the decision on including them part of the 'DRGWSP' font set or as a separate is up to Pete.

[Whatever2006]

Here's Rio Grande Railroad SD40T-2s No. 5371 and No. 5401, I've done the latter recently. I'm not sure works needs to be involved with the cab side numbers for dithering variation, however I'm not good at dithering, so I will leave it as it is. With the trio SD40T-2s done, I can now move onto the Rio Grande GP30s.

[wwhall]

Back in the 1970's and 1980's I lived along the old Rio Grande. Seeing a locomotive even as clean as these shown here was a rarity. The reason was that the old Rio Grande--especially the Moffat Line--had so many tunnels. The tunnel at the top of Tennessee Pass was also infamous for getting locomotives filthy. The running joke was that the Rio Grande painted their locomotives black so that they didn't have to wash them. I would regularly see a train crew take an old rag and wipe all the soot and filth off the cab numbers so that they could even be read. On the flip side, the Rio Grande generally kept their locomotives in excellent mechanical condition. As proof, the Grande was still using unrebuilt GP-30's into the 1990's.

Even today, if UP locomotives are "captured" for service on the Moffat Line for several days or a week, they are just filthy with exhaust soot from going through all of the tunnels.

[Whatever2006]

Back in the 1970's and 1980's I lived along the old Rio Grande. Seeing a locomotive even as clean as these shown here was a rarity. The reason was that the old Rio Grande--especially the Moffat Line--had so many tunnels. The tunnel at the top of Tennessee Pass was also infamous for getting locomotives filthy. The running joke was that the Rio Grande painted their locomotives black so that they didn't have to wash them. I would regularly see a train crew take an old rag and wipe all the soot and filth off the cab numbers so that they could even be read. On the flip side, the Rio Grande generally kept their locomotives in excellent mechanical condition. As proof, the Grande was still using unrebuilt GP-30's into the 1990's.

Even today, if UP locomotives are "captured" for service on the Moffat Line for several days or a week, they are just filthy with exhaust soot from going through all of the tunnels.

Interesting. I will continue on with working additional numbers for the Rio Grande GP30s, it will be 4 of them...? I know I would do DRGW 3006 and 3011, but there's one variant of the DRGW GP30 I can't miss is the small speed lettering version.

[Whatever2006]

As the name of the thread says, this is where I post my renumbering reskins of certain locomotives with specific numbers.

The first locomotive in the post is DRGW SD40T-2 No. 5345, this is my first renumber reskin I did and exported on my own, the model is from Train Simulations (Streamlines)' DRGW SD40T-2 No. 5364 from the Green River route, with the Green River DRGW SD40T-2 engine upgrade from Pete Abrams and Jeff Auberpine applied. I don't have any plans on releasing it into the file library.

While it's not the first locomotive I ever did a renumber reskin, that goes to the ATSF B40-8W set that I did with the help of Unoriginal on exporting the texture files, thank you Unoriginal for assisting me there, while I wasn't able to get TGATool2A and AceIt to fully work in exporting Ace files until now.

I did DRGW 5345 because I got some inspiration on wanting to make it's appearance in Open Rails after watching C Vision Productions' Railroad Film; Denver & Rio Grande Western Vol. 2 where in the timestamp 47:58, the locomotive made its appearance, and I'm glad that I did DRGW 5345.

Overall, I will post some more stuff here once I some other things sorted out, I got some plans on doing the additional DRGW GP30s.

Feedback and constructive criticism are welcomed here, and I need to figure out on finding the number fonts that either matches or is close enough to the DRGW number fonts, I need some more practice in doing reskins for Open Rails, I'm still a newbie at it.

I need to redo DRGW 5345's cab side numbers, fortunately for me, I made a 'patch' for the second part of the texture map for the cab sides and number boards. It should be easier for me to do DRGW 5345 again...?

[wwhall]

The "big Rio, little Grande" herald first made its appearance on some of the SD-45s. As originally painted, the GP-30s all had the small "standard" Rio Grande herald. Same with the GP-35s. As units were shopped, they were sometimes repainted with the newer herald. That said, there were a lot of Rio Grande locomotives that retained their old "standard" herald right up to the end of the Rio Grande era. By the way, the unrebuilt GP-30 is a real odd duck. A turbocharged EMD 567 prime mover with some funky prime mover controllers that gave the GP-30 a very unique sound. When MU'ed with newer locomotives, the GP-30 always sounded like its throttle response sort of lagged the other locomotives by a few seconds. Back in the day, the D&RGW had quite a few branches and secondary lines where 6-axle power was prohibited (the whole line from Walsenburg to Alamosa, and the Antonito and Creede branches, for example), so seeing 4-axle power working their tails off on grades was not uncommon.

One final note about Rio Grande diesels. Two models bought by the Rio Grande wound up being problematic. The GP-35s were not well liked, and most of them were converted to "B" unit status during their lives, with their control stands removed. The last 6-axle power that the Rio Grande purchased were the SD-50s, which also turned out to be problem-prone. After the Rio Grande essentially acquired the Southern Pacific--yes, that is more or less what happened, even though the Southern Pacific name was kept--the Rio Grande's then recent dissatisfaction with the EMD SD-50 supposedly influenced the post-merger SP to purchase the GE AC4400's--a locomotive model that finally somewhat vanquished the Rio Grande's SD-40T-2s as the favored locomotive of old Rio Grande engineers.

[Whatever2006]

DRGW GP35s... I'm thinking that BLW has GP35s (including the ones I mentioned) on their site, I haven't thought of buying them, but I'm sure they got great stuff to offer. An potential for additional DRGW GP35 set, yes?

Although, I need to focus on the other projects I have, one of them is getting to work on an additional ATSF number set for the B40-8s...

And if I get around to finishing the additional number sets for the GP30s, the read me file is the last thing I need to work on (if I plan on releasing the content here).

It's a matter of working on the instructions, requirements and the credits, but since I used the upgrade kits for the DRGW Locomotives, an additional set of requirements will be added in as well.

Edit: Since I'm slowly interested in buying BLW's stuff, I'm going to go ahead and make an account there. Unfortunately the email I use got banned from the site somehow.

Edit 2: Turns out, Gmail is blacklisted for the Valley Pass forums because too many spammers use it along with some other email services, according to Gaetan after I send him an email relating to said issue.

[wwhall]

Just a bit more D&RGW history for those who like to sim the old Rio Grande. In the 1960's, the Rio Grande experimented with short, fast freight trains, particularly over the Moffat Route from Denver to Salt Lake City. For these trains, the Grande preferred 4-axle power. The GP-30s and GP35s were specifically purchased to supplement and later replace 4-axle F-units on these type freights. During the mid- to late 1960's, the Rio Grande's coal business on the Craig Branch and the North Fork Branch started to grow strongly. The SD-45s were specifically purchased for use on the Craig Branch coal trains. Eventually, 6-axle power was mixed with 4-axle power on most freight trains, with 4-axle power still used exclusively on some branch and secondary lines. To the very end of Rio Grande operations, it was not unusual to see 4 and 6-axle power mixed on mainline freight trains. Going back a little farther in D&RGW diesel history, when A.E. Perlman was the President of the D&RGW in the 1950's--and he was instrumental in vanquishing Rio Grande standard gauge steam by December, 1956--the replacement for a Rio Grande articulated steam locomotive was often a 4-unit A-B-B-A EMD F-unit set, with an EMD GP-7, GP-9, SD-7 or SD-9 spliced in between the B units. In Rio Grande slang, that diesel locomotive combination was known as a "Perlman Mallet," the nickname denoting the type of steam locomotive that the set commonly replaced. I saw a lot of "Perlman Mallet"-led freight trains when I was a little kid growing up around the D&RGW.

[Whatever2006]

Interesting. I will continue on with working additional numbers for the Rio Grande GP30s, it will be 4 of them...? I know I would do DRGW 3006 and 3011, but there's one variant of the DRGW GP30 I can't miss is the small speed lettering version.

I could potentially create a 4th SD40T-2... but that's pushing my current plans and what I'm doing, it's going to be fine since I'm doing a few additional SD40T-2s, aside from the existing additional DRGW SD40T-2 sets available here. I could make a running joke about someone telling me that I have enough locomotives, but I tell them that I do not have these locomotives.

While I'm taking my time on doing the additional number set, along with trying to get my motivation and patience on doing Open Rails stuff, along with the laptop I'm using. There are some things I haven't learnt when it comes to reskinning.

[Whatever2006]

Will you make DRGW 3011?

Rob, today's your lucky day. I did DRGW GP30 No. 3011. I still got the other GP30s to do, but the results for 3011 is good for me.

I won't be releasing it yet.. unless I'm going to test the waters and see if I will get feedback on what I do.