Mactier Sub Scenery Enhancements

[cntrainguy12]

The Mactier sub is a classic route that holds up very well in most areas, but there are a few areas in the scenery where I saw room for improvement. I started tinkering on and off to rectify some of these items and I would like to show off what I have done so far. This project isn't intended for a public release at the current time, rather this is meant to inspire future efforts. Please feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions if you have them. All assets used here are from the default route, TEM Bridges set, and CN Blackfoot V3. Here is a selection of what I have done so far running south to north:

Black Creek Dr



Replace concrete Mactier Sub span with steel span more closely resembling the real structure. Supports taken from Blackfoot V3.

HWY 407



The concrete span is replaced with steel span with concrete supports to more closely resemble the real structure.



Langstaff Rd



This is a common thread among road overpasses. Replaces unsupported concrete span with a steel span supported by abutments. This one is a placeholder.



Vaughan Intermodal Terminal



Replaced the bridge over the truck access road off of Rutherford Rd with a more accurate span.



Further down the road, I created a larger underpass to emulate the wide concrete arch used to carry the curve over the road at this location.



Hwy 50 south of Palgrave


After


Between Buckskin and Bala:


Replaced old support columns with new ones from CN Blackfoot. Revised column placement.


Bala:
Miscellaneous placeholder bridge work. Of note are a couple of crude dam models I made in blender to be placed at Bala Falls as a placeholder in lieu of something more detailed for now.




Rock texture bug:
With the version available from TS, there is a bug on the DDS rock texture which sees part of the texture mapped to the object be transparent. Before and after shots of the correction.




Future Considerations:

For what appears to be practicality reasons, a lot of the smaller lakes and rivers at the north end of the route are done with static water. Unfortunately, the look doesn't really do the area justice. I'm investigating my options to rectify this.

[qballbandit]

I like what you've done with all the bridges, etc.

[geepster775]

There appears to be another texture conversion error involving the debris pile at the demolished Kodak plant. 'Rubbish' is the shape and texture name.

[kshannon]

Original author checking in. These look really good. I have been making tweaks over the years myself over the years.

The issue necessitating the static water particularly north of the Severn River was the fact that there are several instances of lake / swamp areas within a single tile, all at different elevations. This makes setting a tile water elevation that works for each location prohibitive so the static water was the solution. I really don't know how you would get around that, even with TSRE's ability to set differential water levels (I can't remember if you could do that in RE or not) it would still likely be tricky, not to mention the water surface not being level when this is done. The Bala dam is a whole issue in itself when it comes to water levels.

[cntrainguy12]

Static Water

As pointed out above, the static water is ultimately necessary at the north end of the route due to lakes at various heights in close proximity. The static water itself isn't necessarily the problem here, however it is the textures used. I had sought out replacements for some time and recently found one that I believe does the job quite well. From MLT's Bala Sub 2.0, I took the texture file stream.ace and replaced waterbluewash.ace, and waterbrownwash.ace. The snow textures for those were adequate so I left them alone. The results are below.

Muskoka Rd 169 (Bala)
Before


After



Mactier
After