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

[jbtower]

That's coming along really nice Eric!!!

[eric]

Interesting fun for Sprint 2... I've got a 13+ mile straight run between Dundee Rd in Palatine and Three Oaks Rd in Cary...

When I set the QDirection between the two endpoints, my alignment ends and begins perfectly, but curvature of the Earth (or just the quirks of the G-H map projection...) sets in, and has the middle off by almost 3M....

Thanks to Dave N who suggested breaking the line up into multiple pieces.

Basically, I found grade crossings at 3-4 miles apart, and ran four separate QD's between those waypoints. Now it lines up perfectly.

Glad I found this out now so I can plan more 3 mile blocks... Palatine to Des Plaines is another 13 mile straight section I'm tackling tonight, followed by Des Plaines to Clybourn, which is also 13 miles give or take.....

Screenshots later....

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

[eric]

I'm closing in on my goal for having the Downtown to Harvard mainline complete so that activity/timetable paths are able to be restored. This weekend I wound up ending about a hundred meters west of Clybourn, which is where the three track main ends and becomes four tracks into the downtown station leads, plus two for the Navy Pier branch. Over the last two nights, I pushed down to what is literally the last mile of track prior to Northwest Junction (where the West Line and North/Northwest lines converge just prior to downtown).

To set expectations... most industry sidings have switches in place off the mainline, but the actual sidings aren't planned to be finished right away. While it's fairly quick work individually to add these, it really adds up as a group. I'll also be holding off on doing the yards at Des Plaines, Avondale, and North Ave., as well as the branch line to the Tribune and Navy Pier. Those are small tasks for when I only have a few minutes vs several hours.



One place I did spend a little more time this go-around was Mayfair... I restored the crossovers for the Skokie Valley line, and have extended the Cragin line a little further south. For a while, CNW ran RDC's in commuter service to Skokie via Mayfair, so if I ever get the bug to throw in another branch line for history sake, that would be a natural, and the Cragin Line down to the M19A shops would be another quick hit to enable some urban switching.... This is how freight moved within Chicago back in "the day"...



I also spent a little more time on the interlocking near Clybourn, where the three-track Harvard main and two-track Kenosha combine and collapse down to four tracks for the remaining run to downtown.

You can't see it in the screenshots, but with so many 03D crossovers to do on this line, I created some new straight sections to build crossovers faster... Now it's a short m03dl or m03dr plus a 55_9m straight to be able to sandwich a crossover between the 3Y and 4Y multi-track straights. I also did a 65_9m section for the parallel track and a 34_1m straight for those times I want to round up the entire crossover into an even 100m block.



The last three miles from Clybourn to Northwest Junction is a mere three miles, but it's made up of very little straight track, with six somewhat large curves and 20 bridges. Since I'm using 4m yard spacing, there are no multi-track curves available out of the box to make things easier, and I'm finding that getting the ends to line up for SR_1tYrd and SR_XtCrv sections on a long curves quite "interesting"... Similar named shapes don't necessarily the have slightly different geometry, which has forced me into the TSection a couple times to figure out the actual curve radii. That also presented another opportunity to whip up some additional straights in 0.4m, 0.5m, 0.7m and 0.8m lengths, entirely driven by those inconsistent lengths in the yard curves and wanting to be able to ensure somewhat consistent track center spacing. Every 200-300m I will temporarily use a straight 4T section to make sure those midpoints are keeping track centers consistent, and those extra 10cm sections do make a difference on closing up the gaps.

By this weekend, I'm hoping to have the station leads tied back in again so the commuter segments are more or less whole...



While we celebrate ORTS and TSRE, I do have to say if there is a utility still needed for the community, it's a successor to Dynatrax... I know some people want splines and dynamic or procedural track, I'm not there just yet. I like having snap track and a system...

I was able to purchase a license from Tim before he left us, and thanks to his tool, the new track sections look and behave just like Scalerail. Once they're added to the master TSection, hopefully they can be used by others. Anyone who has tried to make track sections by hand knows what a pain this can be.

[qballbandit]

Nice work!
Wow, that Morton Salt paint on the roof - one of the things that always caught my eye as a kid when riding in the back seat. Now, you need the animated "Magikist" lips (sp?) sign just prior to that inbound.