3rd District CNO&TP

[landnrailroader]

Colleagues,

At the request of Dudley Evans, I am finishing up his 3rd district of the CNO&TP, the northern
part of which will become the southern part of my 2nd district. To accomplish this, I extended
the 3rd district several miles north to CW tower. CW tower is the south end of a double track
stretch and the single track passes through Tunnel 22, crosses the Emory River and then
passes through Tunnel 24. The latter tunnel is beside the old Tunnel 24 and in the late 60s &
early 70s when I was employed by SR, you could clearly see the north portal of old T-24.
You could also see the south portal of tunnel 23 which was bypassed entirely.

All the track is in place and I am starting the detail process. The right-hand image is of the
south portal of tunnel 24 with the old roadbed working around to the left to the old tunnel.
The other image is of the north portal of tunnel 24 with the old tunnel to the right. Tunnel
23 is to the left behind the camera.

Today, Oakdale is defunct as a division point, likewise Danville, KY and the CNO&TP has
2 districts with the crew change just south of Burnside, KY. We will be doing the line as
much as possible as it was in the 60s & 70s and I plan to include a few pieces of the old
line so users can experience more of the "rat hole" if desired. I'll also be includinig the
Oneida & Western RR (abandoned about 1954), Tennessee RR, and Brimstone RR. The
latter 2 were acquired by SR/NS but have since been abandoned.

J. H. Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

Collelagues,

Slight error. The O&W etc. will be part of the 2nd district. I am currently working on the
3rd district and the extreme north end is just north of CW Tower. One of the major line
changes of 1961-63 was here. Previously the railroad veered east a few hundred feet,
penetrated a ridge in the bend of the Emory R. and crossed the river, then entering
tunnel 23 (bypassed), proceeding down the Emory R. before turning into Tunnel 24.
Tunnel 23 was bypassed and new tunnels 22 & 24 were created. So the road master
is putt-putting along and gets a image of the S. portal of tunnel 24 where the s. portal
of the old tunnels is several feet to the left. After passing through tunnel 24, he then
sees tunnel 22 & the new bridge over the Emory R. ahead with the S. portal of old
tunnel 23 to the right.

Truth: I was manager of track inspection from 3/67 to 8/78 on the SR and we were
required to test this most important bridge line monthly. I've by here at least 100
times so I am trying to make it look like the view burned into my memory cells.

J. H. Sullivan

[conductorchris]

I think the sharing of your experience Jerry is very very valuable. This historic aspect of the simulator is something special. Thank you. It is something Paul Charland also does very well. It is a big reason I value the Milwaukee Road routes.
Christopher

[landnrailroader]

I think the sharing of your experience Jerry is very very valuable. This historic aspect of the simulator is something special. Thank you. It is something Paul Charland also does very well. It is a big reason I value the Milwaukee Road routes.
Christopher

Thanks Christopher. I consider the vicarious preservation of history to be the best thing we do with MSTS/ORTS.
These routes may be ORTS only because Travis Ebner has made me a set of the correct searchlight signals with
the configuration files etc. SR & now NS, use route signaling so Travis had to come up with some really advanced
stuff to get the signals to work right, but it requires ORTS and will crash MSTS. I'll have to use TSRE to place the
signals and I'm not looking forward to that, but I'll get it done.

Jerry

[rdayt]

Jerry,
TSRE is sweet and so easy to use. And stable.
Once you dig into it you'll wonder why you waited.
Love your work by the way.

Randy

[landnrailroader]

Jerry,
TSRE is sweet and so easy to use. And stable.
Once you dig into it you'll wonder why you waited.
Love your work by the way.

Randy

I'll never lay track or roads with TSRE. This business of turning off this or that
and dire consequences if you do this or that wrong and then move a piece. Nope,
with all it's quirks, I'll use RE as long as it works, and when it doesn't, it'll be time
to quit. I do use the alignment functions, although it would be nice if you could
only align about the "Y" axis, instead of both it and the lateral axis. Makes a
big difference if aligning a bridge on a significant gradient, for example.

Jerry Sullivan

[jonpd]

I'll never lay track or roads with TSRE. This business of turning off this or that
and dire consequences if you do this or that wrong and then move a piece. Nope,
with all it's quirks, I'll use RE as long as it works, and when it doesn't, it'll be time
to quit. I do use the alignment functions, although it would be nice if you could
only align about the "Y" axis, instead of both it and the lateral axis. Makes a
big difference if aligning a bridge on a significant gradient, for example.

Jerry Sullivan

To each his own, but personally I would gladly prefer TSRE with all its quirks for the MSRE that crashes at the drop of a hat. Once you get used to doing things a certain way with TSRE you can lay roads and tracks without any problems. My usual procedure is to first disable auto updates to the TDB then I manually update after each piece is added by hitting Z. If I mess up, a ctrl-Z puts me back where I was. I also make sure to backup my route in case I need to backtrack.

Jon

[GokuMK]

I'll never lay track or roads with TSRE. This business of turning off this or that
and dire consequences if you do this or that wrong and then move a piece. Nope,

You dont have to turn off anything in TSRE and editing tracks in TSRE doesnt lead you to dangerous situations like in MSRE when you can destroy the route just by editing a vector with interactives. Also TSRE had undo and advanced error fixing features. In my opinion its much better for placing tracks.

[landnrailroader]

GokuMK, TSRE is a great program and I appreciate your efforts in creating it and maintaining it. But at 82, I am well,
"set in my ways". I've never had a serious problem with MSRE because I follow the rules and do not try to edit track
once I start adding interactives. Now I do have a issue with a route I am working on that was started by Simon in
the Netherlands. I believe I have placed a road piece that MSRE and MSTS do not like & crash when that world tile
starts to load. I have set TSRE to "load all world tiles" and I have checked the errors & messages but nothing is
seen. I did not have the issue as long as there was just track, so I am considering using TSRE to delete the roads
and see if that will clear the issue, then start over.

Jon mentioned backing up. I use flash drives and have 1 for each route I am working on. I get at least a 32Gbt
size and these are so cheap that now I have found them at 2 for less than $20US. I make 20 folders on the drive
and every time I am in the route & do anything, I back it up. When I have filled all 20, I burn a DVD and start
over on the flash drive.

Goku, is there a way to align an object to the track around only the "Y" axis. So far alignment seems to be about
both "y" and the lateral axis, usually "z". I am learning but for most of my planned routes, I have already laid
track & roads, because until you created TSRE I believed there would come a time, likely a Windows version,
when MSRE would not work at all.

J. H. Sullivan
Florida, USA

[landnrailroader]

In doing the 3rd District of the CNO&TP, to be eventually followed by the 1st & 2nd districts, I elected to start the 3rd just north of
CP-CW Tower, end of a stretch of double track where the new alignment (of 1963) enters Tunnel 22. By then the Royal Palm was
not very royal, consisting of a few heavy weight cars, no diner, no sleepers, it being essentially a day train north of Chattanooga.
During my early employment (6/65--) I rode it a few times on business but it expired in 1968, while I worked another 10 years with
the Southern. So here is how it might have been, in fact was in the 1940s, except that then the Rat Hole existed in all its glory.

I have all track in place on the route and most major highways. Currently putting in the major streets in Spring City, Evensville,
Dayton, Graysville, and Soddy-Daisy. I guess it is my video card that oddly displays the ballast texture which I intended to be
light gray, almost white, to simulate the Southern's granite ballast which was kept unreasonably clean - or else the track
supervisor needed other employment.

J. H. Sullivan