Southern Pacific Shasta Route - Development Thread

[whistlestop]

Most excelent and accurate. That is just west of Hwy 97 and north of the Calif/Oregon border. North of the tunnel also. Keep up the nice work.
Ron

[trainmanaustin]

Patiently waiting for this masterpiece to be released!

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[daniellouwrens]

[QUOTE=trainmanaustin;1995502]Patiently waiting for this masterpiece to be released!

]

Me too also as well

[johnnyboy99]

will there be locomotives and rolling stock included with it like the other releases?

[conductorchris]

Question, if I might: is the vegetation in these scenes individually placed or forests? It sure is worlds better than nothing but ground terrex!
Christopher

[PerryPlatypus]

Thank you all

Ron - Technically those 3 screenshots are *south* of the state line. A lot of people associate the tunnel on the north side of Dorris with the state line, but the line is actually about 2 miles further north. I'm very glad to see someone familiar with the area approves of the appearance though!

Chris - Almost all vegetation in these screenshots are forest regions, including the sagebrush. I am contemplating also adding sporadic weeds and grass as forest regions, but we'll see. Trying to balance between detail vs. making forward progress. Thanks for the compliment!

[wwhall]

Beautiful work there, Sean. This route will be up there with Mullan as one of my favorite routes, guaranteed.

[PerryPlatypus]

Just a quick update for everyone! We are graaaaadually narrowing in on completion of Shasta, but still have lots of work to do in the populated areas of the route.

Right at this moment I am adding in distant mountain textures for the entire route using NAIP public domain textures (which means Mount Shasta itself got a minor improvement). This is quite a labor intensive process, which involves converting massive image files from the MrSID format into a usable image format, then very precisely scaling and skewing the images to proper alignment using a combination of Photoshop, Gimp, and Mosaic.

The results, I think, are quite convincing. Here, the eastbound Coast Starlight chugs upgrade past the former site of Cougar siding, with just a few more miles to the top of the grade at Grass Lake.

Open Rails 2022-02-11 01-41-41 by Sean Kelly, on Flickr

[R. Steele]

The results, I think, are quite convincing.

Sounds like a complex workflow, you're right though...quite convincing.

[Kuckoo]

Been wringing my hands in anticipation of this. Looks like a jewel of a route.

[trainmanaustin]

Outstanding job Sean!

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[scottb613]

Hi Sean,

That's some mighty fine scenery work there - sir.

Regards,
Scott

[seagoon]

A beautiful work in progress, Mr. Platypus.

In fact, I am looking forward to this route for OR far more than I was for the DTG/Milepost version for TS2022.

[Kist]

Looking forward for the Shasta Route and also the Blue Mountains from your team Sean

[CSRX]

This looks like it will hit the same quality or more, of the Mullan Pass, and I am greatly looking forward to this! Will be making this as the next route for my youtube series.