Shasta Route available

[PerryPlatypus]

It would be nice to see a well detailed route in the region formerly served by Conrail, or anywhere east of the Mississippi for that matter. More than half the population lives there!

But more than half of the scenery is west of the Great Plains (just teasing)

Our team does have route projects in the works back east, they just won't be coming from me specifically. With very few exceptions, my interests are in the West.

[pschlik]

On one hand, if you want modern stuff, DTG almost always does modern only for USA and practically seems scared of history (I think their audience isn't very interested in the older stuff either), so everything in the Train Simulator brand is plenty saturated with 'last 15 years' content. On the other hand, if you want something that isn't subject to the whims of late-stage quantity over quality, then your modern options indeed get more limited regardless of sim. There may be a lot of modern routes, but good modern routes is quite a different story.

[Kist]

Take Tennessee Pass, one I am toying with heavily for an upcoming project. It shut down in the late 90s, so cant exactly do modern. The era I am looking at - early 90's - is because it was the busiest time by far in the diesel era.

After what I saw on Mullan Pass, then Shasta Route made by you Sean, defitnely Tennessee Pass will be on another level, cant' wait to see, how much further can the OR game engine be pushed, imagine the Rockies on the area of Leadville Colorado.There are plenty of videos on Youtube from the area, plus the street views.

[eric]

Question for those who've downloaded and run the route --- is anyone willing to do a written review to share on the homepage here?

[TrainSimJack]

I have the route but don't know enough about open rails to do any kind of review - if someone wants to tag along on discord and check it out, I'm happy to share.

[wwhall]

If you are speaking of Shasta, I've run it in OpenRails. It is an outstanding route in most respects. As for criticisms, I have just two significant ones--both of which are party due to the limitations of the sim: First, the town areas, especially Klamath Falls lack quite a bit of detail and authentic buildings. Part of that is, no doubt, due to the limitations of loading tiles with just too many objects for the sim to handle very well. Second is the lack of night lighting--street lights, etc. Again, part of this has to be ascribed to the MSTS/OR lack of light cast available for anything other than a player train headlight. Correcting that has been on many peoples' wish list for OR going back to the beginnings of OR. While I recognize that it is a technical challenge, it seems that most every other sim (train or otherwise) has managed to solve it. I don't blame the lack of night lighting on Sean or any other route builder--why would they waste much time adding night lighting objects that look so "artificial", at best?

Aside from that, I really, really like Shasta, just like I really, really like Mullan. In both cases, it's obvious that Sean heavily researched the prototype, and he endeavored to make the route look as realistic as possible in the sim. I do wish that he could offer a "tweaked" current day version of Shasta the way that SLI did with BNSF Seligman.

As for Tennessee Pass, I know it quite well. Sean, you can PM me if you are interested. I also know some people who actually worked it, both in train service, and MOW.

[CSRX]

From an engineer/conductor perspective. The Shasta Route is a winner when it comes to proper grade changes, curve alignment, and the reality of setting trains up precisely when it comes to train forces.

That alone makes me really enjoy the route, and you can't go wrong with the scenery. There are a lot of sections that remind me of where I currently operate on in Maine. Rolling hills, fields, trees, and streams. Large mountains in the distance, you really can't beat that.

[rdayt]

What caught my eye was there isn't any graffiti.
Prototypical or not, I really like it.

Randy

[wwhall]

What caught my eye was there isn't any graffiti.
Prototypical or not, I really like it.

Randy

Back the in early 90's era depicted on the Shasta Route, there wasn't a lot of graffiti--certainly way less than now. As far as I'm concerned, graffiti is criminal vandalism, and the "artists" are, therefore, criminals. Whenever someone opines that graffiti is "art" and OK, I ask them how they would like it if someone painted their car or their house with that crap without their permission.

[rdayt]

Back the in early 90's era depicted on the Shasta Route, there wasn't a lot of graffiti--certainly way less than now. As far as I'm concerned, graffiti is criminal vandalism, and the "artists" are, therefore, criminals. Whenever someone opines that graffiti is "art" and OK, I ask them how they would like it if someone painted their car or their house with that crap without their permission.

I worked as a trainman for BN out of Denver in the 70s/80s and there was quite a bit. Not as much as today but it was noticeable.
I wonder how much extra diesel they burn hauling it around. Probably not insignificant.

Randy

[CSRX]

As long as the reporting marks and car information isn't covered up, I don't really care if it's there or not.

At the end of the day, the railcars are still doing as they were meant to do. I do give credit though, I've seen taggers completely leave a car of a railroad heritage such as CNW or MILW, clean, unlike a SHPX tankcar or something, that gets caked with graffiti.

I also don't think we waste more fuel when hauling freight cars with graffiti versus without...

[daniellouwrens]

Hi

are there any Passenger Activities provided with the Shasta Route?

Cheers

Daniel

[dcarleton]

Yes, one. And it's a good one!

[motormaster532]

I just wish that some loose consists would be placed in yards and sidings. It is very stark to run Activities with nothing in the yards. This is NOT meant as a criticism,as one can always add this using TSRE,but is something that I found also in Mullen Pass and Ruell. Now,for the IMPORTANT part. Thanks You Seanand EVERYBODY at TrainSimulations for these great Routes. It is greatly appreciated.Brian

[CSRX]

I just wish that some loose consists would be placed in yards and sidings. It is very stark to run Activities with nothing in the yards. This is NOT meant as a criticism,as one can always add this using TSRE,but is something that I found also in Mullen Pass and Ruell. Now,for the IMPORTANT part. Thanks You Seanand EVERYBODY at TrainSimulations for these great Routes. It is greatly appreciated.Brian

In the activities, there are plenty of loose consists scattered around, on all those routes...