UP Gila Subdivision 2023

[eric]

capture_5100247.jpg While neither of the teams I wanted to win today were able to pull it off, I did make quite a bit of progress on closing the gap. I'm now at MP 872 working from the east, and the end of work from the west is at MP 868.

For those who've rail fanned the line -- this is Shawmut. A bunch of curves and a split grade, but also single track, which means the available curves are plentiful.

Zoom in, and you'll see the dotted lines, which are the old "off by 10-20m" alignments to the photo imagery.

It's only five miles of track to wrap up, but it's going to involve a lot of cursing if memory serves me correctly.




capture_5100248.jpg Update.... I'm now at Shawmut... let the fun begin. And the cursing.

I retracted what I said about available single track curves... There was a gap in the ScaleRail curves -- with only 1000, 1500, and 2000 radiuses, and after some trial and error, it was clear I needed some tighter definition.

Added to the track package, I'll have 1100,1200,1300,1400,1600,1700,1800, and 1900 radius curves in 1d and 5d lengths.

That's made all the difference in the world for fitting the photo terrain.

[eric]

Not too much cursing actually.... A SP freight holds at the bottom of the shallow grade as the 1973 Sunset Limited scoots by on the steep grade.

capture_5100249.jpg The track chart grade information for Shawmut was a bit sketchy, so I tried something a little different than what I'd have done on a single track grade like this.

I knew what the top and bottom elevations were supposed to be (converted, 410.5m and 393m).

At the top of the grade, I set a benchmark piece of track where the two lines split. I did the same at the bottom.

Between the two benchmarks, I worked my way down one side of the split grade setting curves to match the imagery, with placeholder elevations varying from 0 to -23% grade to follow the terrain. From the bottom, I did the same in reverse up the other grade.

With the curves set, it was time for some math.

Using the Track Viewer, I created a path on each leg, and used the "View Chart" function to get the approximate length of each leg to divide the 17.5m difference in elevation. One leg came out to 2000m (8.75 permille), the other at 1800m (9.7 permille).

Last step... starting at the bottom on each leg, I applied a constant 8.75 or 9.7 elevation all the way up to the top.

All in all, it took about three hours of work to wrap that up, but I'm really happy with the result.

There's still a one mile gap left to fill, but it's been a long enough day.

[eric]

The gap hath been closeth. Or is it closethed?

Spent part of the day building paths west to east, which uncovered "several" places that should have been connected but were either a track that was missing a TDB line or just missing altogether.

By end of the afternoon, I had one "default" path and one "take other exit" path from downtown Yuma to Picacho. That was my end of month goal, and with two days to spare, I might start working my way south for the final 45 miles or so to Tucson. With more track at my disposal, it'll go fast, but also with no expectations of finishing before the end of next week.

Then it's on to a week of signaling, mileposts, and maybe a little terrain painting before I package it up. Because of the new track dependencies, I don't want to post it before Derek is ready for the next TSection update.


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[eric]

Another milestone of sorts -- I've entered CP Naviska and Pima County.

capture_5100252.jpg Tucson is where the route began, and pre-dates TSRE.

For the first time on this route, I'm seeing tracknodes in the low double digits... Seems quite odd.

24 miles to go until I'm in the yard. There are 8 curves and a couple control points left.

capture_5100253.jpg Going much faster than I expected...

Found our old mini-van parked at Tangerine Road on the north side of Marana and just before CP Rillito. Was wondering where that went....

[eric]

It's the end of the month....

With two minutes to spare, I've reached "almost" downtown Tucson, MP 982....

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[ossie]

That's a masterclass in going from back burner to afterburner Eric. 😊

[eric]

It's really my favorite for running... especially when it's ice cold here, I get to remember how much I loved living in the heat and being able to spend an hour or two watching the mainline action.

I worked remote with a team based in Europe, so if I wasn't traveling to meet with clients, my days started early and ended around noon, plus I could take conference calls from pretty much anywhere.

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[eric]

I did make my month end goal yesterday, which was getting to the yard leads in Tucson past the Amtrak station. If I can get a little more cleanup done next week, I'll try to upload it somewhere as an unfinished work.

It's currently 7Gb zipped, so this is not something I'll be opening up to the entire world.

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[eric]

Feels good to have the track done end to end... now I can get back to the funner stuff.

Satellite imagery unfortunately has moved faster than my build. Maricopa now has a highway overpass and a lot of streets that didn't exist when I started the route...

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Using the TSRE Ruler Function, I plotted out a lane of traffic for car spawners to use later... and also as a guide to start repainting the terrain.

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And then erasing all the progress ADOT spent millions on....

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Needed a QuikTrip iced tea after all that work.... just in time for the westbound Sunset to show up 12 hours late.

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I can't understand any of the code, but I really do appreciate the terrain painting tools in TSRE...

After a couple QT taquitos, I had enough energy to take on the real task of the night, which was dropping mile markers.

No, I'm not placing all 240 miles worth. I've placed one every five miles so that the track monitor has some frame of reference -- the desert gets pretty hypnotic and all looks the same after a while.

Next up.... upcoming mini-sprints to tackle every five mile stretch to clean up terrain where it's over the track, add signals and the remaining mileposts, and as time permits, add some nominal scenery. There's really not a lot of civilization between Maricopa and Yuma aside from Gila Bend. But there are some trackside buildings here and there.

There are 47 control points to link up, which comes out to around 250 signals, and at least 200 mileposts (one for each side in the double track areas).

Maybe.... 80-100 hours of work left before I'll feel good about releasing it as a work in progress?

[eric]

Fortunately, all of the signal cabinets and control point signs are in place.

The signal cabinets get placed by WFH -- every 05d and 03d turnout has a cabinet associated to it, and the positioning is driven by the Static Detail Level of the track piece.

SDL 0 gets a cabinet on the opposing side of the diverging path, SDL 1 goes on the same side as the diverging path, and SDL 2 gets offset by an extra track width because it's on the center track in the few areas which have triple track at Picacho, Red Rock, and Cherry Avenue/22nd Street in Tucson.

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The control point signs themselves were a little tricker. The UP doesn't have freestanding signs on this subdivision (I don't know that they exist at all, unlike the CP and BNSF). Instead, they're attached to the CTC cabinets.

Mine are a "freight animation" that fits the CTC cabinet shapes. Like the cabinets, the axis is tied to the track piece they get associated with. Because there are more signs than SDL slots available, those get placed manually and then the "Copy Pos/Rot" function gets used to line it up to the cabinet.

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[niknak]

'Work In Progress' or not I'll be downloading it Eric !

[ChandlerBranchRailfan]

Lord almighty! Great work Eric!

[eric]

Did some signals tonight... had to remember -how- to do them, and then decided I needed to do a tweak to TSRE.

In a rhythm, it took me about two minutes per control point, and I was able to get from CP Pacific in Yuma all the way to CP East Picacho. Workload permitting, I'll have the rest done by tomorrow. What's still missing is the yard leads and ladders at Tucson, which should be done by the end of the week. Or maybe tomorrow. That all depends on what happens in real life...

Switch linking, which is admittedly simple once you get the mechanics down, is easier explained with a video:



Essentially, place it, click List, enable the second/third head as needed, click link, click link signal, and find the track node you're projecting a path onto. Repeat for each signal head, close the window, and then I personally save my work after each signal is linked. Old habits from the MSRE, which would lock up and crash at the most inopportune moment. And TSRE did it to me three times tonight, mostly after having worked for about 40-50 minutes. Saving frequently makes a huge difference.

Beyond the basics, here's the new tweak that will be in the next testing release....

Some time back, I'd created an offset value so that signals and mileposts could be uniformly placed off to the right or left of the track centerline.

On a double-track mainline, they sometimes need to be on the opposite side from normal.

Now in addition to "Flip", I've added "Shift" as an option... it toggles thru a couple options that will both flip and reposition the signal to the wrong side of the track.

1) Place the signal:

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2) Flip the signal if the arrow was pointing the wrong way:

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3) Shift it to the other side of the tracks, arrow should still be facing correctly:

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The shifting may work the first time, or it might need a couple clicks, depending on where the rotation is on the compass...

And now we have very nice uniform spacing/placement along the right of way.

[eric]

It's been a solid week -- track is done aside from some break/fix stuff, and signals are mostly placed and linked. I did a Squirrel! moment yesterday while working on signals, which I'll place into the TSRE forum as its own thread.

Been working my way west to east to fix terrain overruns and also fix glitches where WFH got something wrong or was missing a parent-clone relationship.

Second Squirrel! project of the week... I rebuilt the mile marker shapefile to prototypical of what UP uses. I even stopped at my local UP mainline to measure the sign.
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Because ORTS doesn't render individual panels, I came up with one that would fit up to four numbers. I could create variations knowing where a two panel vs. three panel will work, but as much as I like to get in the way of my own progress, this was the finished product:

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They look proportionally correct, albeit a little too clean, and Squirrel! Number Three appeared when I decided to clean up the signnum.ace file..

Next up... Fourth Squirrel! project.... Yuma needed a proper depot. The SP mission style depot burned down in the 1990's, and without a lot of decent photos to go by, I freelanced something based loosely on what I had for Tucson as a placeholder. The platforms -are- prototypical -- it's a center platform with a subway tunnel under the tracks to the headhouse of the depot. Today, there's not even an Amshack from what I recall.

The water tank is actually more prototypical -- you can still see the concrete footings today. Many of those tanks survived into the 80's, and a few into the early 2000's.

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I also did a fair amount of terrain painting to remove shadows and bridges from the river, and also to erase I-10 a bit.

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The interstate will be there with road and bridge objects, but leaving it painted on the terrain just looked bad as it's an elevated highway from next to the train depot until you get across the river, and the tracks cross under it on the way to its own bridge across the Colorado River.

It's more time than I've spent on Yuma in probably 10 years, but it's looking a lot better.

[eric]

It's a monster of a download, but enjoy.

https://www.trainsim.com/forums/file...leid?fid=89824

There's still a lot of work to be done around the Tucson yard and the industry tracks in Casa Grande & Wellton.

Also, you'll want to download it includes a zip with FR_tracks -- this has the new custom tracks and a test version of the next TSection which includes the entries for those tracks.

As always, make backups first, install second.