UP Gila Subdivision 2023

[Curt C]

I'm sure you'll have a great time! I've filmed in the Maricopa Mountain/Shawmut area about 8 years ago. Seeing the saguaro cactus in the hills was really something. Hope you have fun.

[eric]

It's a little bit early for the saguaro bloom, but you might get lucky and see a few. The flowers don't normally appear until the end of April. You might see other cacti flowering though. Lots of green in the desert if you know where to look for it.

[lineman]

The spring bloom is something to behold at Picacho,

[ChandlerBranchRailfan]

Hey Eric, since your map file shows Phoenix as a location, I take it you're also planning the Phoenix Sub too.

[eric]

It's a maybe. I also have tiles for the Nogales Sub.

[ChandlerBranchRailfan]

It's a maybe. I also have tiles for the Nogales Sub.

Thanks Eric. I was thinking maybe I'd like to try to do the Chandler Branch myself seen as I live in the area. I wouldn't want to have duplicated projects.

[eric]

I suspected your name may have implied that.

If you'd like to do that branch and the Phoenix Sub, by all means have at it. I can send you the world files for Wellton and/or Picacho if you want to use those as possible merge points in the future.

[ChandlerBranchRailfan]

Thanks Eric. I’ll see what I can do given the time I have and I’ll PM you my email when I get the chance.

[eric]

I can see it's been a while since I dropped back into this project thread... Since ossie asked about an Arizona desert route, here's where things stand as of this week...

154 miles complete, with roughly 80 miles of track remaining to be placed.

What's done:

MP733 (CP Yuma) to MP867 (almost to Shawmut) == 134 miles mixed double and single mainline
MP920 (Casa Grande) to MP939 (East Picacho) == 19 miles double mainline

What's left:
33 miles between Shawmut and Maricopa (MP898), which are the worst chunk, and won't go quickly due to a bunch of curves to re-do.
The 45 miles between Picacho and Tucson is moderately simple, and adjustments on that are somewhat minor.

[landnrailroader]

That is one of the few UP routes that interests me, mainly because i have rode over it once, eastbound on the Amtral SSL in Jan. 2019. My issue now is that I have not been able to create a working activity on any route, and I really need some simple activities to test my routes with looking for bumps etc. Track viewer will allow one to check for continuity but there can be a significant bump that does show on it. The area of the divided main tracks a few miles east of Tucson was interesting. We took the track that goes under the big bridge that is often seen in photos. I guess the other track has more favorable gradient because we did not have any issues but going east was pretty slow for a few miles. I don't thing the EB SSL went through in daylight normally but a broken rail near Yuma had delayed us about 4 hours, which was great news to a railfan. The conductor did come through and apologize to folks and I told him I was fine with it. He said "Railfan eh" --- YES.

Jerry Sullivan

[eric]

Yep, running the route end to end is time consuming, but it's the only way.

[ossie]

Thanks so much for the update Eric, it looks fantastic! I only watched the 7idea's Gila video a couple of weeks ago and apart from being blown away by the desert scenery as always I was really surprised for such a busy sub at how much of it still needs to be double tracked and that a section of the western side of the Phoenix sub was closed (at least at the time of the video). Tucson (along with Belen) are the two webcams I spend most time watching and considering how often there's a bunch of trains go through in a short period of time, it must really keep the dispatchers on their toes trying to keep them all moving. I'll bet they'll be happy whenever they finally get the double tracking done. 😊

I understand the attention that Route 66 gets, but there's so much history across the old Sunset route with the Butterfield stage coach etc, that from this distance at least, they seem to get a bit short changed in the attention stakes. I know so many people down here that have driven Route 66 (or want to) but don't seem to realise how much history lies just a bit further south. It's a part of your country I'd love to spend some time in if I ever get up there.

[eric]

We spent 7 years in Tucson. The outflow of people escaping from CA caused real estate prices to double (years after we sold, unfortunately) , so moving back isn't very likely.

[eric]

capture_5100230(00001).jpg Now the fun starts....

I've gotten past Maricopa and at the start of what I'll refer to as Five Mile Curve....

In short, it's a continuous curve for five miles between Maricopa and Mobile. When I did the first build, I had no large double track curves to work with, and managed to get it constructed with a combination of 6000m, 8000m and 15000m curve sections that didn't really line up well and required filler pieces on the outer track.

Thanks to Derek Morton, I was able to get a new allocation of track sections and track shapes this week, allowing me to make some large radii 2T curve sections...

They'll be 1d sections in 5000m thru 15000m, so spacing can be maintained without fillers. Most of today was spent getting the tsection entries and trackshapes generated, and then debugging the new sections in TSRE.

Aside from a couple typos I needed to fix, all's now good to go, and I should be able to get past Five Mile Curve this weekend, and maybe as far as CP Estrella or CP Shawmut... I've got two playoff games worth of time.

Go Bill's, Go Redskins... er... Commanders.

[eric]

That was fun. Jerry might enjoy the notation here on the track chart:

capture_5100237.jpg
They say everything's bigger in Texas, but this and the Grand Canyon probably are two features where that doesn't apply.

Because of skew, there's a little variation in the pieces used. It ranged between 9000m and 12000m, so let's just call it 10000m. That wouldn't have worked without the extra pieces, which I'll package up -after- they're included with the next TSection. Because they're based on the ScaleRail profile, it will be an unofficial add-on, and I may add a few others with 4M spacing so that I have better multi-track curves on my CNW Harvard route leaving downtown.

capture_5100235.jpg

That closes the gap quite a bit -- leaving only MP 868 to MP 888 880.

capture_5100239.jpg