Tourist Railroads in the USA

[BrandonS261]

Hey everyone,

So I have been thinking about this for awhile now and was curious if anyone has been working on any tourist railroads for Open Rails? The main ones I was thinking about were the Cass Scenic Railroad, Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, Great Smokey Mountain railroad, Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, Reading and Northern along with Steamtown. Maybe even an updated version of Strasburg and Grand Canyon Railroad as well would be a welcomed addition. I know there are many more out there but those are just a few that came off the top of my head at the moment.

Brandon

[ngc427]

I had started a version of the East Broad Top, since I had some models available from a few months ago for the rolling stock, locomotives, and buildings, but I wasn't satisfied with the quality of my trackwork so I canned the project. I had finished most of Orbisonia, and extended the basic trackwork to Colgate Grove Wye, with the intention of going all the way to Mt Union, and all the way back to Robertsdale. I was planning on doing a hybrid version of the route, sort of the mid-1950s when the railroad was just coming off of its common carrier era and right into the tourist era, so you could run both.

[fleegle411]

Oh boy... Where do I start...

So I am still occasionally playing around with the Strasburg Railroad V2 project. The route itself is pretty much as good as I think I can get it. That includes using TSRE to straighten out some of the trackwork, adding distant mountains, making the turntable at the Museum functional, and mosaic style ground textures. Main thing holding that up at this point is rolling stock.


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I also started work on a Cass route back in 2021. The terrain was all imported from DEM data and the trackwork is all in place from Cass to Bald Knob as well as to Spruce. I did not build the track out to Durbin as when I started the project that wasn't relevant. The town of Cass would still need all the noteworthy buildings (Station, Company Store, Mill, Enginehouse) made. The scenery is basically in from Cass to Whitaker (except for the Sandstone cut) and in at select points to Bald Knob. Here are a few shots from around the route. It's not nearly as complete as the shots suggest.

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In recent months my attention has been anywhere but Open Rails. If things strike just right I might pick back up on these, we'll see...

[CSRX]

The MEC Mountain Division route I'm working on, will allow the use for Conway Scenic between Conway NH and Whitefield NH, as well as Redstone NH if that counts..

[oper190]

I've done some Scenic Service on Marias Pass ( 3.1 & 5 ), East River Bluefield, and a combined Clinch Valley & Pocahontas set, ( 6 hours+ round trip ) if that counts.

[shadowmane]

There are a few routes from Colorado that would qualify.

[Orbita]

There is Tennessee Pass, even though it's set before traffic was rerouted circa late 90s. I guess running Royal Gorge equipment wouldn't look too out of place.