Alaska RR Anchorage to Fairbanks

[landnrailroader]

This is an interestinig project and probably the most difficult track laying effort I have seen. I copyed Anchorage, north of a point just south of the wye to the airport, to start the route which is mile 120 more or less. I am now at mile 234, a few miles north of Talkeetna. This route is being done at the request of a few others and I have no real interest in this line but it is interesting anyway. It has some of the crookedest stretches I have seen, and some of the longest tangents. You can use a 500r quarter degree, or a 6000r half degree piece at the end of a curve and it is almost invisible when running a route but when the following tangent is 5 miles long or more, it is difficult to get it exactly on the correct headiing.

Most of the line is operated under track warrants with the first 20 miles or so out of Anchorage being TCS and likewise the last 10 miles or so into Fairbanks. Otherwise all siding turnouts are either #10 or #15 manuals, mostly #10. When comparing the 2010 track chart (which I will include in the documents) with Google Earth, a number of sidings, and wye's no longer exist. And there is not much on line business either. Talkeetna, and Nenana are the only major towns along the line. Healy is fairly large, but mostly out of sight of the railroad. There is passenger service and some trains will stop on flag at certain points just to pick up somebody whose home is "not on the grid" and take them to town, which may be 100 miles along the line. The Smithsonian Channel or Nat. Geographic Channel, I forget which, had a nice series on the Alaska RR and I watched most episodes of it and was glad I did my railroad thing in the south east part of the lower 48.

I'll add to this as I progress. My intent is to include the major bridges. There are dozens of small concrete bridges which have ballasted decks, but where I can tell that the bridge is not a ballasted deck, I am including a strech of bridge rails. There are also dozens of pipes under the track, some of which are planely visible. Then there is Hurricane Gulch. I use TSM and will create it and the other truss types but if one of you wants redo a bridge it is fine with me. I take my length measurement off what it says on the track chart.

Jerry Sullivan, P.E. (retired from CSX & Southern, retired docent C&TSRR)

[landnrailroader]

There is definitely a scale factor issue as one goes this far north as well as some aberration between Google Earth coordinates and MSTS/TSRE coordinates. For example, at mile 347.4 just south of Denali Park, there is a large viaduct over Riley Creek which measures about 175 meters on Google Earth and if you take the dimensions of the several girder spans listed on the track chart, the total is 570 feet or 174 meters. But when you follow accurate digitizing and put the markers on the route terrain, the length comes out barely 100 meters. Not only that, but to get 175 meters in TSRE would require extending the viaduct 70 meters or so into the 9.73 degree curve leading onto the south end. But then when you transfer the digitized data, this curve can only be reasonably fitted in TSRE, using 90 meter radius pieces which are equivalent to a 19.4 degree curve. Now while this is not correct for the particular location, curves that sharp are (or were) encountered by passenger trains - where - the Old Fort Loops. Helene took quite a whack at this stretch so I don't know if it will be rebuilt or not, but there were at least two cuves this sharp at Coleman. What I am going to do, is lay track, not sharper than 90 meter radius and then if anyone wants to do things different, the in&out tangents will be correct and dynamic track can be used to place the exact curve if possible. Eric did mention that there are coordinate errors to be encountered this far north. He is CORRECT.

Jerry

[railrunner112]

This sounds very interesting, seems like I might have to rebuild my runaway train movie engines to their original Alaska shape.. I pretty much modelled 1801 and 1810 exactly as they were just with fake noses

[railrunner112]

Does the route require some special track packs? I see some missing track pieces in the only track en landscape version online.

[eric]

Does the route require some special track packs? I see some missing track pieces in the only track en landscape version online.

Yes - MTracks is used along with XTracks. We have new replacements for both here in the library as file IDs 88570 (Atracks) and 88502 (Mtracks) or you can search for the legacy versions.

[landnrailroader]

Two days ago, the track gangs reached Fairbanks and then raided the saloons and houses of ill repute for a little relaxation. Then they turned to the yard area. In the image, the original train station was on the sort of hook shaped part at the extreme left. That is now a private school. And the local newspaper is located just at the end of this piece. The loop encompasses several industrial tracks which are not parallel to the rest of the yard. I thought this might be the distortion between Google coordinates and ORTS coordinates and some may be, but when I checked the spacing on Google Earth, those industry track themselve are parallel but not to the main part of the yard. The two parallel tracks, spaced wide apart at the right are where the new passenger station is located. Where you see a clump of markers near the top right is where the rather complex servicing area is located. Three industries, a scale track, and the lead to the UAF power plant are out of the picture to the top. The line pointing to the lower right deviating from the loop is the Eilson branch. (My friends on the ARR says this is pronounced Eye-lson). That is the longest branch at 28 miles but it also has a branch off of it that ducks back on the south side of town to reach the airport, although the last 4 miles or so to the airport are out of service.

One thing that impresses me is that this railroad was built between 1912 and 1924 and it was built to very good engineering standards. The main line does not have any grades in excess of about 1.7% and those are mostly concentrated in about 20 miles around Denali. Otherwise, very little over 0.5%

Jerry Sullivan FAIRBANKS_YD.jpg

[R. Steele]

Two days ago, the track gangs reached Fairbanks and then raided the saloons and houses of ill repute for a little relaxation

Gee Jerry that sounds like:

The Shooting of Dan McGrew
By Robert W. Service

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...-of-dan-mcgrew

😉😄😀

[landnrailroader]

Friends,

Fairbanks yard is complete and the attached image is of the engine/coach/car service area. It is close to correct, and has the correct number of mostly parallel tracks but to accomplish that in MSTS I did alter the switch groups at the ends a little. Today, I entered the details for the Eielson AFB branch, the longest of the railroad at 29 miles. Also the Healy Branch and the Fairbanks Airport branch. Of these latter 2, there is a marker on the track chart that says track is out of service beyond the mark. I have marked this as close as possible in the details so whoever super-details the route might want to place a sign beside the track. In the case of the airport branch, the tracks are still in place and visible for the most part all the way to the airport and so I have included them. In the case of the Healy branch, it is only in service for about 2 miles but the track chart extends to almost mile 5. It appears that the track is removed after about mile 2.1 but I was able to digitize it off of a topo map fairly well, so it will be included out to mile about 4.8 and there is a "tipple" marked on the topo at about mile 4.3 and aerials show a structure there that looks more like a flood loader with a conveyor extending north a few hundred feet. Now, we will lay the track on the branches. One "error" I notice is that when I use the marked values for elevation, the track comes out about 1 meter underground. So once I am done and back up the route, I am going to regen the terrain suppressing it about 1 meter. Easy to do in DEMEX if my tired old XP machine will contin ue it's so far solid performance.
FAIRBANKS_SVC.jpg

Jerry

[eric]

Looking forward to this, Jerry. I wish we had some Alaska Railroad stock to go with it, but having the route is always a good start to get one of the modelers interested.

[landnrailroader]

Yes, That is the case Eric. I have no particular interest in the ARR but someone wanted the route, so I am doing the track. I thought I might digitize the roads but outside of the few towns, those are really few and far between. The only major one is the Parks Highway which more or less parallels the railroad, so anyone else can digitize the roads they intend to place. Since it is a very large route, roughly from mile 120 to mile 470, this is a route that several might want to work on, but they would have to organize pretty well to do that. Also, there are dozens of private (PVT) roads or passive protection (RX_XB) roads, really rought in nature. There are only a few controlled sidings and I have marked those by putting for example "RHTO-10-P" if it appears to be a powered turnout, i.e. controlled, and otherwise RHTO-10-M for manual. All but a few appear to be #10 turnouts, although those few appear to be #15. There was a series a while back on either the Smithsonian or National Geographic channel and I watched most of them. It is really interesting. Trapper X will stroll a mile or so from his remote cabin to a marked spot on the railroad and when a particular train appears, he just waves at it, and it stops and takes him, maybe 100 miles to the doctor, grocery, hardware, or whatever and when he comes back, his larger purchases go in the baggage car, the train stops, he gets off, and the baggage man unloads the items usually with the Trapper's help. It was interesting.

The Seward to Anchorage part is in the library and I notice that it has downloaded many times. I would liked to have done that one with the old glacier route in place, but it would have to be a seperate route because the winding & twisting of the old route criss-crosses the current route several times. When I release the 2nd district of the CNO&TP it will have most of the old routes because only one conflicts with the existing.

Jerry

[eric]

There was a series a while back on either the Smithsonian or National Geographic channel and I watched most of them. It is really interesting. Trapper X will stroll a mile or so from his remote cabin to a marked spot on the railroad and when a particular train appears, he just waves at it, and it stops and takes him, maybe 100 miles to the doctor, grocery, hardware, or whatever and when he comes back, his larger purchases go in the baggage car, the train stops, he gets off, and the baggage man unloads the items usually with the Trapper's help. It was interesting.

I've watched that as well. It's called "Railroad Alaska" and is available on HGTV Go if you have that subscription.

My YouTube.TV subscription gives me access to HGTV Go, so if you have that or a cable or satellite plan that offers Discovery's content, it's possible you can access it as well.

https://watch.hgtv.com/video/railroad-alaska-destination-america-atve-us/frozen-danger

Oddly, it's not available on Max, which is where a lot of Discovery's content is now available. HBO and Discovery are both part of Warner-Discovery, so they've been slowly merging all of their online streaming into Max.

[landnrailroader]

We don't have that one. My wife has to have so many extra subscriptions that I ought to be a Comcast stockholder but I'm not.

Jerry

[eric]

If you have Comcast (and know your login details), you might already have access. Select "TV Provider" and Comcast.

[landnrailroader]

Another week or two and this one will be ready to put in unfinished. After it is all done, I plan to back it up (actually I do that to an external drive every time I am in it) and then move it to my XP machine where I am going to regen the terrain biased 1 meter low. As it is, using the elevations on the track chart, nearly all track is under ground 1/2 to 3/4 meter. I finished all the branches today except the Palmer branch. On the branches, especially the Eielson and Fairbanks Airport branches, the distortion in curves between Google Eartth and MSTS is GROSS, but I matched the digitizing as close as possible figuring that a super detailer could smooth it out, probably using dynamic track, if he could figure out how to disguise this. Later there are several bridges that I want to create but I will do those as a set of objects, anyone can use if they know how to enter data into a .ref file.

[landnrailroader]

Last night I moved the route to my tired old XP machine and it came through like a champ. Lowered the terrain 1 meter after adding a few tiles around Palmer and then I compressed the route which did not do much, so I will leave the removed items folder in the route. Expect to see right after Christmas in unfinished.

Jerry