Milwaukee Road - Northern Montana

[landnrailroader]

After releasing the Alaska route, the internal quesiton was "What Next". I have a complete version of the L&N KD Sub. nearly done, but there has been some desire from others to get the N. Montana line, so I started back on that. I had all roads in place as far north as Lewistown and most of the roads beyond there to Winifrede & other branches. On this route, one can go for miles after Lewistown without any road to speak of other than farm paths from field to field. Towns are small too. So I have started to put in the roads moving toward Great Falls. Last year, I extended the route past Great Falls to the end of the branch which was some 60 miles NW of GF and there are a couple of small, and one medium size town along that branch. I also added more of the Great Northern so that there is a physical connection between the GN(BNSF) and what is now the Central Montana railroad which operates 100 miles more or less of the former Milwaukee Road line and 40 or so of the GN line so as to connect to the outer railroad world. Although I had put ballast transfers in, these do not work well with TSRE or ORTS and so as I piddle along, I am removing them and hopefully one of the real artists among us will "paint" the ballast in. I should point out that the pinkish tone of the ballast was done by Lukas Lussar and while it is good, I really don't know what the correct color would be. Milwaukee Rd. used river rock for a lot of their ballast while the GN(BNSF) uses granite. I will use this thread to report progress on the route and I plan to release it with mileposts & most crossings but I do not believe the Milwaukee Road was signalled on this line. In old times, there was one passenger train that connected at Harlowton with passenger trains there but it was long gone by the time the last mainline passenger train died in 1961. When released it won't be "incomplete" but super detailers should have a lot of fun with it.

Jerry

[jasonjedi1]

Sweet! Looking forward to this finally coming out.

[CSRX]

Sweet! Looking forward to this finally coming out.

That makes two of us!

[kennyeaton]

Merry Christmas Jerry and family,

I'm looking forward to this route as well.

I think it would be great if we a few contributors to work on this to really make it come alive. Folks to contribute with what they do best. Shape builder's, terrain groomers, signal installers, etc. I personally have no idea how to do shapes or signaling. I believe that would be a fun project for a few of us.

Kenny

[landnrailroader]

You are quite right Kenny. I will be doing the basic terrain shaping, but it is not as easy with TSRE as it was with MSTS/RE. I use 1-2-2-3 top to bottom number and find that does the best that I can see. Other combinations make the width of the right of way to wide, especially noticeable on fills and in deep cuts. And it is to encourage the ballast painters like yourself, that I am removinig the transfers and will not put them in future routes.

Merry Christmas to all who see this

Jerry Sullivan

[landnrailroader]

On the Northern Montana line, there are a number of branches, all radiating from Lewistown except for the connection to BNSF(GN) that was not a part of the Milwaukee Road operation as far as I know, but it is today's connection for the Central Montana RR to the outside world. There are a number of villages, most denoted by either a grain elevator or several grain bins, or both and one of these is Arrow Creek which is a mile or so behind the "photographer". Looking more or less northwest, we come to quite an abyss which the railroad must descind into and then work back toward the north northeast to climb out of what amounts to a box canyon. Just at the left where the track curves out of sight was once a tunnel, daylighted during the later Milwaukee Road period. The track then descends for over a mile, and turns back on a sharp horseshoe curve to eventually pass this spot again, now some 200 feet lower. I am removing the transfers undre the track as I progress. The next village to the right of this image some 10 miles is Geraldine. Twenty miles before we passed this point was Denton which is now the HQ of the Central Montana RR. This railroad nearly went belly up when floods damaged the great viaduct over Judith River but it has been repaired and now the railroad, which also operates a dinner train is back in business. Until that bridge was usable, the CMRR was land-locked.

ARROW_CRK.jpg
Jerry Sullivan

[CSRX]

This looks exciting Jerry.
I may have a favor to ask you about doing the dem terrain for one of my routes I plan to build, if and when you have a chance or the time to do so.

[landnrailroader]

Shawn,

I would be glad to help you if my ancient XP machine continues to soldier on. You can use .hgt files to shape terrain in TSRE but I haven't done any of that. I always liked to use material from the USGS in 1/3 arc-sec resolution but then about 3 years ago the format changed and now the only material I have been able to use is 1 arc-sec resolution and that must be pre-processed with VTBuilder which is odd because you read in a .tif file and then export a .tif file but in doing so whatever the issue is, goes away. On this route, I am using size=1, embankment and cutting = 2 and max radius = 3 when I manually adjust terrain with the "F" key. Not perfect but it seems to look the best to me.

I'm not on any rigid schedule although being 86 next month, maybe the master of us all has some rigid plan for me----. I just spent two months essentially roughing in the Alaska RR, a route I have no personal interest in. As a teenager going to visit relatives in NW Iowa from Nashville, TN I rode the Milwaukee Road from Chicago to Spencer, IA. And my favorite uncle was a high seniority engineer on the L&N, so my main interest is L&N and then there is the Milwaukee Road.

Jerry

[CSRX]

No worries, I've had to do that myself, but somehow still struggle with it.
I don't like using the hgst data, as they are the lowest quality, and I've noticed landscapes that aren't even remotely close to what I need.

It will take a bit, but I'd like to get the tiles laid out from Mattawamkeag, ME to Portland, ME with the several branch lines in place. 200+ miles is probably more than I want to bite into, but it's something I've been wanting for some time now.

Whatever you have to offer route wise, is always a pleasure to see. Not many route builders around anymore.

[landnrailroader]

Shawn,

If all you want is the terrain tiles and terrain shaping, I would be glad to do that, again if the old XP machine holds up. However, I am not familiar at all with the area you mentioned, so if you could create a marker file for what you want, it would help. This is easy to do. Digitize from the sharpest images you can find on Google Earth, preferably doing all of the digitizing from the same image date. If necessary to go to some other image set because of visibility issues, then be carefult not to pick a set that is offset from the first one too much. I have seen offsets of 50 meters which is just too much. Now once you create the path files (as GE calls them), save them to your PC as .kml files and then there is a utility in the library that runs fine on my Win-10 machine that converts .kml to .mkr format. If I have the .mkr and .kml files, then I can load the .kml files into my GE and see what the route patchs are and from that I can go to MSTS/Geometry Extractor to creat the base route and if I then put the .mkr file(s) into it, DEMEX will show me if I have missed anything and I can go back to MSTS/GE and add the required files. Since I will already know the route coordinates, I can download the necessary elevation data from the USGS site. If I get only the .kml files, then I can create the necessary marker file.

Now, I have found that TSRE will not digest a route unless there is already a track and road database, so while I am on the XP machine, I go to some obscure place and place a track and a road piece, way underground. This creates the necessary files.

Jerry

[landnrailroader]

We have most of the roads in west of Great Falls. I am not much on detailing but the small town of Choteau, MT lends itself to some interesting things. First the grid is almost perfectly laid out in squares about 120 meters on a side although there is a slight variation of about 1 degree but I won't sweat that. In the more or less center of downtown there is an ellipticle shaped area with the local courthouse in it. Since this is the country seat it is rather impressive structure. At the bottom, there are two sets of tracks that are operated as one today but prior to the abandonment of most of the Milwaukee Road one of these (top I think) was the Milwaukee Rd. and the other was the Great Northern. At a point a few miles east of here, there is a branch and it seems that the GN continued more or less east and well north of Great Falls serving at least one large grain source with a loop track. That is 75 or more miles east of here and not included, but I do include the junction & a mile or so of the line. At the junction, the other line, presumably the old Milwaukee line goes on to Fairfield where it ends at a plethora of grain elevators and bins. All this is at about mile 242 from Harlowton, and Agawam is mile 265. I have laid out the tracks as they probably were prior to abandonment in 1980 so there is a fake diamond west of downtown. There rather than put a zig in the track, I used a smooth curve for the Milwaukee Rd. over a tangent on the GN track. Today, with the track from Choteau to Agawam abandoned, there is no diamond, and examination of Google earth shows that what was the Milwaukee Road ends with a big zig-zag and turnout near the east end of town.

Jerry Sullivan CHOTEAU_MT.jpg

[landnrailroader]

Well folks I finished the last of the roads today and now the only icky thing left is to redo the west end of the BNSF yard in Great Falls to conform to what the real world is like. Stefan did a really great job on Great Falls but as I have mentioned elsewhere, he used a coordinate system that was different from USAPhotomaps which I used initially and later Google Earth. This results in about a 50 meter E-W offset and a slight rotation offset which I had to account for at both ends of Great Falls. The nit pickers will find a zig-zag just east of Malmstrom AFB and this adjustment more subtle at the northwest end of Great Falls. Great Falls and Harlowton, which was copied from the RMD-EAST are very detailed but I do have to shape the terrain. I have all of the steel viaducts in place as well as tunnels but I have to complete the area around the tunnel portals. Nearly every town gets a grain elevator and several grain bins, and I will place hidden signals at the ends of reasonable passing sidings - none are longer than a mile, most a lot less, mileposts, and crossing protections, i.e. if I can figure out how those things work in TSRE. If I can't then I will release it as "incomplete". I hope to release an operational route which others can super-detail. Anyone that likes to simulate tilled fields will love this one. West of Great Falls it is BIG farm country. There are several branches, mostly radiating north & east from Lewistown. Total mileage is around 500. I should add that while I don't use many dynamic pieces, Stefan used a lot of them in Great Falls and most of those will have to remain. GF trackage is very intricate, an entire route could be made of just the one city.

Jerry Sullivan

[jasonjedi1]

Awesome! Looking forward to this finally coming out.

[landnrailroader]

I think it will be a great route. I've also included several miles of the GN(BNSF) and anyone that wants could probably expand on that. Stefan, who did GF as part of his GN HiLine route was from the Czech Republic I believe and I am still working a Virginian route started by Simon Van de Laak who is also from the Netherlands.

Jerry

[landnrailroader]

I have almost completed the street grids for the major small towns on the line. In the case of GF it is highly detailed by Stefan and all I had to do was adjust some track locations and add the Milwaukee connection through town to reach the Agawan branch. So here is the street grid for Winnette, MT. No tracks go there since 1972 but for the most part, the right of way is still tracible. The largest town along the line is Lewistown, MT and for that I probably will just put the nearest streets to the track and those that cross the track but if the super-detailers wish, one could spend weeks on that community. I have done the grids for Fairfield, Choteau, & Agawam west of GF, and Denison east of GF. There is also Roy, MT and Winifred, MT at the end of their respective branches, all gone in 1972 according to A.F.E. notes on the track charts. A.F.E. = Authority for Expenditure. It is a legal document that must be filed with the FRA whenever an amount over some value (used to be $500, no telling what it is now) was required for whatever. WINNETTE_STS.jpg

Jerry