Knoxville Div. L&N, incomplete

[landnrailroader]

A few years ago, I uploaded part of the L&N Knoxville Division, and then later Kenny Eaton improved on it a lot. I regret that he did because I intended to have a 2nd and more complete version and this is it, probably the last effort I will make on this particular area. The route covers the L&N main from Corbin, KY to Knoxville, and on to Etowah, TN with branches. It also includes all Southern line in/out of Knoxville, two of which are now R. J. Corbin properties. From 1967 to about 1992, a unit train operated from a ARCO owned mine in Clairborne Cty. TN to near Milledgeville, GA. It followed a peculiar and rather circuitous route from the mine to Knoxville.

The mine was at the end of the Tackett Creek spur, off the Clear Fork Branch. This branch was originally started by the L&N and then acquired by Southern. So the train ran 14 miles +- from the mine to the junction with the Clear Fork Branch. From there it ran a few miles more or less west before going through a tunnel on a sharp (8 degree) curve and coming out at Holton, the junction with the L&N line from Corbin to Knoxville. From there it ran north a few miles to CP Lot where it turned west to Jellico, TN and then south to Clinton, TN. At that point it turned southeast to Knoxville. The Clear Fork branch extends east from the ARCO Jct. to Fonde, KY where there were at least two coal operation as late as 1967 but now closed and the line is abandoned, or at least out of service east of Clairfield. At Clairfield, the short Straight Creek spur leads to coal mine that was the last operational mine in TN when it closed around 2002. A new mine is being developed in the area and from what I understand, it will be served out of Middlesboro, KY.

Maybe Kenny will grab this one and detail it out. He does great work doing it. He also has another of my unreleased routes and I need to find out if he is doing anything with it because I would like to improve on it.

Jerry Sullivan

[kennyeaton]

Hi Jerry,

I received your email earlier Clinch Valley Appalachia route. No, I have not started doing anything with this route as of yet. There's a few things that need to be done on it that is over my head as far as route building goes. Signals, roads, cutting tunnels, bridges and so on. All of that stuff is on a bucket list for one day when I force myself to look into diving in it but it ain't gonna be tomorrow or next week.

Now, since you have uploaded the updated Knoxville Division, Can the update that I did to your original be merged into your latest version of the route? And I would ask the same question about merging the Pokey 2.0 into the Clinch Valley? I'm not talking about combining these two but adding the work I did on the Pokey in the Bluefield, Dry Fork branch from Cedar Bluff, VA to Iaeger, WV and Buchanan Branch from Weller Yd to Devon, WV?

I just want to thank you for all of the excellent track laying work that you do. Your grades are very accurate and my hat is off to you on how gentle that you start into a grade and especially cresting a summit. For quite a few years now when I download a route by other builders, the first thing I look at is the grade work. As soon as I see the track immediately go from level (0.00%) to a 5 or 6% or higher, I stop there and delete the route. I've thrown a lot of routes away because of this.

As you know I am currently working on Don's Rollins Pass. I am getting close to finishing up on the Bond, CO to Craig, CO. I think it's looking really good. I'm just not satisfied with the overall terrain terrtex that I've used. But, with a little over 100 miles almost finished, ain't no turnin' back now.

Again Jerry, thank you for all that you do for our community and if you haven't already done so, put together a little tutorial on your track laying techniques in the areas of starting up, cresting and descending bringing the track back to level. But as you and I know there ain't a whole lot of level track. You know that back up yonder in them hills it might appear that the tracks are running level along a creek or river, but there not. There is always a "river grade".

Kenny

[landnrailroader]

Kenny,

I would guess that a lot of routes are done with out the use of a track chart. Using a railroad track chart is absolutely essential for accurate track laying. Mine is not perfect in one respect though. There have been times when I could tell from the generated terrain by DEMEX that a cut or fill should be <here> but the markers from Google Earth would be a few meters different. If it was really gross, I would follow the terrain, othewise I would stay with the markers. Also using Google Earth has some issues in that the aerials from <this time> compared to <that other time> often varied by a few feet.

I don't use any magic except for grades. At the top or bottom of a grade, I like to have at least 5 meters of level track. Then when I lay a fast mainline like the CNO&TP I want to vary the gradient by not more than .1% in 10 meters. If it is a lesser speed line like the Kingsport or Blue Ridge Sub., I will use .1% in 5 meters. Lastly, I have only 3 narrow gauge lines in my working list and for those I will use as much as .2% in 5 meters.

As for merging your existing work into new routes, I have no clue how to do that. Maybe Eric or one of the other members will have an idea on that.

As for tunnels etc. Those are much harder to do in TSRE than they were in MSTS/RE but the process is similar. First you have to make an opening in the terrain and off the top of my head I forget how to do that but it is explained in the forums and I always refer back to those comments. Then you use carefully sized transfers to cover the hole except where the track is present. As a train approaches a tunnel, you cannot see what is behind the portal, so sometimes it is easier to put a vision blocker over the top of the portal - a tree line is one I often use and then, if you cannot see it, it must be okay.

Jerry

[bootednancy]

I being on the quest for new routes all the time, tried downloading and installing the KD Subdivision route.

True it is a "buyer beware" tagged incomplete route..,..but it is so horrible it is a waste of time. There are so many pieces of track missing/not laid that it gets impossible to follow or drive(????) if you can call it that, on the route.

Sorry it is NOT up there with ones like Full Bucket or Utah Belt or Patrick Wise creations and many of the well completed foreign railway routes that provide well done scenery and challenging track plans and activities.

Sorry, this one should never have been uploaded for the quality that IS in the Library files, so I deleted it to the trash can for good.

[kennyeaton]

I being on the quest for new routes all the time, tried downloading and installing the KD Subdivision route.

True it is a "buyer beware" tagged incomplete route..,..but it is so horrible it is a waste of time. There are so many pieces of track missing/not laid that it gets impossible to follow or drive(????) if you can call it that, on the route.

Sorry it is NOT up there with ones like Full Bucket or Utah Belt or Patrick Wise creations and many of the well completed foreign railway routes that provide well done scenery and challenging track plans and activities.

Sorry, this one should never have been uploaded for the quality that IS in the Library files, so I deleted it to the trash can for good.

Hi Doug,

Sorry to hear your disappointment in Jerry's incomplete route. Some of his routes are the bare necessities in starting a new route. Once he uploads an incomplete route, a few of us here in town will take his work and add to it creating somewhat of a completed piece of work. Although it might be bare bones, his track laying is excellent.

May I suggest that you download kdsub.zip that's in the library in the MSTS Routes section. Jerry is the original author on this one but a couple years back I went completely through it with a major scenery makeover. I know that I worked on this route well over a year before sending it back to Jerry for his approval and to upload it back into the library. The kdsub.zip runs from Corbin, KY to Knoxville, TN.

Kenny

[eric]

True it is a "buyer beware" tagged incomplete route..,..but it is so horrible it is a waste of time. There are so many pieces of track missing/not laid that it gets impossible to follow or drive(????) if you can call it that, on the route.

Which part of "incomplete" wasn't clear?

[baldwin]

I understand we are talking about the unfinished version of the route as made by Jerry, not the upgraded version made by Kenny. Jerry included install instructions plus two zip files in his upload. These are the route and Mtracks. If you did not follow instructiions and install Mtracks you WILL have missing tracks. Not the route builders fault here.

[bootednancy]

OK Eric....here's the screen shots of the Knoxville-Clinton path......more than just "incomplete" on the track sections.....now one reader says it needs M tracks.....so I'll try that.
I have the "earlier" version called KINGSPORT and that shows a decent effort of being a well constructed route.
Now "Incomplete" means buildings not settled or filled in, terrain maybe not shaped, cars and other objects maybe not laid out yet....BUT NO MISSING MAJOR SECTIONS OF TRACKS, and A COUPLE OF BROKEN PATHS THAT ARE USELESS. Route should not have been in the mainstream of downloads..........as bad as some of the Indian routes are, many of the builders have made attempts to correct and finish off what they should be

[eric]

Incomplete means work in progress, which will never have the same definition twice...

Your first post was a bit ham fisted... posts like that were far too common years ago, and it resulted in fewer modelers willing to share their contributions. Your last wasn't much better...

The builder is posting it here as a safety net in case they can't finish it. If there's a missing path or track, so be it.

I'd much rather have a partially done route that could be finished by someone else than to lose their work entirely because it didn't meet everyone's expectations.

Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk

[bootednancy]

All well and good Eric.....you & I view this from two different boxcar sides. Went over READ-ME and says NOTHING about M-tracks....just a lot of mumbo jumbo about his past work on other things. I have a pair of L&N SD-40's not making any money trying to figure out this clap-trap. Any who, I put in M-tracks "Mtracks_v1.50 t-section 29" which is what I have in my way back files into the system GLOBAL folder (not route)....and now I get THIS in the screenshot......I know one thing now....back to the trash can with this mess since route wont load at all, and the error message suggest X or Y tracks???.

[eric]

Yeah you slagged your own route there by messing with the TSection.

Only use the most current Tsection, which is 60 or higher. Putting 29 in there is like going back to a 386 CPU.

Download this.

https://trainsim.com/forums/filelib-search-fileid?fid=88841

Then this.

https://trainsim.com/forums/filelib-search-fileid?fid=88502

Drop the shapes in your Global/shapes and make sure you use a TSection developed in this decade..... the one in the first download........

I've asked the open rails team to change that error message for years. It has nothing to do with x tracks or y tracks. It has to do with either missing track shapes or an out of date Tsection. You seem to have both.

[yellowdog]

I have the "earlier" version called KINGSPORT and that shows a decent effort of being a well constructed route.

KINGSPORT is not an earlier version of the route. It's a completely different route. KD Sub is former L&N. Kingsport is former Clinchfield. As mentioned several times in this thread, there is a prior version of the KD Sub built by Jerry and populated by Kenny. Maybe just go download that?

[landnrailroader]

Yellowdog is correct. The KD is a earlier version of the kdsubdivision uploaded a few days ago. It did not contain many of the NS lines around Knoxville nor did it extend sout of Knoxville. Kenny did detail the earlier version. The kdsubdivision is operational but incomplete and I should have point out that when signals are added , As far as I know you cannot have but one set of signal rules in a route. I would therefore use the L&N rules since there is more L&N signaled miles than NS. The difference is that L&N like most other roads used speed signalling, where as NS(SR) used route signalling. I am working on a more correct Kingsport and more correct Blue Ridge subs.

Jerry

[bootednancy]

Good Morning Eric:
Followed your instructions with the 2 downloads you gave me and it looks like we are making progress with the KD Sub. I have a much better looking route without all the sections missing. One battle won, 2 more to go.

YELLOWDOG mentioned there is an earlier version of the KD Sub, so I have to to a manual search the Library for it as the only thing coming up are the 2 files of the recent route build uploaded last week. Much rather have a finished route that I can run activities from than one in it's early stages.

Then the 3rd war is the on-going problem I am having with the India based pay-ware sites. It seems many are disorganized as I had a recent 3 week battle with one which has no base or means to take international purchases. Another I tried for a different route has some cock-a-mamie procedure for buying routes and stock which comes out with a no-win end. It is a shame there are a few activities turning up in your file Library that need special payware routes, yet obtaining them is next to impossible because of their ordering/payment procedures.

But thanks at least for your help and patience with the KD sub helping me straighten it out despite my dumbness and not understanding.
Doug

[yellowdog]

YELLOWDOG mentioned there is an earlier version of the KD Sub, so I have to to a manual search the Library for it as the only thing coming up are the 2 files of the recent route build uploaded last week. Much rather have a finished route that I can run activities from than one in it's early stages.

L&N/CSX Knoxville Sub

File ID 88600

https://trainsim.com/forums/filelib-search-fileid?fid=88600

There you go--2 battles won