Surprised how my old stuff was done

[landnrailroader]

In the library, there is the Kingsport and Blue Ridge Subs. which were my very first efforts at route building way back in 2001/2002. Can't believe I've been at this for 22 years but then I retired from CSX in the spring of 2001. I tried to make every curve precise in radius knowing what the degree of curve was from track charts. So both of them are LOADED with dynamic pieces. I do have a plan to revise them, eliminating many dynamic pieces since M-tracks has a pretty good collection of curves and that, with X-tracks means that almost all curves can be reproduced precisely, or near enough, without so much dynamic. I have piddled with the Kingsport so far and have redone the Erwin, TN and Kingsport, TN yards to be more correct. I've also redone the main track from Elkhorn City, KY through the first two tunnels. The 2nd tunnel was originally done with dynamic, but now I have redone it with the correct degree of curve and then since we don't have tunnel pieces in those curve values, I have used 33ft. tunnel sections that came out of the library as I recall, some time ago. Those are also used on the CNO&TP 3rd district which is in the library, and will be seen in my next release which will be an improved version of the Knoxville Division. In looking at those old routes, I am really suprised that I did them fairly well. Nowhere near as good as I would demand of myself now, but pretty good for first efforts. Dynamic had it's worst problems on grades couple with long curves and so I know that the Loops on the east slope of the Blue Ridge will be better.
And guys, those loops were badly damaged by Helene and the track from Spruce Pine all the way to Erwin essentially does not exist now. The Toe/Nolichucky River did a job there with flood levels never seen before. CSX has guessimated it will take $200M to rebuild and I have serious doubts that can be justified, now that coal is dead, and not much else goes that way. YouTube had a number of clips that are scary to watch.

Jerry

[kennyeaton]

Mornin' Jerry,

Looking forward to you finishing up the track work on the Clinchfield. Those two routes have been on the list for a makeover. I'm getting close to finishing up the Pokey. Currently I'm at the upper road crossing in Northfork working east.

I want to thank you for mentioning the fact that the original route was like riding through a green tunnel without a roof. I have eliminated almost all of that by opening up the vegetation along the right of way. I think it is looking good.

As I have mentioned before, I'm not going to re-vegetate the branch lines at this time in order to keep the size of the route to a minimum (it's already a monster). Once I get it uploaded to the library I will continue to work the branches and upload the updates as I finish them.

Kenny

[CSRX]

Removing Dynamic tracks is honestly the best thing ever. Granted at the time of route building, it was the only option for precise curves, but thankfully today we have extended curve features from X-Tracks, M-Tracks, and even ScaleRail.

[landnrailroader]

Yes, the BR & KP routes were done with track chart in hand and every curve that was not close to a standard (original default) piece is dynamic track. Now I have come to accept that it is better to use a fixed piece IF it is close to what I need. M-tracks has good representation up to 10 degrees in single track, then somewha less as the parallel tracks increase in number. There is also a lack of documentation for #20 turnouts & crossovers that Eric discovered and has commented on. It would be impossible to have fixed pieces for every possible degree of curve but for example, I see a curve of 2 degrees 20 minutes on the Alaska chart near mile 152. For that I would use 2 degrees 15 minutes except that most of the ARR curves have spirals that are long enough to show up in digitizing, so I would probably start out with 5 degree or less increments of 30 minute, 1 degree, and then 2 degrees 15 minutes and just try to fit the digitizing marks as close as possible.

Jerry