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Sunday, December 23, 2012

Route reviews, starting this week!

Route reviews will be when I will judge other people's routes. Here are a few main points.


  1. I will be 100% honest and fair. I am not going to rant and rave about how wonderful a single-texture route is. However, I am not going to complain about how a creator of a prototype route missed adding in a tree.
  2. I will criticize. And some of those criticisms may be a bit rude. Read #3 for more detail on that.
  3. I am not here to bash the route or creator of the route. I am 100% against trolling or flaming. I won't use the words stupid, dumb, stop, or say the name real name of the creator unless it pertains to a certain object in a screenshot. I won't say derogatory phrases to potentially put down the creator of the route.
  4. I will grade the route by using a points and a star system. The system will go by 10 categories. The average of the 10 star ratings will be the overall star rating. The total of the points will be the overall points. There will be a maximum total of 100 points.  

Saturday, August 11, 2012

What I can't do + Emerald Pass

Today, while I was working on the BNSF Mojave Sub, I realized that I don't like building prototypical routes. I like doing what I want to. This is why I decided to revive Emerald Pass for TS12. Today I finished one baseboard. I plan to make the route close to 110 miles long, with Emerald City having a major yard, and the summit will be there also. You ever seen the movie "Unstoppable"? If you have, you know about the fictional railroad AWVR. Yes, it stands for "Allegheny West Virginia Railroad", but it just fits well in the desert. I decided to do that after I didn't want just BNSF signals, BNSF containers, etc. The locomotives courtesy of Blawnox Locomotive Works. I expanded the Automatic Numbering system, so the numbers weren't so cramped. Here are some WIP shots of the baseboard I completed:

The overview

Down low

Where the tracks cross over Bison Creek

Looking to the West at the MP 31.4 signal bridge

Looking East at the MP 31.4 signal bridge

Friday, August 3, 2012

Daggett-Mojave!

Just began a new route today, Daggett-Mojave. It will feature the last few miles of the BNSF Needles Sub, and all of the BNSF Mojave Sub. The route will begin just a bit east of the Hidden Springs Rd. just east of Daggett, which is part of the transcon, and go into Barstow Yard, where the Cajon Sub goes south, and the Mojave Sub goes East. Here are some screenshots!


The signals at MP 733

Looking down on Hidden Springs Rd.

Looking East, towards where the texturing begins

Looking West, towards where the city of Daggett will soon be. Yes, there will eventually be vegetation there, also.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Obviously no one is going to bother to vote.

So I'm going to take down the poll. I am tired of seeing a poll running for more than 5 days, and only seeing two guesses. It is humiliating, especially considering the last poll in July only had 4 guesses. There will be no more polls on this blog for a while...

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

My re-creation of Lane-Seaside

Long-term readers of my Crossing Talk blog know that one of the more popular routes from back in the day(2010) was my Lane-Seaside route on the fictional Kingston Island. Yes, it was the one with Bernard. People who have been reading it since at the latest January 2011 know that Lane-Seaside was deleted with Trainz 2009. Well, I have decided to re-create it on TS2010!!! Like the TS2009 route, I started in Downtown Lane. However, with the assets on the Download Station, and help from trusted third-party Trainz sites, this route will be much better!!!

Here is a sneak peak:

Acacia Rd., Stadium District, Downtown Lane, KI:

More screenshots are to come soon, but I need to say one more thing. I will add in a quiz poll. If you read Crossing Talk regularly before October 2010, you may disregard the following message. To all people who began reading Crossing talk after October 2010, then there are a lot of posts saying Kingston Island, or the state abbreviation, KI (example: Lane, KI). If you want to go back in time on Crossing Talk, a lot of the posts regarding Trainz before 2011 are Kingston Island(or KI). I know I took pictures of the screen back then. Those were the old days.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Kingston Island Alt Hwy. 37 fictional grade separation project

First of all, I know there is no Kingston Island, and I know that there is no alt I-37 grade separation project in real life, so don't go yappin' about that.

And the grade separation continues on the second crossing.

In 2009, there were 5 crossings on the 90-mile long alt I-37. In 2010, there were four, the one in Bernard had been converted. Soon, by August, there will be three as seen here. This is all part of a major grade separation project. Every grade crossing owned by either Sounder or BNSF that crosses the alt I-37 is to be converted to  a grade separated crossover by 2016. Let's give you some more details about this crossing shown here:

  • It is the busiest alt I-37 crossing around, with around 50 daily Sounder trains, 16 daily Amtraks, 41 daily BNSF, and 2 daily KILS (Kingston Island Local Services) on weekdays.
  • The four lane road is expected to be closed in May. At that time, while the four lane road is being torn up, a temporary two-lane crossing will take its place.
  • The overpass will be open in August or September.
  • The crossing is located at MP 2.4, near Eastern.
The KILS Eastern local crosses both the still open four lane crossing, and the temporary two lane.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Cajon Pass so Far (again)

After Trainz deleted my old Cajon route, I started a new one, from the other side. Hidden Springs Rd. at Daggett:

Yeah, it's not much yet.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012