RSC published some great news today that they are going to release the Southern Pacific Donner Pass route in late November. Apparently it will start in Roseville Yard and end in Reno... which is really great, but will this affect my route?
Originally I was not going to go past Roseville, making the Yard the last phase of the project the proverbial "frosting on the cake" so to speak because it is one of the largest and oldest yards this side of the Sierras. I only recently thought to expand the route to Auburn because it would offer the CC a completely different venue of forested mountains, tunnels and vistas as appose to the huge expanse of flat land and salt marshes along the majority of the currently planned route. Luckily this is happening in Phase III which would have started next year, so I have time to decide what my options are (like if I can join my work to theirs making a monster route).
I am curious about a couple other issues as well. RSC mentions they will have an SD40-2 in SP livery. I hope they get this right and make it a tunnel motor (SD40T-2) because the truth is that they did not own any non-tunnel motors. In fact they were built specifically to handle the many snow sheds of Donner Pass. The second item I would like to see would have been completely at home on Donner Pass, a rotary snow plow. Many of these were based in Roseville and it would be nice if RSC make a couple types and included a scenario where we could drive one up the mountain (with a passenger view within the plow itself).
Overall I am looking forward to this release. I only hope they get it right, because this is certainly a unique route with years of history, railfaning, and natural beauty.
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