CC Progress (2012-06-27)

Wondering what happened to my dream route? Did the allure of 3D modeling seduce me? Did I bite off more than I can chew?

So the CC got placed on the back burner. Yes, its true. I was in a creative rut and needed to switch to something else. Well its on the front burner now, and I am happy to say that its cooking nicely. I even solicited some help from RWA member Micaelcorleone to help with some Phase I QA work and turn out some nice extras as well. If you have not read his fantastic tutorials on scenario creation on RWA you should take a moment to look through them. I approached him to use my route as the basis for creating a third tutorial on how to add AI trains to a scenario. How will this help QA my route? Glad you asked. I am a strong believer in automated testing. I use it at work constantly, and with my route I will be using the AI to run a few trains across the main line to make sure there are no hidden SBHH errors, breaks in the track, derailments due to sharp curves or bumps, and signaling (if it honors signals). It also offers an opportunity to hand my route over to someone else and see if it "works", which I am happy to report that it did.

So what has been accomplished since the last update? The mainline between Newark and Niles has been repaired. I am almost done signaling the entire mainline. A few missing crossovers which now exist. Oakland terminal has more of a yard. Nearly have the mainline has its speed limits set, and some more scenery has been placed which include passenger platforms. At the same time Micaelcorleone has been adding markers for sidings and platforms, and bringing bugs to my attention. Its nice having another set of eyes looking over my work.

I80 near Davis

Jack London Square

More done to Oakland Terminal

Markers, markers, everywhere... and not a train in sight.

Am I done with 3D modeling? Nope. I still have way too much I want to create, but as I needed to switch from route creation to something different, here I am doing the same with models.

Did I bite off more than I can chew? Of course! Looking back I would have done somethings differently, and I will be sharing a couple of these things in future posts. Don't get me wrong though. I am still having a lot of fun with Railworks, and I plan on finish all my projects.