My first route is the Desert Railroad, a 400(estimated) mile long semi-fictional route between San Diego and Phoenix. The route will be a cross of the real-life lines which are San Diego and Arizona and the Arizona and California Railroads. The route will primarily use SDA, SDAE, and ARCZ rolling stock but also uses Amtrak, Southern Pacific, ATSF, BNSF, and Union Pacific. Shapes and Textures of the route were default and others which were from various authors and Mark Divecchio's Carrizo Gorge Route. So far, I made the part between central Imperial Valley to a town in the Arizona side of the Colorado River. Credit to authors who made custom buildings I used.

Also, I made a link to Yuma and made part of the now embargoed Yuma Valley Railway. Still more work though.

Great undertaking.... Best of luck and post some pics of your progress.


Henri

400 miles................now that is my kind of route.

Good luck with the project.

cheers,
Mike.

That's a lot of long days placing trees

now i reached to coyote wells. it is unknown if i'll make a fictional branch from coyote wells but i'll more likely to.

There are no trees in the desert -- are there? Maybe a lot of long days placing cacti.

CB

i reach over jacumba currently.

Spoken like a true mountaineer Curious. Here are a couple of shots around Picacho Peak west of Tucson. About as deep in the desert as you can get. Very liitle of what shows is cactus around those parts.

Here is a great site ct for the AZCAL.

http://algomacentral.railfan.net/AZCal.htm

Yep Curious, lots of cactus up there (pictures 2 & 5).

ct, be sure and check out 13th picture down and put the Shoe Tree in your route.

i'm almost to the high bridge. I also created a double track loop with a moat and a lake with a castle in the center. I see that shoe tree image, though I might need to repaint a tree or find a shoe tree.

the areas according to the route geography creator, starting at Phoenix, you'll go straight north about 10 miles and you go west over 100 miles straight to the colorado river passing a town similiar to parker but not in a accurate location. Then the tracks go south to a town and miles east then south to another town[where i start making the route and is little based on blythe]. The tracks continue west about 2 miles and south with a short branch to a mining town and the mainline would cross a town. After the town, the tracks will be in a u-curve and crosses the same road of the previous town and west with 3 towns[one of them in another branch] until a bigger town next. The track still continues by south about 80 miles of desert with a junction to yuma and indio[To be announced] and junctions again at jrawley[ a parody of brawley]. The tracks go south through a incomplete town, Imperial, and a airport until El Centro, where the line continues on the SDA. The tracks could reach to Plaster City[ the original western terminus of the route] with access to the narrow gauge railroad. Tracks go southwest to Coyote Wells[ with a branch is but fictional with excursions] and went along mountains until Dos Cabezes. The mainline now roughly climbs the mountains into Carrizo Gorge with 4 bridges and 2 tunnles. The Mainline goes through Jacumba and Interstate 8 and wents through a series of mountain passes and several deep pits. The tracks now wents through the loop and then to a logging facility[more to be continued soon].

"...The mainline now roughly climbs the mountains into Carrizo Gorge with 4 bridges and 2 tunnles..."
Let's see - based on the last time I went through the gorge, that's about 30 bridges and 16 tunnels short... and my count may be low, it's been a long time.

i might had reached to Campo now.

reached to division. there will be plans on repainting certain locos and wagons to create the route's own railway.

last week, i reached to tecate. I also made a big rework on the middle of the line.

well, if i complete the route. I'll have plans to extend my downloaded carrizo gorge route to San Diego, but I'll not release it online, though. I will also try to add bridges and tunnels to my Desert Railroad Route as I can.

reached to somewhere after horseshoe curve.

extended to the southernmost area and I add a large yard in Blythe.

Any screenshots?

well i need a place for screenshots online or so. Does 3dtrains can allow images from a computer instead of online?

Yep. Go to the Screenshots area and it will allow you to link .jpg images.

Screen shots of 800 x 600 can be uploaded to the screen shots forum, while larger images must be hosted elsewhere, such as Image Shack, Photopics, etc.

Cheers!
Marc

look here for the screen shots at Blythe.

Desert Railroad Blythe Screenshots

Click on the thumbnails for full view on each image.

More screenshots soon!

Maybe you have not gotten to it ct, but I would go with a darker brown ground color. This is the desert southwest, not the Sahara.

In fact, according to Google Earth, area around Blyth is mostly solid green because of all the farming.

One does have to be careful with satellite photos, particularly of the desert. One picture may look pastel and sandy, while one next to it taken in different light conditions or season would appear much darker, as some Google Earth shots west of Blythe show.

Notice how on the Arizona side there is a more darker texture mixed in. Be sure and try to obtain shots from the ground as they usually give you a better idea of the environs.

Looking forward to your route ct. Keep pluggin'!

With a new texture, it will take a long time to replace the sand texture so I might had to use the Desert Textures from the Badlands Project or so.

i might had reached to the san diego and tijuana metro.

More information. Terrain will be made from scratch but not made by Demex.

What sort of topography are you thinking of having in the route? There'd be many blokes on this forum who would be able to suggest areas of the United States where it matches the criteria very well for your project. Manual terraforming is one absolute bone cruncher of a task depending on how detailed you want it, and I would strongly advocate the inclusion of DEMEXed terrain in your new route.

If you're interested I did something that could match your taste.





Shoot me a mail if you like them. It's just a basic texture set with 17 different terrain textures.

Once I reached to San Diego, I'll do my best on reaching to Phoenix and Las Vegas. It may take few more months though.

I reached to San Diego. Almost there!

After that, I'll reach to Phoenix and Las Vegas.

I may not make connections to Yuma and some other places until a next version of the route.

I have reached to San Diego and that division is almost done. Now I'll add more scenery, crossings, and the past branches.

I have to rework on 2 areas on the route. One of them is because of a bug and the other is that climbing to Carrizo Gorge is rough that trains over 70mph would climb successfully.

I reseted the development so I can start making the route more realistic.

If you've already laid all that track and placed scenery, it's a little late to DEM the route. That would bury everything you've done and you would have to raise everything.

No I haven't. I start all over on the route starting from scratch. That old one, is now gone. The new Desert Railroad would be more realistic than the one I start last year. It would features markers for real based placing and 30 meter DEM(I have a hard time finding 10 meter ones though). I'll also use parts of the Carrizo Gorge route(including the extension), Surfliner, Phoenix Sub, and possibly Needles Sub.