About a year ago I purchased a copy of Trainz for Mac and began dabbling. I was impressed by Curtis' offerings and being a V&T fan I wanted to play around with his creations. After a few days I decided to take a look at the narrow gauge offerings and was surprised that there are no finished prototype routes available. With the routes I'd really like to see in progress (NCNG, B&B, SPNG), I felt I should spend some time learning how to use the surveyor and maybe I'd get a route of my own started one day. Being a Californian I felt I'd give my local area a little love and find a route here that I could work on. Considering I live in Grass Valley, you'd think NCNG would be a natural. Knowing that anything mountainous would be time consuming as far as getting the grade right, I decided to find something "easy".
The answer? The Colusa & Lake RR.
Most people haven't heard of the C&L, but it served an important role in the growth of California. Stretching 22 miles across the central valley, roughly 13 of those miles are tangents. The railroad served a pair of sandstone quarries just outside of Sites, Ca. This sandstone is of excellent quality and was used in the construction of Ferry Building in San Francisco and many other projects in the region. On the other end of the line, Colusa was an important river city for the system of riverboats working the Sacramento River. Despite it's importance, Colusa was bypassed by the SP's Northern Railway when it constructed through what is now called Cortina. Locals took matters into their own hands, built a rail connection to the standard gauge and the C&L was born.
Realizing all of this straight valley track would cut down on construction time, I leapt head-first into importing DEM data with MicroDEM/HOG and even getting the appropriate overlays colored to the terrain thanks to TIGER data. After several snafus and attempts at quick trackage based on what I knew, I found myself less than satisfied with the results and dug into researching the road more. The result was the map linked at the site above. Over time I discovered issues in the Mac version of Trainz that slowed me down. At the same time I got busy with other things and I stopped working on the route. Last month I built a new PC and purchased myself a copy of Trainz 2012. Work has resumed on the route and I am pleased to share a few screenshots. My recent work has been in getting the feel of an earlier California right. Much of the modern data reflects farming practices that came about during the 20s. Thanks to a series of old topo maps I now know that most of the valley was still wild, full of wetlands, creeks and an occasional farm in the distance.
My current goal is to get a basic landscape finished up and presentable. The screenshots attached show the unfinished landscape, the rolling hills of California are going to require a lot of grass splines.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)