The Colusa & Lake (36ng) for Trainz

[ferroequine]

Greetings!

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.

[NormHart]

Nice!

My grandfather's grandfather helped found Meridian, CA just south of Colusa, I've been there a couple of times, I never made it up to Sites or Devil's Elbow though. My great grandfather used to drive freight wagons from Meridian to Clear Lake on what's now known as Ca. Hwy. 20 hauling finished goods up to the lake and walnuts down to the riverboats.

Are you planning on having Sutter Buttes rising up in the background? I suspect it would be visible from most of the route you are building.

Looking forward to more.

Norm

[ferroequine]

Norm,

It's quite a small world, I never expected to encounter someone with such local roots here. Meridian is a wonderful little town, on my next trip through the area I intend to stop and get photos of the Sacramento Northern depot there. The townsite should be visible on the route's terrain but I'll have to check next time I am in to be sure. The Buttes are there, but you cannot see them from Colusa as they are outside the 5000m render limit unless you're on the eastern side of town. The railroad, sadly, did not run on that side. Despite this I have left them in the map and much of the intermediate coastal mountains. I may very well wind up replicating a good portion of that very same road your ancestor did.

With the route set in the 1890s, much of the landscape is "wild" and will make for interesting scenery. I am hoping to eventually include riverboat and wagon routes that can be used for further exploration. I have the Sacramento river modeled a ways north, but not south as far as Meridian just yet. At present, I have track and basic grade in place for the entire route and the major yards have been replicated in a basic form. Granted this isn't a massive railroad, most yards are nothing more than a couple sidings. The line had a single turntable in Colusa, the rest of the line made use of wyes. Research is still ongoing, I have yet to see what half of the depots looked like in fact.

I'll sit down tomorrow and grab a few more screenshots to share with you all.

[NormHart]

Looking forward to it. It is a small world, there are people from Modesto, Santa Cruz, and Clear Lake around too.

[ferroequine]

Here are a few more shots from the route. I was able to spend a few hours laying out grass spline, and I am pleased that I finally have a single row of grass on either side of the track for the entire length of the route. Once I have around 4 rows on each side I'll be ready to release a beta for everyone to try out.

Sites, Ca. - View from the engine house.

2012-03-12_00001.jpg (150.58 KiB) Viewed 90732 times

Just outside of Sites, headed downgrade. Note the grass hill in the distance.

2012-03-12_00002.jpg (152.66 KiB) Viewed 90732 times

This is the same grassy hill as seen in the previous photo.

2012-03-12_00004.jpg (132.66 KiB) Viewed 90732 times

In the next set of screenshots I'll show off Colusa Junction, where the C&L crosses the Central Pacific and one of the Sloughs the line crossed.

Enjoy!

-=Andrew=-

[Pencil]

Thanks for sharing, Andrew! I'm really looking forward to this!

Norm,
Funny you should mention the Sutter Buttes - I always wanted to explore those as a kid, but we moved away before I got the chance...

Curtis

[NormHart]

You may already have this information but...

Locomotive Engines:

Road No. - #1
Name - none listed
Cyln. - 9x14
Type - 2-4-2T
Driver - 36
Builder - Porter
Bldr. No. - 720
Date Blt. - Nov. 1885

Road No. #2
Name - Harrington
Cyln. - 12x18
Type - 4-4-2
Driver - 45
Builder - Baldwin
Bldr. No. - 8125
Date Blt. - Sep. 1886
Weight - 42000

Road No. - #3
Name - none listed
Cyln. - 12x18
Type - 4-4-0
Driver - 46
Builder - Baldwin
Bldr. No. 12561
Date Blt. - Mar. 1892
Weight - 42000

Road No. #4
Name - none listed
Cyln. - unk
Type - 4-4-0
Driver - 42
Builder - Baldwin
Bldr. No. - 3971
Date Blt. - Aug. 1876
Weight - 44300
Effort - 6090
aquired Feb 1910 from Southern Pacific Coast #3

All engines burned wood but were converted to oil at some point.

Roster of 12/31/1888
Locomotives - 2
Passenger cars - 2
Baggage car - 1
Box cars - 4
Platform cars - 10

Source - Encyclopedia or Western Railroad History Vol. IV pg. 114

[ferroequine]

Norm,

Thank you for the roster. My hope is to get a version of the D&RG 4-4-0s modified to represent the C&Ls first two 4-4-0s which were nearly identical excepting a few hardware differences. Since I am trying to focus on replicating the line around 1895, I am going to skip #4 for now. There aren't many good photographs of the 2-4-2T, but when I locate that information I will work on getting that one modeled.

I took a trip to the State Archives and was privileged to see a map of the line showing it as it was constructed. This included all of the grade profile and track information I need to get things accurate. Thankfully my previous work was not far off and I hope to have an updated beta available for testing in the future.

Below is a sample of the map showing the trackage in Sites. At the time of this map, the quarries were not yet served by sidings and the yard in Sites is much simpler than turn of the century photographs show. The important details here are the notation of curve radius and grade (Grade is not shown directly here, rather it is keyed to a another section of the drawing by the same points which call out the curve radius ends) in addition to the existing roads and other landmarks. So far I've gotten much of the grade from Sites down the canyon corrected. Sadly I forgot to look at the map for the Colusa Jct. to Colusa section as I ran out of time. For the first beta I'll have the trackage from Sites to Colusa Jct. corrected with the rest to follow in the future.

[NormHart]

Sure, glad to help.

The encyclopedia has most of a page dedicated to the Colusa & Lake Railroad Company I don't know how much, if any, of that information you may need.

Mr. Robertson lists Poor's 1889, p. 887; 1889 California PUC report, p. 183; and Chico - The Weekly Butte Record - Oct 3, 1985 to Jan 9 1886 as his sources.

Note: I mis-quoted the conversion to oil, correction is "# 2-3-4 converted to oil burners", sorry.

I am a little confused by your "My hope is to get a version of the D&RG 4-4-0s modified to represent the C&Ls first two 4-4-0s which were nearly identical excepting a few hardware differences." At least according to the EWRH the Harrington, engine #2 was a 4-4-2 although I have found some errors in the book. I, as yet, do not have access to the Baldwin Locomotive Works data so I can't be of much help there.

I was looking at the Northern Railroad Company and they were a little weird. They had 6 standard gauge locomotives by 5 different builders and were leased and operated by CP until 1885 and then by SP until they were purchased by SP in 1898. If you are going to include them at Junction a possible locomotive might be one of Curtis' Baldwin 2-6-0s (Northern had one built in 1875 with 48' drivers weighing 35500, I think that's close to the V&T equipment) although I assume any SP loco would work for 1895. There is no roster of rolling stock and I am guessing any mix of old SP and CP stuff would work.

Edit: I knew I'd seen a SP wood burner. lgbmatt did a repaint of Terry's J. W. Bowker - SP 2-4-0 Sanuye <kuid:228997:1091> (that's a quick fix for a line you are not modeling.)

[ferroequine]

Norm,

I am a little confused by your "My hope is to get a version of the D&RG 4-4-0s modified to represent the C&Ls first two 4-4-0s which were nearly identical excepting a few hardware differences." At least according to the EWRH the Harrington, engine #2 was a 4-4-2 although I have found some errors in the book. I, as yet, do not have access to the Baldwin Locomotive Works data so I can't be of much help there.

The 4-4-2 in question is actually a 4-4-0. You prompted me to remember that I forgot put upload the spec sheets to PacificNG. Here they are. Both locomotives are built to roughly the same design with the second being a bit more modern having been built a good number of years later. For all intents and purposes their closest neighbor would be the D&RG 4-4-0s like D&RG #95 which is available on the DLS. The detail differences would be a "short" smokebox and a Radley-Hunter stack, everything else would be close enough.

As for Northern Railway equipment, the entire picture is definitely murky for the early days. By time of the consolidation in 1888 the Northern Railway really only existed on paper as another part of the CP/SP empire. According to the corporate history for the line in the back of "A Century Of Southern Pacific Steam Locomotives" the original 1871 operation never owned rolling stock of it's own and used CP/SP equipment. This stays true until the consolidation and later years when the SP orders rolling stock lettered for it, though they wore the standard SP "sunset route" herald on the side. I've started talking to Curtis about some proper CP/SP rolling stock as he and I need the same cars. I suspect the locomotives listed in EWRH are the narrow gauge locomotives that fell under the Northern Railway numbering, these were originally from the SJ&SN and the Oregonian lines. I do not have a copy of EWRH myself as I tend to have the source materials that author references on hand. What numbers does he list for those locomotives? I am curious about that.

I noticed that neat little repaint of the 2-4-0 before, it's a shame the CP/SP never used them (or that wheel arrangement). Though the Visalia Railroad did have a 2-4-0 which was later owned by the SP apparently (per some rosters) it would have been a bit more modern than the Bowker design having been built in 1886. Sadly the CP/SP locomotives will take more time to get accomplished as most of their equipment was heavily modified in Sacramento during this time. Few locomotives are "identical" in design save a great deal of classes which simply are not available in Trainz. Much like my modeling exploits IRL (V&T circa 1900) the core CP/SP freight locomotive is missing from the scene: the 4-6-0. I might be able to work something close enough from a model of Sierra #3 if one is available.

Now all of this would be for naught if I didn't include enough of the line to operate on... I suppose it was a good idea to leave the terrain in place and construct the trackage from Williams to Maxwell.
The Northern Railway crossing is an important part of the C&L experience as all trains were required to stop at the crossing before proceeding, and the Colusa/Colusa Jct side operated multiple round trips to pick up travelers at the junction. I couldn't leave it unmodeled!

[Pencil]

... the core CP/SP freight locomotive is missing from the scene: the 4-6-0.

How close would V&T Nos 26/27 be to this typical CP / SP loco - or are you thinking of an earlier era? It might not be *too* hard to 'kitbash' a 4-4-0 into a ten-wheeler...

Curtis

[NormHart]

Have you looked at gary_hoorn's American 10? I haven't got it working in TS12 yet but it is a 10 wheeler perhaps a bit newer than you need.

As for the Northern engines in the encyclopedia, I left out their narrow gauge stuff. They had 5 engines they inherited from the San Joaquin & Sierra Nevada Rail Road Company when they bought that company in 1877. That company had the only narrow gauge track (36") that Northern operated, 40.3 miles so far as I can tell from this source. The remaining 343.29 miles were std gauge.

According to the roster of 1888 (I assume that this if from Poors and represents owned assets of the Northern)
Locomotives - 27
Passenger cars - 22
Freight cars - 1416

locomotive Numbers are listed as
1001-1009* 4-4-0s by Cooke went to SP #1403-1411 in 1898
1010-1018* 4-6-0s by Schen. went to SP #1747-1755 in 1898
1022 2-6-0 by Baldwin went to SP #1500 in 1898
1037-1039* 0-6-0 by Schen. went to SP 1037-1039 (built in 1891) in 1898
the intervening numbers are mostly SJ&SN, two engines went to the Oregonian, Northern apparently did not get any from them, these later went from the Oregonian to SP. The 2-6-0 Baldwin came from the CC&CL .

* built for the Northern according to Mr. Robertson.

Edit: I was puzzled by the CC&CL listing, I did not remember a CC&CL in California . On hunch I checked the listing for the VV&CL and sure enough the 2-6-0 Baldwin was there, named "Ben Ely" and transferred to Northern when they took over the VV&CL in 1888. She was std gauge, and serendipitously the only other engine the VV&CL had was the old "Calistoga" now named the "Vacaville" and converted to a 2-2-0 which Northern promptly sold.

[NormHart]

"For intents and purposes their closest neighbor would be the D&RG 4-4-0s like D&RG #95 which is available on the DLS. The detail differences would be a "short" smokebox and a Radley-Hunter stack, everything else would be close enough."

Since togog's D&RG #92 and his E&P #4 both fit your description I guess they would both do.

Edit: As for the 2-6-0 I don't think it unlikely that she would go as far as Junction in the course of business, JMO.

[ferroequine]

Norm,

Thank you for that roster info, that confirms my suspicion.
The numbers indicated are all in the 1000 series, which would be the standard ranges for CP/SP subsidiaries of the time. Most interesting is that the Ben Ely became a NRy locomotive. I think I might be able to find a photo of it from the period in question. The others I can cross reference against my other sources and see if I can find a photo of one of them.

Last night I spent a few hours working on the grade from Colusa Jct up to Mills Orchards. The next step being from that point up to Sites, I decided to do a little more searching for photographs. I just found a few showing more detail of the route through the canyon up to Sites. It appears that I've been wrong about the route of the ROW in this one section from the start and even after exploring it on my own. If I get a chance this afternoon I'll work on this section more and show some before/after screenshots.

[NormHart]

OK, here is what I have on the Ben Ely

Bought by the Vaca Ville & Clear Lake Railroad Company

Road No. - #2
Name - Ben Ely
Type - 2-6-0
Driver - 48
Builder - Baldwin
C/N - 3753
Date Blt. - 7/75
Weight - 55500
To Northern Ry. Co. #1022
To SP #1500 (SP listed the weight as 45600)
And SP sold the engine in 1892 so I guess I should have looked further before suggesting it might be operating at Junction in 1895. There is no record of who might have bought it.

The EWRH lists this as the C&L's first published timetable
June, 1892 - daily
12:30 p.m. Colusa
- - - - - - - Parkinsons -- 6
- - - - - - - Junction - - 10
- - - - - - - Lurline - - - 13
- - - - - - - Fairview - - 15
- - - - - - - Mills - - - - - 18
2:50 - - - - Sites - - - - - 22 - - -12:15 noon

Rail Wt 30/35 lb steel

I'm looking forward to more screenies.