Elvas Tower: Goose Island "Alpha" ( 1 of 5 ) - Elvas Tower

I decided to do a release for the Goose Island project and given it's very incomplete state I'm calling it an Alpha Test just to make the point of how incomplete it is. So here's the deal:


Please understand that it is my intention that at some future date I will release the route as an Open Source Product... but before then I want to restrict use of the files to a limited number of individuals. This means I need you to agree to the following restricting license to ensure you understand that the files are not to be shared with the public as a whole.


License

• You are authorized to install the Goose Island route for evaluation and personal enjoyment.
  
• ALL of the files distributed are restricted to be used ONLY in the Goose Island route. You may not use any of the files in other routes.
  
• You may not make available any files you receive from this distribution to any other person(s) or computers by any means.

Present State (of incompleteness)

-- what's not present --

• There is no vegetation.
  
• There are no signals, sprite text, or other interactives.
  
• Most buildings are skinned with temporary brick textures. For the most part, no doors, no windows.
  
• There are no roads.
  
• The terrtex art is temporary, showing maps, default grass, or concrete.
  
• Water surface uses the MSTS default.
  
• Terrain has not been lifted to track height -- all track is 0.5m to 1.0m above current ground level.
  
• There are no activities, service or traffic files.
  
• There are a handful of track flaws on the C&NW tracks running along the west side of the route.
  
• Both the Chicago River and Lake Michigan are present but the shorelines of both are very rough.
  
• The position of a few buildings relative to the track needs fine adjustment.

-- What is present --

• Enough ScaleRail track is in place to make use of about 65% of the Milwaukee Road portion of the route, including the Division Street Yard on Goose Island.
  
• Over 250 custom built models (e.g., industrial sites, entire city blocks).
  
• Two defined paths, one representing the arrival of a turn from Galewood Yard, the other an LCL transfer from the PRR, south of Union Station. These two paths cover the north and south ends of the route.

Pre-Installation

• This is an Open Rails only route.
  
• You must place the route in a mini-route setup as it uses a custom Tsection.dat file unsuitable for use with other routes (this is a temporary constraint).
  
• You must have ScaleRail track available and you must be able to put copies of that track into the \global\shapes directory where Goose Island is installed.
  
• I recommend an extended visibility of 8-10km.

Installation

I have used a free open source compression utility called 7z to create the archive files. They are 1/3 smaller than if I had used the zip format. 7z is available here. An alternative is PeaZip, another free, open source utility which also knows the 7z format. IMO It has a slightly better user interface. It can be found here.

NOTE: I don't recall any issue with these products but please be aware that any freeware product may include "invitations" to install other software. Just decline any such offers in the installation process and you will be left with only the archive utility.

You will need either one of these utilities to unzip the archive files.


You will need to manually create a mini-route environment using the same directory structure and names as MSTS uses. All of the directories you create can be empty EXCEPT you must install Scalerail track shapes (ordinary wood ties) into \Global\Shapes. You will not need Scale Roads.

You must also manually create a directory in Routes\ called Goose_Island\.

Populate Trains\Consists\ and Trains\Trainsets\ with whatever things you want to use while running the route. None are provided. Equipment from the late 40's / early 50's are ideal.


Download these 5 archive files:

• Global.7z
  
• Goose_Island.7z
  
• Terrtex.7z
  
• Textures_1of2.7z
  
• Textures_2of2.7z

The files in Global.7z are prefixed with either global\ or global\shapes\ and so they should be unzipped into the "root" directory of your mini route.

The other archives should be unzipped directly into the Goose_Island directory you created earlier.


2 paths are provided but there are no activities, consists, or trains included.



System Requirements

I recommend the equivalent of an Intel i940 quad core processor (2.8ghz) and any moderate to above average video card. With that caliber PC the slowest performance should be around 15-20 fps. The primary reason for this performance is the combination of a very large number of ScaleRail shapes placed on just a handful of tiles plus extended view distances. This combination presents a significant drag on game performance (by my calculation the track shapes are responsible for 60-70% of the draw calls).

If you don't have a PC equal to or better than an Intel i940 quad core processor (2.8ghz) you're probably not going to have enough "horsepower" to run the route, tho you may be able to examine the route w/o running any trains via the f8 key. If you want to try running anyway, one trick to use is to always aim your camera perpendicular to the train (or close to perpendicular). If your PC is well short of i940 Quad Core capability, you probably don't want to bother running the route.


Running the route

I've provided two working paths, no activities. My reasoning for this is I didn't want to distribute rolling stock. You can do Explore Route and pick either path... or get into the Activity Editor and create activities on your own. The paths I've provided are:

• Galewood to Goose Island
  
• Union Station

The first one is for the first move of a turn from Galewood Yard, destination of the Division Street Yard on Goose Island and other is the second move of a turn from south of Union Station. These two paths will span almost all of the functional (non industrial) track.



Recommended Locomotives and freight cars
The Milwaukee Road assigned 1st generation switching Diesels to the Division Street Yard in the 1940's and so any Alco S1's, S2's, and/or Fairbanks-Morse H10-44's would be correct. Turns from/to Galewood Yard (not modeled, about 10 miles west) may have used 2-8-0 and/or 2-8-2 Locomotives. Freight equipment can be anything that you believe to be Late Steam / Early Diesel era.

There isn't much working track for the C&NW portion of the route but if you want to give it a try I recommend a trio of F-3's... there are some nice models over at TS.com