[damo]

Ok these shots are from West Australia where it's hot, the ground is red and there are wheels of steel...









Locos are West Australian but like the wagons, not quite prototypical for this particular spot, but what the Hey! After all it's Train SIMULATION.

Cheers
Damo

[Noisemaker]

Hate to say Damo, the most I learned about Australian countryside was from Mad Max movies. And your shots remind me a lot of The Road Warrior - which I always thought took place in central Australia. But that red hue to everything always haunted me, and I think made the movie that much more realistic and believable to North American audiences of this supposed 'nuclear wasteland'. But of course there are other great Australian movies, and am always amazed at how varied the vegetation and terrain is through out the country. Mad Dog Morgan, Walkabout, Until The End Of The World, Crocodile Dundee, The Quiet Earth (which may have been New Zealand when I think about it?). Quirky movies I love, but not sure if it's because they're so 'offbeat in beautiful country' or beautiful stories in offbeat country'?

You're fast becoming The Wizard Of Oz with all these great Aussie routes you're showing us! :pleasantry:

[damo]

Hi guys,
Thanks for the compliments. Noisemaker, the screenshots were taken on the Australian BHP Mt Newman route available over at Steam4me. It's a beaut and is a very good likeness to the terrain in NW West Australia where iron ore is but one of the minerals dragged outta the ground. The Mad Max movie was filmed around Broken Hill where the countryside can be dry and rocky as well. I live in Far north Queensland right next to the Great Barrier Reef where it's tropical and jungly and we still have sugar cane farms that the farmers burn off at night when being harvested. Yep, Oz is certainly a country with a varierty of terrain from desert to jungle and all in between. You should come out and check it out one day!
Damo

[damo]

Okay, just to whet your whistle, here's an empty ore train heading to the mine load out. There are about 208 ore cars and 4 locos. When this baby is loaded we're lookin' at well over 30,000 tonnes. Yes the ground is that colour because that's the colour of the iron ore. Enjoy, Damo

[caldrail]

Incredible. A flat, empty desert, with a level crossing packed with waiting road vehicles :oldstry: Certainly does have a different feel to the usual european or US rouyte though.

[damo]

 caldrail, on 04 September 2012 - 02:58 AM, said:

Incredible. A flat, empty desert, with a level crossing packed with waiting road vehicles :oldstry: Certainly does have a different feel to the usual european or US rouyte though.

Yeah mate thats not unheard of in this part of the world (Oz). There are squillions of truckies and locals bush bashin' around the area getting to their properties (farms) and into town. The Pilbara railway only runs out to the mines and back to the coast so any other large items have to come by road from down south. Road trains (prime mover trucks with 3 trailers) are a common sight in this part of Oz.
Only way to experience it is to come on out and suck it all up for yourself!
Damo

PS: Bang up job on the ol' Pahusett railroad mate.

[Lindsayts]

Most of the road traffic will be tourist in nature, while the area is huge and 1000 kilometres up there is not that far there are a number of major tourist atttractions up there apart from the areas reputation of being "remote" Australia.
Some of these atttractions being of course the iron lines and the massive trains that run on them, then theres, places like Exmouth, Meekathra, Broome, The Kimberly's, the Canning stock route to name a few. As long as one does not mind driving and have the funds to pay for the food and fuel both of which are around double the price on the east coast one will see some really magnificent scenery. The coast is somewhat amazing as the tides range over around 10 to 11 metres (32 to 36 feet) and at places like Port Smith one has a bay thats around 10 kilometres by 1.5 kilmotres that almost entirely drains out at low tide.You can be standing in a metre of water and 10 minutes later one is on dry land.

I spent 4 months up that way on holidays around 15 years ago and was ammazed at the number of tourists in the whole area and there are plenty of Australians that go back there repeatadly, We also saw quite a number from Holland and Germany for some unknown reason.

The actual MSTS route is VERY interesting but as yet OR does not handle trains that size well. The reason is the braking is controled from all locos in the string not just from the lead loco's and the increased delay down the train in applying the brakes and of course recharging all those auxiliary reservors takes a long time just from the leed locos. OR as yet cannot control the braking in any but the lead loco's.
You can though get a loaded train down the main grades without losing control of the brakes I managed to do that on my second attempt. There's also an error in one of the paths that leads to a head on collision near Port Headland, not good.

I believe in the real world the controlers will try as much as possible not to halt a loaded train as it takes so much time and fuel to get it rolling again. I found one had to control ones speed very carefully to avoid being stopped by a red signal. It would be nice at some future time in OR if in an activity one could give priority to some trains.

Just for a laugh I built a steam powered ore train using 104 wagons and 2 of the NALW bigboys for the power, The bigboys eng files did require a good deal of tweaking to get them to run OK in OR though. It was one of the more interesting consists, should put up some screen shoots of that. I did work out they probably would have made the distance without having to get more water but there is not a lot of water left when one gets to the dumper.

Lindsay

[Lindsayts]

At the top of the range north of the Yandi mine, now the interesting part a long down hill that varies in grade.............................

A real good thing about simulators is one can try something that never existed..............
Big boys 4000 and 4009 at the head of a 15,000 ton iron ore train on the way to Port Headland.