DSEPR02 Pilbara Iron v2

DSEPR02 Pilbara Iron v2

UPDATED TO VERSION 2 TO REMOVE NON-DLS ASSETS.

Like many Trainzers who date back a bit, I cut my teeth in Trainz on the old Robe River Iron route that shipped with early versions of Trainz. DSEPR02 Pilbara Iron is my long-planned successor to Robe River. Whether it is good enough to achieve this goal I will leave to others to decide. Though Robe River was an amazing route in it's time, advances in Trainz itself and additional 3rd party tools make much more realistic routes possible, and these advances have been utilised for Pilbara Iron. The route was constructed in TANE SP2 ver 4.5 build 94916, and took roughly 2 years from inception to completion. About a year of this was actual construction in Surveyor once the terrain was built and textured, and research done.

SIMPLE ROUTE DESCRIPTION
This route models at full scale the entire Pilbara Iron mainline from the coast at Dampier south through Western Creek Junction, Rosella Junction, and onward to mines at Mount Tom Price and Paraburdoo. Recent aerial imagery has been used to ensure that the trackage is as accurate to it's 2019 configuration as possible.
Downloading the session named DSEPR02 Pilbara Iron Basic Session from the DLS will provide suitable motive power and wagons in their starting positions. I couldn't quite manage to exactly reproduce the 33000 ton prototype trains, but my Trainz versions are a fairly good analogue. They are certainly challenging to handle in CAB Mode if you don't mind such a challenge. Otherwise the AI schedules provided in the Basic Session can be used to direct the AI Drivers to do the driving for you. AI ore trains will also generate once every two hours near Western Junction and drive the doubletracked section of mainline to Rosella Junction then return. These trains are as long as the operations trains and can be demanding on computer resources. You can deactivate these AI trains by editing the session in Surveyor in the usual manner.
Downloading the session named DSEPR02 Pilbara Iron Schedule Demo will provide a means of observing most of the normal flows and activities of iron ore trains on the route, using the AI Driver schedules provided in the Basic Session. The AI ore trains are disabled in this session.

DETAILED ROUTE DESCRIPTION
This route was built with operation in mind, so for those fellow Trainzers who enjoy operations, here is a text based pseudomap of the route, from north to south.

Dampier ports with 3 ore dumpers.
---------------13km dual trackage across the Dampier Causeway
7Mile Yard complex
---------------56km single track with 3 sidings
Western Creek Junction, now a complex intersection with the old Robe River trackage
---------------167km dual trackage with multiple sidings and crossovers
Rosella Junction, unmodelled lines from mines to the East and West join the mainline here
---------------26km single track with no sidings
Wombat Junction and Mt Tom Price township. Mount Tom Price ore mine and it's twin loaders is just west of here on a short branchline
---------------steep 100km single track with 3 sidings. Ore trains require pushers northbound.
Paraburdoo Mine with 1 loader and a pusher locomotive base


TRACKAGE TYPE USED
Standard TANE procedural track with concrete sleepers has been used for most trackage on the route.

SUPERELEVATION
Fully implemented along the entire route. I based the SE calculations on the speed that a loaded ore train could attain during test runs on every curve on the route. On curves where a low speed is expected I used the equilibrium SE figure, but on higher speed curves I used the modified figure as per standard practice on real railways. Maximum SE angle employed was 0.089 radians, which equates to rougly 5.1 degrees of track cant. Only in a few places along the line did the SE approach this limit. The overall effect of this approach to SE produced a noticeable but not unrealistic end result.

GRADIENTS AND PUSHER SERVICES
The general ruling grade facing loaded ore trains on the Pilbara Iron network is 0.33 percent. There is an ex

DSEPR02 Pilbara Iron v2