My Next MSTS Route

[Paul Charland]

Hi All,

I'm coming closer to completing the Trainsim route I've been working on for the last 32 months and have started kicking around ideas of what my next project might be. A couple of years ago I laid 23 miles of track south of Annapolis Royal, and the track from Windsor Junction to Southwest Junction, but back in the 70s there just wasn't a whole lot of traffic for so much work.

Since then I've drawn a big brute of a steam locomotive, a Central Vermont 2-10-4, turned out well and learned a lot. I keep thinking I wouldn't mind a few DAR steam engines and a route to run them on.

I've been kicking around the idea of a Kentville to Truro route set in the war years. Plenty of steam, should be plenty of traffic, so now I'm wondering about customers. I have an idea about the customers between Kentville and Windsor, but what about Windsor to Truro? There appears to be a team track at South Maitland but I can't see much else until the Irving depot (or was that an Esso) at the south end of Truro. Was there anything else?

Paul

[SamuelMClark]

I would love it if you did the Truro Sub as that's where I used to live was out along it when I was a child.

I believe most type of traffic that would have gone along that route

Mantua - Gypsum
Brooklyn - Based on images of the station there was a Coop Feed, so grain.
Scotch Village - Based on talking with some locals, mostly Farming and Logging/Lumber, and high school students going to Windsor
Kennetcook - According to the Wiki "Lumber and dairy were important exports at one time and high school students filled a passenger car every day to attend school in Truro".
Stanley Airport - Troops, Air Craft Supplies/Parts, Gas and/or Oil.
South Maitland - Lumber/Logging as according to the Wiki used to have ship building.

From the wiki

"The Truro Subdivision ran from Windsor to Truro and ran on tracks built by the Midland Railway Company. Completed in 1901, the line was purchased by the DAR in 1905 from the Midland Railway Company and became the DAR's Truro Suddivision, but was commonly referred to as the "Midland Line" for the rest of it's life. The sudvision produced substancial gypsum traffic as well as some lumber and agriculture traffic. Following gentle river valleys, the line enjoyed easy grades and mild curvature. It was heavily used by the DAR for westbound interchange traffic at Truro as it avoided the extra miles and delays of sending westbound cars into Halifax."

Hope that helps!

[Paul Charland]

Thanks Samuel,

Sounds a bit more promising, there would also be an extra now and again heading for Aldershot. Might just be enough traffic to make the line interesting and active.

Paul

[Dan Conlin]

The Truro sub sounds like a natural. The massive Shubenacadie Bridge should be an impressive digital structure.
There are some good details about Truro Sub customers in the 1968 DAR General Memorandum, pages 20-25: http://www.dardpi.ca/wiki/index.php?tit ... oOfGenInfo
Brooklyn had a large saw mill and also shipped some Barite and metal concentrate from the nearby mine at Walton. Kennetcook had an Esso bulk plant and two mills, mainly doing wood chips by the 1960s but they would have shipped lots of lumber in the steam era plus milk cans from the many dairy farms in that area. A lot of the sidings at the small stations loaded pulpwood logs.
During the war, their would have been airport traffic to the Stanley Flying school as Samuel mentions but also supplies for the Maitland air base dropped at South Maitland.

Dan Conlin

[downeastrailfan]

Sounds fun Paul!

I've decided the best way to run MSTS is to get an old computer that runs DDR2 RAM and Windows XP.

[Paul Charland]

If you can run MSTS on a computer you can run Open Rails. It's set up a little different then MSTS in the way it handles graphics, so in areas of the DAR were I was getting frame rates in the mid teens I get frame rates in the upper 40s. You can also adjust OR viewing distance up to 10,000 meters, MSTS limits the viewing distance to 3000 meters. The difference is that in MSTS you see the scenery in front of you appear, in OR you never see this.

They are still working on things, it's not perfect, but neither was MSTS when Microsoft abandoned it.

It's free at: http://openrails.org/

I think a steam era Truro Sub might be the way to go, it would be interesting changing Windsor back to pre-causeway days and do a little street running. Build a few steam engines, might even have a couple in maroon. Might be fun to do the M-107 as well.

Paul

[DARMIDLAND]

Hi Paul, that sound great up this Sub. Spoke to my father who grew up in Clifton. He gave me a run down on traffic on this side of the Shubie bridge. Green Oaks mostly lumber loaded. Princeport Road also lumber ,farm inputs fert. and lime, at times and cattle unloaded for a large farm owned by Americans ( Beech Hill Farm). The trains that were Westbound that were over tonnage would stall around milage 48.5 on the ruling grade of Truro Sub. The trains be doubled to Princeport Road siding. Clifton a lot of lumber loaded CE Crowe mill near by, again farm inputs and barrelled potatoes to the valley for export. McNutt Creek small siding potatoes again and farm inputs. A siding next to Willow St.was the White Rose oil dealer tank cars unloaded. Last customer on Truro Sub was Imperial Oil off King St. Tank cars unloaded.
There was a stub track west of Truro Station that the DAR used to load and unload trains. One track about 5 tracks out from the Truro Station was a freight pickup. The switch stand still had DAR on it until the 1980's.
There was a ballast pit between South Maitland and Burtons.

[Paul Charland]

This is starting to sound good. For me, it would be creating another part of the DAR that I haven't, maybe if this works out I could add the Kingsport branch at some point.

An interesting development in the last month or so, someone in Open Rails figured out how to get a turntable to operate, the code was pretty simple and should be added to OR 1.2 whenever that comes out.

I keep forgetting, potatoes were shipped out in barrels, that also means barrels would be shipped in, doubling the traffic.

Paul

[SamuelMClark]

Paul for when you build the Truro Sub it will be an addon to what you have already so one could operate any engine from Truro go to Windsor down to Windsor Junction? Or is it going to be a completed separate map?

[Paul Charland]

Hi Samuel,

No, this would be a stand alone route, there would be serious changes in Windsor that would have the causeway removed and the track rerouted at Falmouth. I'd always thought of completing a 1977 version of the DAR but there just wasn't the traffic on the Truro or south of Annapolis Royal to justify committing a couple of years work. So now that I've built my first steam engine and they're not as nasty as people said, maybe the very long term future is to keep adding to a steam era route.

The one and only drawback to a 1940s route is the lack of easy to find information. For the most part this was easy to find for the mid seventies route, that's when I lived in the Valley and remembered a lot of things, and there was enough people out there that had photos form that era that helped out. The Nova Scotia archives have nice photos of the big places like Truro and Kentville, but not much in between. Little things like what roads would have been paved, if any really... on the other hand, if I can't find out things like that, nobody else will be able to to prove me wrong!

Paul

[hanesh1]

One of the most unusually thing that my daughter found out went on this line was a high rail truck that went from Truro to South Maitland, part of the US testing of a bomb during the second world war unfortunately no photos that I know about. Holly has some info about this line, there were stations at Kennetcook ,upper Kennetcook (Patterson and doddridge also in current upper Kennetcook) a siding between Kennetcook and Upper Kennetcook called Rhines (lumber), My daughter has more info ....Heather

[Paul Charland]

Thanks Heather,

Always nice to hear about more customers! I wonder what bomb and what kind of test they would need to do in Nova Scotia that they couldn't do in the States.

Paul