Transcontinental

[EPH]

Thanks for the kind words, milo. :)

You can lay track from Sac to Reno with a fairly even 5% grade (a few pieces of 6%) and a tunnel. I had to lower the mountains by half and raise the vally halfway up the mountains (that's why expanding the station at Sacramento is a BAD idea), but I wanted a slope the engines could actually climb. Try laying from Reno through the pass, through the mountain and then up from Sac to connect.

The bridges only get washed out once, in April of 1867? (I think). From that the railroads learned you could build it cheap and sloppy, and as long as a train ran at all you could fix it up better later.

Building this thing was a huge leap of faith, just a giant jump into the unknown. The Ames brothers vowed to sell their shovel shop if the UP needed the money; all four of the CP 'Big Four' pledged their personal fortunes and credit. (The Ames shovel was so popular it was legal tender in the gold fields and known by name acorss the US, Canada and the British Empire. It was no small shovel shop!) Nobody knew if it could be built, much less if it would ever make a dime. The men who built it were such egotists they just KNEW if they did it, they would succeed.

Rock Island connected to OGDEN? I've seen them make it to Sioux City and Sioux Falls... Perhaps you mean Omaha? Yes, the Rock Island was the UP's connection across Iowa to Chicago. By the time the UP got to Ogden the Rock Island was already in Council Bluffs, I believe.

Going from Ogden to Seattle isn't easy, I agree. That was added as a requirement for gold because the scenario seemed too dull in the last decade. That was wolverine's suggestion, and I think it is a terrific addition. I used a tunnel or two on the Ogden to Portland route, myself. Personally I think 'burn' track would be OK if you can still raise the money to pay off the US bonds. I found the Seattle route too profitable to let it just lie there. :)

I'll check on bond issues getting cut off in 1868. Because all bond issues are stopped when the Ogden connection is made (I gave you 1100 units of land instead) the Rock Springs/Wells connection is actually the last of the US bonds. There are in total 50 bonds and 4200 sections of land.

Here's the breakdown from Transcontinental_v1.

.............................................Bonds..Land....Track Units
Start.................................................200
First 80 miles............................5.......300
Omaha-North Platte.................8.......400......400
O-Cheyenne............................10.......300.......635
O-Laramie, Sac-Reno................7.......500......785 + 150
O-Rawlins, Sac-Winn...............10.......600......899 + 114
O-Rock Springs, Sac-Wells.......10.......800.....1056 + 157
Ogden connection (Spike)........*.....1100.....1260 + 204
* These bonds were added to earlier connections. Track units are approximate based on values I got from early runs. Your mileage will differ!


Yes, you can repay more than 50 bonds, though only about two more. If you want to do it Uncle Sam will cheerfully take the money. DOesn't the government suck?

[EPH]

O/k I'll restart with a whole new strategy - but still how you have enough cash to get to Reno from Sacramento puzzles me - should have a map of how they really did it :P

Here's what I use. If you find a better way please tell me! :)

From Sacramento build due east toward the mountain. As you get to the slope curve north, keeping a 4% or 5% grade. You can go about halfway up the mountain at a steady 5% grade.

From Reno, build west through the valley and make a short tunnel through the mountain 'wall' (will cost around $750k). You may have to try a few locations to get one that works. From the mouth of the tunnel, bend sharply south. You may have a couple of sections of very high grade on that curve. From there, angle down at 5% (or as close to that as you can) and connect to the track coming up. Counting the station in Reno you should be able to connect Sac to Reno for about $2.5 million.

That money comes from completing the connections from Omaha to North Platte and Cheyenne. For those you will get 23 bonds worth $9.2 million, plenty even if you take the 'California' track. And once Sac-Reno and Omaha-Laramie are connected, you get 7 bonds worth $2.8 million to play with. :)

BE SURE you do not lay track in December, January, February or March when the rate is jacked up 1000%. After the Golden Spike is driven, you can lay track whenever you like. :)

[Wolverine@MSU]

Unusual:
- This may be the first scenario in which I actually used a Fairlie. Couldn't get from Sacramento to Reno without going grade 6 almost all the way, and there simply wasn't another engine that could make that climb without scattering boiler chunks across the mountainside.

I found the Consolidation does a pretty good job of hauling from Sacramento to Reno. Just don't overload it (4-5 cars max) and it'll make the grade. You don't get it until after the Spike is driven, so maybe the Fairlie makes sense before then.

[bombardiere]

Could I get more help on how to build a route to Reno!!!!!!!!!! I am not able to find a decent route. Mine has grades up and over 9% and horrible curves which slows down the trains even more than the grade, And only place I can fit a tunnel is NortWest of Reno. I can't fit the track on that pass west of Reno. Well the track fits, but the tunnel makes horrible grades.... :?

And how about Odgen - St lake city- rock spring. I found that best route by passed Odgen totally. And because of this I didn't make Golden spike, beause I didn't realised that it won't happen before I connect Odgen.

Hey, is there any web site which would give me more info about the route? I am not familiar with US rail history so I don't know what is best route selection.

[belbincolne]

Haven't had time to retry yet (suns shining!!) but echo Bombadiere's request.

[EPH]

I have a couple of screenshots but I can only put them up temporarily - the Reno to Sac shot requires 1.3 meg.

The Rock Springs to Ogden to Promontory route was chosen because the desert west of Salt Lake City was thought to be impassible. Today the Lake is a little lower and the line runs due west from Ogden across the lake and on to Wells.

Zoom out on the map a little and you will probably see the trace Mobius left on the map to mark various routes.

You can visit the Promontory monument today but there is nothing there except the old railroad cut-and-fill gradings. The rails were taken up during WW2 for scrap.


I used print materials for my info rather than the 'net but if you google 'Union Pacific' or 'Transcontinental' you will find a wealth of info. The UP has a decent web site and there are planty of rail route maps about.

Admin Note: This image can be viewed here. It is 3840 X 2222 - 1.33 MB
Reno to Sacramento

Admin Note: This image can be viewed here. It is 1267 X 810 - 173 KB
Around the Great Salt Lake

[milo]

Huh. Okay... there's another way down from Reno with about the same slope characteristics that doesn't require a tunnel. Oh, and you're quite right - I meant Omaha rather than Ogden, of course.

BTW, there's an interesting graphics bug when looking at Salt Lake from certain viewpoints - looks occasionally as if there's a faint ray of light beaming into or out of the lake. Doesn't affect gameplay.

[Orange46]

I just finished the scenario last night and it was great! After two false starts trying to figure out what 3 was all about (ok, I read the first 2 posts here to find out how to get the govt bonds - and please show that information at the start of the scenario), I'm glad to say I was able to finish it without reading anything further here. I actually layed the golden spike in June, as I was a few track sections short of making the connection in May, but amazingly, the game said I was still on track for the gold, so I continued. Tunnels (hey, I read your opening scenario comments and other later stuff and so I built it cheap - no tunnels.) However, I did rebuid Sacramento and the bridge (destroying the station and bridge allowed me to expand the station without the sinkhole problem), to get more income and then went straight up to Reno. With 4 cars, the American struggled, but made it. (What Fairlie?) Later Consolodations did quite fine with 4 cars. I also built to SF for income and Denver. Denver was a waste of good track, which is why I couldn't drive the golden spike until June, or was it that I was too cheap to spring for the extra track in February - I thought I had enough but didn't when the building season came.

Thanks for that neat pass to get up thru the first foothills in the eastern rockies. My only tunnels were used to get north of Redding, but even then I went up quite high before tunneling, as I didn't want to spend the $10 or more million that was required. I first built down from Seattle and built the high Redding tunnel as the last piece.

Ogden was fun. I bypassed it by dropping down to near
Salt Lake (the Mormons didn't thank me), and sent a spur up to Ogden after laying the golden spike. Then in July, I destroyed the Odgen station and extended the track closer to Ogden so that I could actually make some money. I also connected Salt Lake (and they still didn't thank me). 6 car Consolidations did fine going thru the Rockies on my tunnelless lines. I even ran 6 car express only trains from Omaha to Sacramento and they did ok - although we did have a number of crashes. Come to think of it, I don't remember ever seeing more than 4 cars on these trains leaving Sacramento.

This was a well thought out, historically fun scenario. I'm especially pleased with the innovative use of govt bonds and land grants (is this the first use of the yellow 3 concept?) The first 3 years were challenging, exciting and fun. The last years were also enjoyable, as you are running a railroad not to pile up a hoard of cash, but to pay off debt.

Rating: 10 out of 10

[EPH]

OK, milo, show us your route! :)

I haven't noticed the ray of light shining out of the lake. Perhaps it was the sun shining off the temple in Salt Lake City? :P

Orange46, I'm glad you enjoyed the scenario. The nice pass is courtesy of Mobius, who made the original map and very kindly agreed to let me use it.

Historically the Golden Spike was driven on May 10th. I decided to allow the playera little longer, through June, as you point out. With the latest version you should only be able to get the spike by connecting Ogden, as that was where they finally decided the roads would meet.

I never connect to Denver until after the Spike event. I never have enough track to do anything but build the Omaha-Sac route (plus the little extension to San Francisco). As soon as I have the connection I go straight for the Chicago rail link, Kansas City and Denver. That gets the money rolling in.

The briefing section is too full for me to add anything else, but it does recommend you try out camera views 1 through 4. I will think over how I can reword and better explain the land grant/US bond idea.

The idea of laying a section of track in a special territory to trigger an event is not mine. JayEff first used it in 'Greening the Red Planet' I believe. I stole it - um, 'paid tribute' to it - in Japanese Miracle and thought it was an appropriate tool here. I could have awarded the money at each connection, but I enjoy cashing those bonds! :D

[milo]

I don't have an image server to upload to, but my Sac-Reno route isn't much different from yours. Came up around the outside of the ridge rather than tunneling through it, and approached Reno from the north. About half the route at 6% grade, but nothing steeper than that.

[arop]

: I find, that a 6% grade is too steep for a mainline. In Europe most railways with grades more than 6% are cog railways. Is it the same way in the USA? Sadly there is a tendency among many mapmakers to build the landscapes too dramatically high to match the scale of the trains. If the scale of the trains were right, compared to the distances between towns, the gauge would be as wide as half a mile! Maybe someone will find my maps too flat?, but I find, that the scale fits better to the distances. I seldom use higher grades than 2-3%.

[Hawk]

milo, you could use PhotoBucket for image uploading. It's free. :D

[belbincolne]

Just a comment on Arop's that mountains are too high. I found that if you want to force players to build tunnels or take long devious routes it was the only way. in the few scenarios I've built I had to exaggerate the heights probably by ten times or more as otherwise you could simply build over the hills with gradients of (say) 2 and virtually no loss of speed in your trains if you didn't - and anyway on the scale we're working on you wouldn't notice they were there :?

[Gwizz]

One additional comment:

I generally build mountains high to block (cargo flow) the cargo wagons routes.

[EPH]

The scale of the map is too large to accurately recreate the run from Sacramento to Reno. So, for that matter, is the 'Central Pacific' scenario that comes with the game. The path from Sacramento to Reno in 'Transcontinental' doesn't model reality; the game isn't able to simulate Cape Horn, the tunnels and the route up the American River. If you use Google Earth to overfly the route you will see that at times the railroad almost winds back on itself, it twists so much. You can't do that in RRT3 at the scale I had to use.

The 6% grade from Sac to Reno in the grade doesn't relate to the real route, but then we don't really know how RRT3 grades relate to real terrain. It serves the game purpose of making the route expensive to build and more difficult to operate than a flat stretch, both of which were and are true.

Sacramento to Reno was widely thought to be the most challenging part of the whole railroad because of the steep, rough terrain and because the mountains are made of some of the toughest granite anywhere. Blasting from both ends to the middle AND from the middle towards both ends the Chinese made about 3 feet per day in one tunnel. That's by blasting, not by picks and shovels. No one would even consider starting the railroad until Theodore Judah surveyed the route and found a path that climbed at a steep but usable grade. It took the Central Pacific about four years to get to Reno; it took the Union Pacific two and a half to build from Omaha to Ogden.

To make the map work I had to lower the mountains three times and raise the Sacramento valley at least twice. For a comparison look at Sacramento in Mobius' 'Great Northern' and in 'Transcontinental'. Same map except I reduced the climb to Reno by half or more.

This extensive landforming caused so many problems with the surrounding terain that, once I was able to get to Reno at a 6% grade or less, I declared a victory and went on. I really wanted a steady 4% but that would have meant reworking every mountain on the west coast to get them into some hind of proportion.

As gwizz points out one practical effect of the mountains of the west coast is to create demand and price gradient for products in both directions.

[belbincolne]

I'm now totally puzzled. Following the strategy outlined in May of the last year I stopped the game used all the bonds and a lot of land and made the connection from Sac to Omaha. I then restarted into June and stopped again. The almanac said the connection wasn't made so I ran a train between the two - no message to say it wasn't connected and the train ran o/k (course it will probably take three years to get there!).

Anyway at this point I just let the game run (and daftly didn't save it) - by the end of the year I had lost 3 bonds as I went into the red (ie I was now -3) and still the Almanac says no connection Does this happen to everyone? Do I have to restart again and, as soon as I've made the connection, start trying to build a profitable line?

[EPH]

My suspicion is that you did not connect Sacramento to Ogden to Omaha. If you have, and the event did not fire, then I'm not certain where the problem lies. I have had the event fire a little late, but never months late.

[belbincolne]

Yes you're right I hadn't connected Ogden. So made the Goden Spike in time and connected the others o/k - but the Seattle completion cost a fortune and never really made any money - the first train was hugely profitable but after that only very average so with the time it took to travel it lost money. Should have left the connection until the very end.

The depression also got me and I never really made any money at all so could only repay 7 bonds. I've noticed there's quite a big difference in the seeding (and the AI play) so maybe I was just unlucky.

[besterik]

Like everyone else, I have to say, what a great and really fresh and inventive map. Making us all do the most counterintuitive possible (building lightining fast) was really fun.

It was first on my second try that I decided to wholeheartly give in to the strategy that they used at the time. Which paid off by gold. One thing I did to make it extra fun and in the spirit of the time, is to find a good enough route as fast as possible (since a lot of the track that was built wasn't that good, speed over quality) and not spend eons on trying to find the perfect route. I also thinks that it adds to the general stress.

One thing, the message that I got at Rawlins made me think that all tracks were expensive and that track laying costs would be reset to normal once I reached Rock Springs, and that because of this I thought that Rock Springs should be next in order to save money. This, and not reading the instructions good enough when I started the game the second time, made me reach Rock Springs before I had even started the Sacramento-Reno route. Even after cashing in all goverment bonds and land grants was I dangerous low in cash. Well, I started in Reno, and built the shortest meanest-looking tunnel possible (with 19% grades in the middle), the only possible turn that was possible and then as straight as possible down to Sacramento. Keeping the grades under 6% wasn't even on the radar. I managed to place a small station in Reno and even had $17 left. After that it was pretty smooth. I did lay "burn" track Redding-Klamath Falls-Eugene, it had a few nasty grades, but I doubt it is even possible to do much better without just making one big tunnel. I mean I followed the marked intended paths.

Once again, great map!!!

[EPH]

I'm glad you enjoyed the map. Yes, it is a little something different :? but it sounds like you got into the spirit of the game - nail it down, shore it up, get it running and fix it up when you make some money!

Originally I did increase the coast of laying all track when you got to Rawlins. Wolverine convinced me that only the track from Rawlins to Rock Springs should be higher, so that is how it now stands.

I think of this one as being three games in one ( :D ) since you have to build it, make money from running it and then pay off the debt.

Congratulations on your gold and thank you for your comments!