NSW - North, south & west
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 1:34 am
More tyre kicking. This time related to a possible "Across the Blue Mountains" update. It's still NSWGR ideas, so might as well go in this thread to save hijacking the existing scenario's thread too badly.
Taking the actual start year of 1855 and running for the standard 25 RT3 years until the end of 1879, same as the existing scenario, I checked out what had been laid in the way of track up to that point. It looks like the following shot. The pale blue rectangle outline is the near-as-I-can-get-them limits of the existing 448x448 map, which to be strictly correct for proportions should be 448x512 at the same east-west scale.
The pale green outline is the required limits if you wanted to fit the actual NSWGR network on a map, and at the same east-west scale would be 704x576. You could save some off the width by chopping the east coast in the northern corner, and get it down to 576x576 if necessary, but 704x576 is still fairly compact anyway.
There's not much track for an RT3 game, even though it was pretty good going in real life at the time. One noteworthy point is that Queanbeyan wasn't connected, whereas Yass was, and Yass is within the limits of the existing 448x448 map so I'm not sure why it was left out. Anyway, keeping the same map limits but looking at what track had been laid up to 1884 (ie. another 5 years) you get this, with the yellow track being the new bits:
Which brings up another point: the town of Kandos didn't even exist in the 19th century, so I'm not sure why it was included in an 1879 end year map. By 1884 the southern main line had reached the Victorian border (basically, bottom left corner of the screenshots) but including that would require an even larger map. The northern line had reached Glen Innes too, meaning even bigger again if you wanted that included. When making the existing ATBM map he seems to have focused on the idea of the Blue Mountains (directly west of Sydney) and not worried about the actual extent of the network at the time. Which is fair enough, but I'm still wondering why he went for Queanbeyan instead of Yass.
Anyway, moving right along and taking another five year interval, more track was laid in the period from 1884 to 1889. That looks like this, with the orange stuff being the latest:
This is when the south coast line and the Sydney-Newcastle connection were built in real life. But there's another oddity, in that the south coast line only goes to Nowra. It has never extended as far south as Bateman's Bay, and didn't even reach Nowra by 1889, so beats me why Bateman's Bay is a required connection in the existing map. The map could have been cut just north of Canberra and been more realistic (at the time Canberra didn't exist either). Anyway, for the last decade of the 19th century there are the following bits in red. Anything more extensive than this was built in the 20th century.
The differences are that a start was made on the line out to Broken Hill (at the middle of the western edge) and the final short section of the south coast line, from Kiama down to Nowra, was completed.
Taking the actual start year of 1855 and running for the standard 25 RT3 years until the end of 1879, same as the existing scenario, I checked out what had been laid in the way of track up to that point. It looks like the following shot. The pale blue rectangle outline is the near-as-I-can-get-them limits of the existing 448x448 map, which to be strictly correct for proportions should be 448x512 at the same east-west scale.
The pale green outline is the required limits if you wanted to fit the actual NSWGR network on a map, and at the same east-west scale would be 704x576. You could save some off the width by chopping the east coast in the northern corner, and get it down to 576x576 if necessary, but 704x576 is still fairly compact anyway.
There's not much track for an RT3 game, even though it was pretty good going in real life at the time. One noteworthy point is that Queanbeyan wasn't connected, whereas Yass was, and Yass is within the limits of the existing 448x448 map so I'm not sure why it was left out. Anyway, keeping the same map limits but looking at what track had been laid up to 1884 (ie. another 5 years) you get this, with the yellow track being the new bits:
Which brings up another point: the town of Kandos didn't even exist in the 19th century, so I'm not sure why it was included in an 1879 end year map. By 1884 the southern main line had reached the Victorian border (basically, bottom left corner of the screenshots) but including that would require an even larger map. The northern line had reached Glen Innes too, meaning even bigger again if you wanted that included. When making the existing ATBM map he seems to have focused on the idea of the Blue Mountains (directly west of Sydney) and not worried about the actual extent of the network at the time. Which is fair enough, but I'm still wondering why he went for Queanbeyan instead of Yass.
Anyway, moving right along and taking another five year interval, more track was laid in the period from 1884 to 1889. That looks like this, with the orange stuff being the latest:
This is when the south coast line and the Sydney-Newcastle connection were built in real life. But there's another oddity, in that the south coast line only goes to Nowra. It has never extended as far south as Bateman's Bay, and didn't even reach Nowra by 1889, so beats me why Bateman's Bay is a required connection in the existing map. The map could have been cut just north of Canberra and been more realistic (at the time Canberra didn't exist either). Anyway, for the last decade of the 19th century there are the following bits in red. Anything more extensive than this was built in the 20th century.
The differences are that a start was made on the line out to Broken Hill (at the middle of the western edge) and the final short section of the south coast line, from Kiama down to Nowra, was completed.