Slightly's Whittier Sawmill Connection

Main features

One usually starts in East Whittier, yes?

But we also usually also outgrow it extremely fast. The interchange moves to Sylva, or Bryson, or even further, and East Whittier stays behind as a whistle stop. There are a ton of mods to make East Whittier more comfortable to handle. But do we really need a 600 car capacity yard after the interchange moves away?

We don't. So, why not make a neat little East Whittier QoL package and keep our quaint little starter interchange to the vanilla size.

This mod is set up to simulate incremental progression in making East Whittier more user friendly:

- As a 1st stage, the Engine House is converted to a run-through setup, with the Eastern end connecting to the yard's Northernmost runaround track.

- Next, the 2nd stage connects up the Sawmill's lead in spur into the Yard via the Engine House's newly built yard connection, for easo af access. Especially useful for up-modded, and high tier Sawmill operations.

- And finally, in the 3rd stage a small spur behind the engine house and an unloading platform to separate out repair part shipments from the actual service work.

Stages 1-3 can be built independently of each other through separate milestones. However, stages 4 and 5 are further improvements on stage 3, and thus are locked behind its completion:

- Stage 4 links the Parts Track spur to the front lead-in if the engine House's northern track. Note that the track needs to take a rather close line to the engine house to avoid excessively sharp bends. To my best ability to determine all locos and rollngstock should be able to go around this bend with centimeters to spare, but it is merely centimeters. Do tell me if you find anything trhat actually clips, and I'll adjust. Untill then, a bit of sweating and a few grey hairs on new engineers is worth the gentler line.

- Stage 5 links the Parts Track to the Coal Loader, making it accessible directly from the Yard as well, without having to go through the Engine House area anymore.

As with stages 1-3, stages 4-5 are constructible independently of each other, after the Parts Track is completed.

For anyone who wants the tracks available from the start, alternative downloads with odd version numbers should be available for builds with the progression system stripped out and track pre-built from the start. (At the time of writing this, version 1. 3 has stages 1-3 pre-built, and version 1. 5 has stages 1-5 pre-built.)

The main versions with the even version numbers should be the builds with the progression system as originally intended.

I shall endevour to maintain this even-odd version split for 'progression' vs 'pre-built' going forward.

Additional optional mainline connection buildable on the eastern end of the Yard, immediately next to the Engine House.

The mod was made explicitely to be compatible with CGACGACGA's Whittier Car Shop, the use of which converts the runaround track into a service communications track, while also giving extended maintenance capacity for the logging trucks and a much needed splash of scenery for the far end of the Yard complex. Not a requirement, but highly recommended.

Limitations

- To fit in the necessary switches for all of stages 1-3 of the expansion, the Northern track of the vanilla Engine House was shortened.

- Similarly the Sawmill's lead in spur was slightly bent and shortened to maintain a 20 mph industrial track with the yard connection.

- The incoming diesel fuel unloading span was moved from the Engine House to the 1st stage trackage in order to be physically closer to the pumping station. this means no diesel resupply until 1st stage is complete. Not a problem usually, but it might be an inconvinience, if you want to switch to diesels right away.

- Finally, at present, due to slight shortcomings of technical know-how, the stage 3 parts track is not a dedicated parts loading span, but an extension of the Engine House's Repair Track. Take note that your employees are maximalists and will also want to service the boxcars you ship the spare parts to them in.

Installation instructions

Drop into Railloader and off you go.

Requirements

Strange Customs, as for all map mods, and

Autism Locomotive Works' Scenery Assets pack (soft requirement - the mod works okay without, but you'll miss the speed advisory signs and the parts track loading platform.).

Miscellaneous Information

v. 1. 8 integrated @lolli23's RailForge 0. 7. 14 (package 0. 1. 1-alpha5) compatibility fix.

(Thank you again Lolli)

If you have not heard of it, RailForge is a foundational mod in development by ItsthatguyREX that promises