Coming soon, Feather River Canyon Enhanced Scenario Pack 02 features Union Pacific and BNSF railroading in the Sierra Nevada! Read More : Union Pacific and BNSF in the Feather River Canyon! (dovetailgames.com)
Okay, let’s break this down. TLDR: Once again HIS proves that he does exactly zero research, doesn’t care about consist or operational accuracy, and still has the audacity to claim that his “work” is “closely based on real railroad operations.” Let’s start from the top. The first glaring error is about 2 paragraphs in, with the ridiculous statement that BNSF baretable movements are “frequent.” They are, in fact, not. All of the baretable symbols are unscheduled and run on an “as-needed” basis. (In my experience, rarely more than once a week) Yes, they do run, but they are not as common as HIS claims. No problem with a scenario being made with one obviously, the problem is this misleading statement (which as you'll see are in large quantities in this article). The second comes with symbol LRC60. LRC60 was the symbol known as the Quincy local ,which ran from Portola to Quincy Junction and return several times a week. It was in no way a "long-distance local" since, obviously, it went 35 miles each direction. The symbols changed a few years back to LRR65/66, which run between Oroville and Portola. It is, apparently, now back to the LRC60 system. HBARPAS is also not a heavy train at all, and mostly ferries empty centerbeams, hoppers, and tankers back up to Washington from SoCal (it is literally 90% those three cars usually, with an occasional boxcar and autorack thrown in), and runs pretty commonly with just 2 units because of how light it is. That's just the paragraphs and basic info-now onto the photographs. For these, I'm only working off of what can be directly seen, so even though I can make a bunch of fair extrapolations based on what I see, I won't say them because they aren't explicitly shown. 2nd photo-three geeps have never, to my extensive knowledge on this train, pulled the LRC60. Since they were only around eight cars long, one unit usually was sufficient, and this is captured quite often. (Side note (and shameless self-plug): I already made a scenario of this train, but using actual good stock, and doing real research instead of faking things and saying it's realistic (and it's free, not behind a $10 paywall!) https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/m.../i4910-longhood-backward-and-longhood-forward) Additionally, the loads in this picture are in the wrong place, they should be spotted where the player train is in that photo. 3rd photo-So this is the LRR66, but...it has logs? And an already loaded centerbeam? Where in the heck did these cars come from? 99% of the time this train is made of of solely empty centerbeams for the Quincy, with the occasional cars for storage or ballast car mixed in. There is not a single active industry on the route that takes or ships lumber or logs besides Quincy, which only outputs lumber, but clearly, the train hasn't made it there yet. And ACes are not common at all on this train, nowadays it runs almost entirely behind SD59MXs and, previously, SD70Ms and SD40Ns. Given the stock used, it was probably the best choice, but we have UP SD70Ms, and it's dumb not to use them. As a whole, Sherman over Tehachapi would of been a better decision for accurate motive power. 6th photo-So this is supposed to be BNSF MBARPAS, but as said earlier, this train runs 90% tankers, hoppers, and centerbeams, and, you know what's not in this picture, which shows a good 23 cars? Tankers, or centerbeams, and there's only 4 hoppers. This is a horrendous excuse of a MBARPAS, especially when all of the stock you need to do a half-decent job of it is included in both required DLCs. So that's "it" as far as definitively incorrect things as shown in this article, but, again, there's a lot more I can imply is wrong based on these photos, but they aren't explicitly shown so I'll wait until they inevitably release a second article for this cash grab. It is complete and utter bull**** that this stuff gets cranked out and can be advertised as factual despite clearly not being so. As a freeware scenario creator, the lack of time and research HIS spends on creating consists, making meets, and considering how the real railroad operates is an insult--the payware creator should be putting in far more effort than the guys who make freeware, and yet, that is not the case with these High Iron scenarios-they are workshop quality at best, and should NOT be payware. So that's my opinion on this so far, as someone who actually has done the research on operations and rail fanned this route for the last 18 years. For those who hate those who call developers on their bull****, sue me, everything I have said here about operations, symbols, and consists is factual and can be backed up online or by my experience on the line.
Hey guys. Just posting to let you all know there are happy people in the world too. Will play these new scenarios as soon as I get them and have time !
I would more often, but I only feel qualified to do so on a few routes, since obviously knowing all of the trains and operations takes a very long time. Otherwise there are people who are much more knowledgeable than me and they would be better sources. The routes and eras I know enough of to actually be trusted on are: Feather River Canyon 1970-now Shasta line 1980s-now Donner Pass 2000-now Soldier Summit 1990-now Tennessee Pass 1985 to 1997 Tehachapi and Cajon 2014 to now Arizona Divide 1990s A lot of these aren’t really covered with scenario packs, although I will say nearly all of the criticisms here apply to the ones that do, which means in all likelihood that the scenarios I don’t know enough about to fact check are just as bad. Frankly, High Iron is extremely poor at making realistic scenarios, or even good (in the sense that they’re well made) ones. If you want good NA scenarios you’re extremely limited in choice, at this point it’s pretty much me and a few occasional others releasing stuff on TrainSimCommunity. RWA has a small selection (mostly by BoostedFridge) but its like finding a needle in a haystack, ditto with the steam workshop.
