I think it's safe to say LPB needs no introduction, especially when there's so much history behind this 150 mile route (though roughly 100 miles have been abandoned by SP in the early 1980s, leaving just 50 miles of the route to be serviced). Stretching 150 miles between Lone Pine and Searles in the State of California, Lone Pine Branch is one of the most historical and legendary Union Pacific routes that Southern Pacific and The Trona Railway once operated on. The route starts at the Main 2 switch north of the Mojave Yard, heading NE passing through the Highway 14 railway crossing. The basics of the operations are as follows: -Empty train cars are brought to different facilities throughout the route to be loaded and sent out with the sole exception of acid tankers. -The Navy siding will be switched if necessary. -The railroad traffic that runs along the line normally consists of coal, sulfuric acid, soda ash, salt cake, military equipment and minerals which come from the facilities. -Other railroad traffic such as intermodals, grain trains and mixed freight trains can occasionally be seen passing by. Rollingstock: One of the most important parts of a Train Simulator route is the rollingstock, specifically the quality of the rollingstock. Boxcars, tank cars, tank cars carrying sulfuric acid, covered hoppers carrying minerals, open hoppers carrying other minerals along with coal, wellcars, the good stuff, including 100-ton gondolas. The quality of the rollingstock should be the primary focus here. If VRC didn't leave Train Sim, I wouldn't already be worrying about how the 100-ton hoppers (and other rollingstock) would be handled, because I sure as hell don't want to see DTM touch one piece of rollingstock should this suggestion be accepted and DTG's rollingstock is way too generic to even trust them with the hoppers. I expect to see better and newer models, not reskinned freeware we get for almost every North American route that comes out. If I had the time and knew anything about UP and BNSF railroad operations in California and if I knew anything about Lone Pine Branch other than what I pulled from hiawathamr's description of his LPB route dlc for certain Trainz games, I would have done this route myself, however I know nothing and do not have the time to even allow the thought of trying to make this route live rent free in my head, so I am unfortunately forced to turn to strangers and developers (that don't make terrible dlc) in the hopes that this comes to TSC in great quality. The locomotives would mainly be Southern Pacific SD40T-2s, Union Pacific SD40T-2s, UP SD40-2s, possibly GP38-2s, an interesting variety of UP and Espee locomotives, though quality shouldn't be brushed aside for quantity. I think we can all deal with three or four actually good and high quality locomotives with some great rollingstock, plus there're so many UP locomotives from other dlcs that the only thing that would really be needed is a UP SD40T-2 (hopefully pro range) as we have enough UP locomotives though I'd still like to see some good Espee stuff. The rollingstock should come in several liveries instead of just UP and Espee.
See, if this was a TSW route I can already see the mastery reward being all the names changed to Twin Pines and a DeLorean being added to a parking lot.
SP did rebuild some of their SD40s as SD40Rs which are basically the same thing, and they rostered several other rebuilt SD40 units, as well as SD45s rebuilt as the equivalent of SD40-2s. GE U-Boats, Dash-7s, SD45T-2s, SD45s, SD38-2s, SD39s, GP60s, GP50s (UP only), SD50s (UP), and SD9 "Cadillacs" would be awesome to see on this route.
Wasn’t there a freeware version of this route at one point. Seem to remember the late Ottodad (RIP) mentioning it a few times. The route can be found in Run 8 though it’s a bit of a slow drag once you get past Searles with not much to see.
