Indiana & Ohio

The Indiana & Ohio Railway started as a one-locomotive short line back in the early eighties.  OK, it had two locos - both switchers, a Baldwin and a Lima-Hamilton - but only one of them worked!  It had just under thirty miles of pretty much worn-out track between Valley Junction Ohio and Brooksville Indiana which had been sold off by Conrail as that new company struggled to make sense of the mess it inherited from Penn Central.  The original short-line has grown - and prospered - in its twenty-five years and is now a major regional carrier with an eclectic mix of (mostly) second hand locos.

My Trainz route is a DEM/HOG based representation of the original short line part of the route, thirty miles of (almost) flat railroad running through the valley of the Whitewater River.  As is my usual sim philosophy the track work will replicate the original as closely as possible, but the 'other side of the fence' will be essentially freelance, although I do have a few 'landmark' buildings slated for more-or-less accurate recreation.  Local industries have the right name, but beyond that any similarity to the prototype structures is pure co-incidence!

Trains will mostly be from the IORY period, but Conrail and even Penn Central stuff will appear. The odd New York Central train might get a run, but mostly this will be a 'modern' route.

UPDATE- October 2007

This project is on hold.  About half the route is 'done', but I plan to completely re-texture the route and add a fair bit of 'grass' etc trackside.  The route is pretty simple and most reasonable computers should cope with the extra processing load.  Stay tuned :)

Another Update - 05 December 2007

It's been a while, but I have been playing around with old unfinished routes while Clovis Sub is in beta.  George Fisher released a beautiful US style wood-sleeper track today.  It is fairly high poly, but on this route I think I can get away with it.  I have also been playing around with grass splines. 

To see the result go to the NEW Indiana & Ohio Page...

Video...

To see a four and a half minute video following a northbound Brookville job past Cedar Grove, click here.

Graphics intense page, please be patient!

Newest pictures are at the BOTTOM of the page. Yes, I know you have to wait longer, but it makes captioning a series of related pics easier!

  17 November 2005 - the first screenie!  The location is Brookville Indiana with the chimneys of Owen Corning's  roofing materials plant belching smoke in the middle distance and the OC Boiler Plant just beyond the first bridge.  Brookville is the end of the line.  The Main is the track closest to the camera, the loop is the centre road.  The Gp40 is standing on the track serving Owen Corning and Trumbull Asphalt out of sight around the bend.  The team track and more industrial trackage is just visible to the right of the disused depot.  Virtually everything that is done to date is visible in this shot.

An ex-Union Pacific GP40 idles quietly in the centre road at Brookville alongside the Owens Corning boiler house.  The loco is the VMD Union Pacific GP40s with the road name cut and pasted out and the alpha numbers swapped for the set from VMD's Conrail GP40.  Not quite right, the reporting marks should be above the number, but fairly close!  These locos are NOT for upload.

Just south of Brookville is one of two industrial sidings which were more conveniently worked by trains on their way into town since they face the wrong direction for a switching move from the yard.  With its north-bound train standing in the background an ex-Union Pacific GP40 (OK, it's a PS GP38) drops down off the main with a boxcar for the Brookville silo complex.  The silo was disused by the time the I&O came into being, but it's a nice trailing junction that drops steeply off the main and crosses two roads - one at a very acute angle - so what the heck - it's in!  Just a hint of un-textured grid over the river.

  Continuing south out of Brookville the line crosses the West Fork of the Whitewater River on the longest bridge on the line.  It should be a deck girder, but who could resist this beautiful through truss from Ronin13?  Conrail sold the line to the I&O shortly after taking it over from Penn Central, so these locos are unlikely visitors, but again who could resist Sean's (sureshot28) nice new B40s?

If you use trees that are made from photographs and rolling stock that is made from photographs, you get screenies that look like photographs!  More or less anyway!

Craig Hutchison (Momentum) produced this I&O Geep as something of a Christmas surprise :)  Still in need of lettering (the ampersand in the name is a doozey) it is seen here spotting a boxcar on Franklin Casket's track at Brookville.

That Geep again, now complete with lettering, propells a boxcar down off the main towards the Brookville Silo Complex just south of town.

A panoramic view of a southbound freight between Brooksville and Little Cedar Grove.  At this point the river swings away from the railway, only to rejoin it again a mile or so down the line.

The north end of Brookville.  The Geep rolls into town as a freelance PaintShed SW7 idles in the north lead.  Trumbull Asphalt is in the centre background with the chimneys of the Owens Corning plant belching smoke behind.  The disused passenger depot is just visible to the left.

 On Jan 9th progress got to a mile or so East of Cedar Grove.  All that rolling farm land was getting a bit repetitive, so the presence of a hill (at last) near the line led to the inclusion of a pine plantation to break things up a bit.  There was a timber mill at Cedar Grove, so the plantation is not impossible!  The default TRS04 trees have since been replaced with some of Dave Drake's beautiful creations.

January 13 and Cedar Grove is pretty much roughed in.  The trackwork is final (I've heard that before LOL), but as much detail as possible will be added to the town area.  The track layout is simple, but should be satisfyingly frustrating to switch.  There is a single double-ended siding serving four industries (LCL, Metzler Chicken Feed, a Fertilizer depot and Sperry Rubber) with a long kick-back siding at the East end (visible at the top left) serving Brown Brothers Lumber Mill and the Booher Company's gravel pit.  If the cars in the train aren't in the right order, getting them to the right spot will be a pain!

January 17 and the Cedar Grove area is pretty much finished texture and detail wise after a marathon couple of days.

  Backtracking slightly to just East of Cedar Grove where a late summer storm is brewing as this Westbound rolls into town.  I have been playing around with some of Pommie's skies - lovely stuff!

And back to the Eastern entrance to Cedar Grove, showing the entire yard approach trackwork - two junctions!  The main is on the left, the siding on the right and the kick-back to the mill and gravel pit bottom right.  The big water tower has since been removed, it dominated the scene too much and was probably a bit anachronistic given the period of the railway - not that the occasional NYC or PC train doesn't get a run, but mostly it is set  mid-1980s and later.

Randal (Whitepass) White has produced this lovely model of the very first I & O locomotive - a 1948 Baldwin DS-4-4-1000.  For quite a while this was the only operational loco on the line and handled the thrice-weekly return trip from Brookville to Valley Junction.  As pictured here the loco is Randal's first test release - a lovely bit of work!

The Baldwin again spotting a couple of hoppers below the Lumber Mill's woodchip chute ...

... and again out at the end of the gravel pit siding.  The gravel pit is named for the Booher company who loaded stone at Brookville at some stage in the line's history but not in the modelled period (as far as I can find out anyway).  The map I am using shows a gravel pit at Cedar Grove and although I have been unable to discover whether it was served by rail, its proximity to the line suggests that it might have been.  Whatever - it is a source of additional traffic which can easily enough have its siding lifted by pedantic operators!

Cedar Grove depot again, in Conrail days this time as a Westbound rolls through town.

In a break from the normal picture format, here are a couple of panoramic shots of the line...