Post-apocalyptic railroad


Status
Not open for further replies.
N

nekom

Member
I hope this is the right forum for this, because there isn't much to show off just yet, but I figure I can update with more pics as I get more done. So far, this is basically just a concept of the first town on what is a rebuilding effort, circa 10 or 20 years after a nuclear holocaust. The working name for the railroad will be the NWR (new world railroad), but that's subject to change. I'm hoping to come up with a lot of backstory. They haven't had time to repaint any of the old equiptment, it's all salvaged from nearby lines and even railroad museums. Derelict cabooses and boxcars have been turned into rolling and even semi-permanent housing. This is what will be the town of Hope, situated in southwestern Pennsylvania, and a key hub of the effort to rebuild civilization. But I ramble on. Here's the first photo of the concept, nowhere near done but it's a start:



On the far track is just a test train with ballast. The mainline will extend farther back, and the yard is being constructed off to the right. Nearer is camp/excusrion/salvage car parking, nearer still is abandoned track with semi-permanent housing cars. Off to the right is abandoned car remnants used for storage and housing.

I'm going for realism (yeah, I know it's nowhere near that just yet), and functionality. I would greatly appreciate constructive criticism, and I can take it. If it's awful, tell me it's awful, but please do explain WHY it's awful so I can try to make it better. I'd love to post more pics of my progress and get some feedback, as far as I know this is a unique idea and I'd like to see what I can make of it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
First, please don't post photos from Image Shack. It's a site that downloads adware on every user's computer that looks at your photo. Use Photo Bucket or another reputable photo hosting site.

Second, I didn't get a chance to look at the picture too long because I was too busy stopping Image Shack from downloading ads and adware but I think it really looks awful. It reminds me of of what a five year old would do if he got turned loose on a layout and was was allowed to throw things around.
wherever he wanted. There's no reason that even 10 years after a nuclear war, railroads would not have had time to clean up old junk laying around the track.

Just as some starting questions, where did the ballast train get all that ballast? Is there a quarry nearby? Where is your mainline going? What communities will it serve and what will the trains carry? Why do all the cars and engines look like they still have paint in good shape when the results of a nuclear blast and 10 years of neglect should be nothing but rust? Where are your pumping and refining diesel fuel? Finally, where is all the heavy equipment like cranes, flangers, stacks of rails, bridge building materials, and ditchers that you'd need to restore a grade that hasn't been used in ten years?

You need to do a lot of thinking about the concept of your layout and what obstacles the rebuilders would face. If you can't account for all of these challenges and how they are being overcome, you'll get a bigger version of a layout that looks like a five year old threw things around. Sorry if this sounds harsh but you wanted to know if it was awful and I did my best to tell you why I think it is.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Huh, Jim, my computer did not alert me about the adware, gonna have to run a check anyways.
 
I appreciate the honest feedback. I do plan to do plenty more weathering, but not to the extent of the effects of a nuclear blast. Any equiptment in the blast would be completely destroyed, but anything in outlying areas would survive and only be subject to the effects of years of neglect. As for where everything comes from (diesel, etc) I guess my concept is a network being cobbled together with different towns trading with each other, probably having specialization. There would be some stored diesel remaining to be salvaged, and maybe grain for biodiesel would become a big commodity.

As far as where the mainline goes, it will extend and push in two directions to connect more towns, and to bring in salvaged goods. It's obviously a purely hypothetical model, but will be based on the Monongahela river valley between Pittsburgh and Morgantown, and adapted to what I have to work with.

As far as imageshack loading adware, I've never heard of imageshack having any malicious code, I will have to look into that. Thanks again for the honest input.
 
Nekom, I'm not sure what the deal was with ImageShack last night. I got three pop ups and then it tried to start Microsoft Office installer. Everything I can find abut ImageShack says it's clean so it must have been spyware coming from the intermediate domain that happened to be hosting that particular picture at that particular time. It only happened once - when I went back to look at the picture today, there where no problems so I apologize for the false alarm.

Any world that was still post apocalyptic after 10 years would have had virtually no outlying areas not exposed to blast and heat. If this was a model in the middle of the Nevada desert, I might buy it, but very little industrial equipment, including railroad locomotives and rolling stock would have survived in a densely populated state like Pennsylvania. That which did survive should show obvious signs of heat damage, blistered paint, and lots of rust.

It's not at all clear to me how you'd "trade" something like diesel fuel. Unless you're talking about hundreds of guys carrying five gallon jerry cans of fuel every day, you need, at the least, tank trucks, which could be pulled by horses, but some sort of pipeline would become a requirement very quickly for anything other than very localized operations.

I think you need to read up on biodiesel. Grain would play no part in making biodiesel fuel. You need vegetable oil or animal fats, both of which would be hard to come by. Even if the materials were available, they still need some refining and have to be mixed with petrodiesel to run any railroad diesel in existence now. Richard Branson's "Virgin Voyager", billed as the worlds first biodiesel train, only runs on 20% biodiesel. The rest is regular petrodiesel. The idea of wood or coal fired steam engines would make a lot more sense than trying to make diesels run again.

Again, my main question is what profitable items would any railroad be carrying? I think that areas with surviving people would be mostly self-sufficient and railroads carry things to people who are not self sufficient. The entire economy would probably be based on barter and it's hard to imagine what people could barter with a railroad that would make it profitable to run. Think of rail traffic today. Most of it is coal for power plants, auto racks, industrial chemicals, and then thousands of containers full of 54" HDTV set that would be coming from...where? There won't be a China to make them nor an American economy to consume them.

It's your layout so do what you want. I just don't see any plausible scenario that would make what you're doing realistic.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Image Shack hit me both yesterday and today when I opened the pic. I think my comp blocked it all. I hope.

Rotor
 
I opened the pic and my pop up blocker went off. When i tried to move to the next page of this thread it would not. When i tried to close the window it took 2 mins to close. So I had to reset my wirless modem because download time became real slow. I also ran AVG and removed 10 spyware and malware items. I had run AVG before getting online here and deleted all spyware and malware before going online today.
I'm glad someone brought up the problem or i would of never ran my AVG so soon after getting online today.
 
I practice safe surfing with Firefox and NoScript. I didn't see any pop ups, no cross scripting, no java script, etc. Maybe you should too.

Didn't have any problems with this thread. And, I'm now using MSIE, which doesn't have the same protections as Firefox on my home machine.

If your machine got that messed up clicking a link, you *NEED* to reevaluate the protection software or settings you are using.
 
Bodyartist,

Not sure what got your bullet train started today but the OP had an idea and I proposed counter ideas. Neither your ideas nor mine hold any water - we are both speculating. The OP can do whatever he likes with his layout. However, if you post pictures and ask for input, you'll get it. Nothing that I wrote was mean but I thought it was realistic.

As has been stated in several posts here, Image Shack uses intermediate domain servers as a way to save money. There are times when this works well and other times you can open the exact same picture and be bombarded with spam and adware. Mac happened to open the picture at the wrong time and got the spam bomb. There's nothing that would stop it because the same thing happened to me. Having been a network admin for a number of years, my computer is pretty well protected but the spammers are always finding new ways around whatever protection scheme is used. If you'll note one of my posts further up, I asked the OP to change the picture to a legitimate hosing site like Photo Bucket and he has yet to do so.

There are other forums that allow personal attacks and name-calling. If that's going to be your continuing style, I'll be happy to send you some links. We don't allow that here. I'm going to assume you had a bad day and look forward to civil posts from you in the future.
 
First, let me preface this by saying I am just trying to share some knowledge on the web browsing / adware/ malware issue and not intending to fuel any tensions.

Interent Explorer has many vulnerabilities toadware/ malware on the web. There are several things you can do to protect your computer from such things. This list may not be conclusive, but based on my experience this combination of tools has not failed me in over 3 years of heavy internet use.

FireFox Web Browser with the "No Script" add on installed

Most malware results from Java Script. The No Sript add on will not let Java scripts run unless you allow them to. These two programs are your first line of defense.

CrapCleaner

This is a registry cleaner that is free. If Malware gets on your PC it will find its way to your registry. This thing will find and clean up some of the mess. This is also a great tool for maintaining system performance.

Spybot Search & Destroy

This is a free scanning utilty that will scan your system and ID malware and then eliminate it.

*I typically run Spybot - Crapcleaner on a monthly basis to clean out my system.

AntiVirus Software

I use AVG freeware from Grisoft, but really most will do the trick

ZoneAlarm

This is a firewall, I use the shareware version. There are other firewalls as well.


I cannot guarrantee that this combination of programs will guard against everything, but my experience has been that this will make your PC essentially "bulletproof." I am not affiliated with any of the above programs, I am just a humble modeler like you guys. I hope this information was helpful.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
give the poor guy a break...

it's his railroad, let him do what he wants with it. I for one like the concept. I would recommend some seriously heavy weathering, but that's just me.

as far as civilization, I could venture to say that perhapse the nuclear holocaust was from neutron bombs, that did not destroy the infrastructure, jsut all life. What do the recors reflect on that?


if ya wanna count rivets, go count 'em on a guy who is obviously into rivet counting, note some modeler who jsut wants to have fun. at least some of use still like to run trains for the fun of it.
 
nekom said:
I'm going for realism (yeah, I know it's nowhere near that just yet), and functionality. I would greatly appreciate constructive criticism, and I can take it. If it's awful, tell me it's awful, but please do explain WHY it's awful so I can try to make it better. I'd love to post more pics of my progress and get some feedback, as far as I know this is a unique idea and I'd like to see what I can make of it.
Click to expand...

If you don't want comments, don't ask for them. None that were given did not fall into the parameters the OP (who has never shown up again) stated.

As far as neutron bombs go, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb so you can find out what they actually do.
 
Gentlemen, I do believe this thread isn't adding much to topic discussion. I have disabled the link to Image Shack, and since the original poster is not participating I believe it's in the best interest of the forums to close this thread.
Thank's for your understanding

Cheers
 
Status
Not open for further replies.



Back
Top