Trona Railway

There's been alot of talk about the Trona Railway lately, due to Searles Valley Minerals annoucement to close the railway, due to overseas competition. Conviently, Franks recently announced Rolling Line's latest map jam, Mountains and Rivers. Making heavy use of the new terrain tool, I have decided to attempt to recreate the Trona in its entierty, capturing the imposing background of the mountains of Searles Valley's Great Fall Basin. 

I started by getting the Google Maps topology data for the area from Blosm, into blender. Next, I imported it into Rolling Line as Terrain, after making a few adjustments of course to the mesh. Now, I am in the process of placing tables. . .many tables, then, with the terrain tool, matching the general topology of the mountains.

5/11/26.

Day two. Completed main Trona facility trackage, and more mountains. Havn't started on main track yet.

Crash #1.

5/12/26.

Today I matched most of the Topo to the height of the trackwork. I adjusted some of the trackwork so its at the proper elevation (I hope!!)

As always, more work on mountains, and I extended the trackage abit.

5/14/26.

Most of the Trona main area mountains are finished! Again, more mountains. But, progress is moving rather quickly. Experimenting with skybox on the Searles Lake side.

Crash #2.

Spent way too long taking screenshots :)

Did more adjustments and extensions of the trackwork (extending and aligning the height with the terrain)

5/15/26.

Lots of work was done today.

Extended the track to. . .well. . .actually I don't really know where (the Trona hasn't made much headway in terms of Control Points). Seriously though, today trackwork has reached the Trona Pinnacles area, including the Argus Facility trackage. Also tackled the first real grade on the map (thanks Teapop for the advice!). Google Earth Pro informed me that the track elevation gains around 206 feet over just under 5 miles.

Progress on the topology has moved quickly, mostly thanks to the big flat area south of Trona.

Something new I have been trying is scaling up the tables really big, so they take up more space, therefore taking less time to place down in large areas. I only do this in skybox. Obviously this gives you less precision in terms of topology, but its alright for skybox.

5/16/26.

Again, lots more work has been completed. Bless the weekends! The map hasn't extended much in length, but all the current terrain has been configured into a proper skybox. The overscaling of tables has been working well. Skybox has gotten to the point where it has to load it in chunks!

Track has been extended more aswell. 

5/17/26