Since our last official update it's been just over 3 months and a lot of progress has been made on our projects during this time. We already had a commission scheduled for the last quarter of 2024 so that when January came, we could start working on it:
Illinois Central Class 2600 "Paducah's"
This new class of locomotives was a continuation of the railroad's existing 4-8-2 Mountains and comprised 20 units for the Illinois Central Railroad, numbered 2600-2619, build in 1942 by the ICRR itself in its Paducah Shops.
In recent years we've had the pleasure of being able to deliver a number of commissions for our clients, one of which comprised a very special request for the creation of a new route for their steam-era Train Simulator Classic in the run-up to its transition to diesel:
Illinois Central: Iroquois Prairielands
A request for a commission for the Mikados 1500 class for this route came to us from the creator of this Dragnus project, and the Machine Rail team was able to work on creating the new locomotive as well as new rolling stock to make up a beautiful set. This time his new request was for us to develop the beautiful 2600 class mentioned earlier, and the current progress of the locomotive's development can be seen below:
At the moment, the external modeling of the locomotive is at 75%, which is good progress, but there is still a lot of 3D modeling work to be done on the external parts and the entire interior of the cab. The tender should start in the next few weeks with the completion of the machine.
Also negotiated for this commission are the ICRR 2200 Heavyweight Coach and ICRR 700 Heavyweight Baggage Car which are currently in the initial design phase, and for the time being there is no visually significant progress to show here.
Western Maryland I-2 Class Arriving on Steam
The largest 2-10-0 Decapods built by Baldwin are arriving in the Steam Store for the majority of TSC users who love to enjoy a good workday in real time, this time in the power of one of the Western Maryland Railway's largest steam locomotives!
You'll have a great experience of almost 3 hours of career scenarios exclusively created for the B&O Mountain Subdivision: Cumberland - Grafton Route Add-On.
Coming soon to the Steam Store!
Rebuilding The Machine Rail's Sierra No.3
In December 2024, some products that had been out of date for some time were removed from our online store, including the Sierra Railroad No.3 bundle.
This was a project that began in 2020 and since then Machine Rail has been proud of the amount of work put into each new project with a view to significant and progressive improvement. The Sierra No.3 Movie Liveries and Sierra Railroad No.3 packages were offered separately due to the huge amount of texturing the models required; this will not be the case with the new Sierra No.3 package.
If there is one steam locomotive that has had several paintings throughout its life, it is the No.3 and due to the great interest of many locomotive enthusiasts, the Machine Rail team has decided to create almost all of the most famous movie paintings in which the No.3 has participated for its first release in 2021/2022.
With the project to completely rebuild the locomotive for the TSC, Machine Rail is currently considering keeping its final versions, which will be offered in our online store as a new product; if you have the previous packages, don't worry about files being changed or replaced, as this will be a new product that won't affect the old one.
So what versions of the new Sierra No.3 will be available? We don't have an answer to that yet, but it may be plausible to consider its working era of the second half of the 1940s and 1950s at Sierra Railroad, which may also comprise some new rolling stock models for the locomotive in addition to the coaches already seen before.
Old Products Back to the MR's Online Store?
Unfortunately all products that have been or may be removed from our online store in the future are unlikely to return in their original state. Just as Sierra No.3 is undergoing a complete rebuild for Train Simulator Classic due to people's great interest in it in our community, other obsolete projects or even new ideas may surface for the TSC community and that's just fantastic!
But we also get asked about our old Brazilian products from South America and the most recent job Machine Rail worked on was the Dom Pedro II Railway where we put our efforts into recreating a small section of the original Dom Pedro II Railway route and also a beautiful set of rolling stock. All this proved obsolete with the passage of time and we decided it was time to start reorganizing our thoughts again about Machine Rail's possible future dedication to more South American projects with the main focus on Brazilian railroads.
It's still a bit premature thinking, but I can tell you that our team is working on a new Brazilian narrow gauge route for TSC, with no official commitment to have it launched any time. But if screenshots of this project emerge via our official media, everyone can look forward to a possible launch, but until then, this is just speculation.
Sincerely, the Machine Rail team.
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