The Illinois Central 2600 Class Bundle is available now for your Train Sim Classic!
Our sincere thanks to Daniel O' Hearn, the commissioner of this project.
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Check out our latest update on the progress of the commissioned Illinois Central 2600 Class!
This was the last major commissioned project we had the pleasure of working on over the course of 1 year and 5 months, beginning in October 2024. It was a large project involving one type of locomotive and two variations, a standard 40ft ICRR steel boxcar model, and two 1925 ICRR Pullman Heavyweight cars, a baggage car, and a passenger car.
The Illinois Central's 4-8-2 Mountains Series 2600 (built by the company itself at its Paducah workshops in 1942) complement the large locomotive projects that Machine Rail has had the opportunity to work on in recent years. Although these locomotives unfortunately no longer exist, we have put many hours of research and production work into this project so that the best experience could be achieved during its classic simulation in TSC.
This commission became much more special than it already was at the outset when the customer also requested two Pullman cars to compose the excursion version of the locomotive that was represented by locomotive 2613 in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The request included a baggage car and a class car, both represented in a single version of the ICRR, as there were many. The customer provided us with specific material to try to represent a particular moment in time.
The 3D mesh of these cars has been crafted with great attention to detail, which means that they are models with a high number of polygons, just like our other latest rolling stock and locomotives. In order for TSC to handle this in the best way possible, we worked on the mesh parts as child parts and LODs. Although the TSC platform is still the old Railworks that we have known for over 15 years, it still supports all of this satisfactorily today.
The interior of these cars during the day looks like it does in the screenshots above. They are a little dark due to the dynamic shadows produced by the game, and naturally the color of the interior parts contributes to this. But it is important to highlight a very important point about the interior lighting of these cars.
• This is how they look with the interior lights on. Remembering that these lights only turn on automatically at night, we decided to keep it that way, mainly because of the shadows cast. This makes everything more beautiful, but it directly impacts performance during the TSC simulation. Although it handles many features well, the graphics engine is still over 15 years old, which sometimes makes it poorly optimized for effects like this.
• To mitigate this, we will be providing a version of these lights on at night without Cast Shadows. It is an .RWP file named “No Cast Shadows” that you simply install using your Utilities. When you want the shadows active again, install the “With Cast Shadows” file. This is not a rule if your PC has a great graphics card, memory, and current generation CPU; you will rarely experience performance drops when you have the lights with shadows on.
And for those who would like to wait more for the 1925 Heavyweight Pullmans, you can wait! We have already separated the entire project built from scratch on the baggage car and the class, so if time permits (later this year) we would like to build an exclusive package of these cars in a Standard configuration ready for repainting that will include more cars such as dining car, sleeping car, parlor car, etc. We will have plenty of time to talk more about this soon.
And speaking of repaints, the ICRR commission baggage car and class car are not ready for repaints, but Machine Rail will add a courtesy “repaint kit” only for Pullmans to the package.
I would like to take this opportunity to give a special thanks to all those who participated in this project directly or indirectly.
The launch of this bundle is scheduled for April 6, 2026!
Greetings to all.
Another cycle begins with the arrival of 2026, and we are excited and dedicating ourselves to the latest Illinois Central 2600 Class Bundle commission, which includes not only two variations of the locomotive, but also a 40-foot steel boxcar and Heavyweight Pullman baggage and passenger cars. January marks exactly one year since we joined forces to start this commission project. Given the scale of the project and everything that needs to be built from scratch, following each step of the process can be really time-consuming.
It can be said that the beautiful 4-8-2 locomotives corresponding to the ICRR class 2600 are fully completed and functional, but undergoing a careful programming process and numerous tests. At the same time, exquisite work has been carried out on the 40-foot closed cars that will also be included in this package, as part of the commission's request. The locomotives will be offered in two variations, one of which is Modified, with subtle visible modifications that have been made to these locomotives, such as the replacement of the spoked drive wheels with cast disc wheels and the smaller front cover of the smoke box. If everything goes well, the modified version will have white stripes added.
Started three weeks ago, more precisely on January 5, the Pullman Heavyweight Baggage and Passenger cars will finally complement the ICRR 2600 Class commission order. At the time of writing this post, the two Pullman cars are in the 3D modeling and detailing phase, followed by a process of optimizing all parts, and then we can finally proceed to texturing, animation, scripting, and introducing the models to TSC. The Baggage car appears to be complete, with only minor interior details remaining to be added, while the Passenger car still requires more complex details, such as the restrooms, for example.
We hope to return very soon with a new update on all this material included in the TSC, which is already in the final stages of completion and will be officially released shortly. We appreciate everyone's patience and interest in our work.
See you soon.