Survival Railway Network (Survival 5)

Survival Railway Network (Survival 5)
Survival 5
Grand Central Station on Shepherd
Project
Type	Transportation Project
World(s)	Survival 5
Leader(s)	expedtadam - Shepherd North
Contributors	Line Managers:  Skelleton123 - Shepherd West  Slomo_1994 - Shepherd East  darparniox - Akita North  eybwam - Akita East  Montenator - Akita South  Ze_Tais - Akita West

The Survival 5 Railway Network was a project on the Shepherd and Akita worlds of the Dogcraft Server. The SRN's goal is to provide a high quality rail transport network to help player get around the server. This was the fifth iteration of the server that the organisation has been present in, after previously seeing lots of success in the previous four iterations of the server.

Network

The fifth iteration of the SRN was present on two of the four worlds, with Labrador and Corgi being managerd by the Community Rail Network (CRN). This decision was made to maintain the SRN's leading idea of 'quality over quantity' with the fear of having more sub-par station builds and the risk of burnout had the network expanded to accommodate all four of the new worlds. However, Grand Central Stations have been pre-built in all four spawn areas by the SRN.

In addition to the SRN, the Nether Transport Network has also returned for the new world, and will again run alongside the SRN with portals at all main line stations. The SRN team are also hoping to further integrate with the other newer transport networks that were started in Survival 4, that being the Road and Horse Network and the Connected Seas Coalition, with the hope of providing even more variety in transport options and easy transitions between them.

Headquarters

The Survival 5 HQ was located on Shepherds Spawn island, just outside the pre-built spawn area. The HQ was build later on in the season. At first only the resource/storage was build under ground. Both the initial storage build and later on the HQ itself had a donation chest, were people traditionally could donate resources for the networks construction.

Management

The management of the SRN would only see minor changes in the transition from Survival 4 to Survival 5, with the three line managers on Husky transitioning over to Shepherd, and the three line managers on Beagle transitioning over to Akita. The structure on Shepherd would remain the same, with conductor  expedtadam working on the North Line,  Skelleton123 working on the West Line, and

The 7 active Line Managers meet for a photo in February 2023.

 Slomo_1994 working on the East Line. The former Beagle team would see some minor changes going into Akita.  eybwam would move from the West Line to the East Line and  darparniox would return to managing a single line, that being the North Line. Lastly,  Montenator would keep his position working on the South Line. Announced in the SRN discord on January 7th 2023  Ze_Tais joined the team dedicating themselves to the Akita West line. The remaining vacant line (Shepherd South) would be overseen by all the line managers as a collective, with station builds generally being offered to helpers through the SRN Discord.

Spawn Build

Shepherd's GCS

The SRN team would again be invited to build Grand Central Station in the pre-built spawn areas of each world. The Shepherd GCS would take heavy inspiration from Rotterdam Centraal Station in the Netherlands. The design was primarily done by Skelleton123 but the other line mangers helped out with track building and interior design as well.

Akita's GCS.

Akita's Grand Central Station would be built in a similar theme to the rest of the spawn area, that being a gold rush theme. The station was located on a small peninsula of the main spawn island, with its longer slender design stretching along the length of it. This station was primarily built by Skelleton123.

Both Shepherd and Akita GCS' were built under the assumption there would only be two worlds for Survival 5, however when it was announced to the build team there would be four worlds, the SRN Team decided to make the decision to not operate on the newer worlds, with the workload just being unrealistic to maintain. As previously mentioned the line managers did agree to build spawn stations at Labrador and Corgi's spawns, keeping doors open for potential future use.

Labrador's GCS would be in-keeping with the sci-fi space base style of the spawn area, and would again be the work of Skelleton123. Corgi's GCS was a joint effort between Skelleton123 and Slomo_1994, taking the form of a large tent that might be found in a dig site.

Starting Out

Player working on the Shepherd North Viaduct during a build session.

This time around, the SRN team were more than ready to take on two worlds, now having a team of 6 line managers as well as an active group of helpers. Each line manager quickly got to work finding an area for the first station on their respective line, and starting to map out a path for tracks to go running from the spawns to these stations. The two vacant lines were also swiftly delegated to other members of the community, with  Ze_Tais offering to build the first West Station on Akita, which was also located in the same area as the ever growing player built shopping district called MOTTO. Former line manager  Aeghu would volunteer to build Shepherd South Station meaning all the initial station now had a builder working on them. While scouting out an area for the first East Station on Akita, eybwam noticed  MattKi01 was building his base in an area ideal for the first East Station. So the idea was floated to have the first East Station at his base, to which MattKi01 agreed, and would shortly thereafter begin work on it.

Shepherd West Station, which opened in May 2022.

Both Shepherd and Akita spawns were located on mushroom islands surrounded by ocean, meaning either tunnels or viaducts would need to be built to connect the spawn areas with the rest of the world. After previously constructed underwater tunnels to connect the Survival 3 Spawn Basin with the rest of the world, the SRN Team decided to build viaducts to cross the ocean in Survival 5. Some viaducts were build individually, such as the Akita South Viaduct and the Shepherd East viaduct, however others were built in large build sessions which were great in getting the community involved with the network. These viaducts were the Akita North Viaduct, the Akita West Viaduct and the Shepherd North Viaduct. As April drew to a close, Ze_Tais would finish building the first Akita West Station, now known as MOTTO Station. Akita South Station would be completed by Montenator a few days later and they would both open in a joint opening on the 24th of April 2022.

A New Rail Group

Player at Shepherd East during the Kirwick opening.

After seeing the absence of rail networks on both Labrador and Corgi, the server [HeadMod]'s contacted  N1cM4tth3w63 asking if he would be interested in leading a rail group which would cover both Labrador and Corgi. After some initial miscommunications and misunderstandings between parties the new rail group known as The Other Rail Network (now known as the Community Rail Network), would begin operations on both worlds, with SRN Line Managers serving a kind of consultant role if needed, and hope to work with the network in the future.

Meanwhile on the SRN side of things Skelleton123 would open Shepherd West Station on the 12th of May 2022, after hosting a build session to finish the track to the station earlier that same day. The station would also serve as a large RHN rest stop, for the ever growing amount of roads in the area, being spearheaded by  TyrantrumGOD and  _Shako. June would see more solid progress on other stations. With darparniox designing a build for Akita North Station, and starting to transfer it into survival. MattKi01 would finish constructing the bulk of Akita East Station, now known as Emberperch Station, and begin expanding the line westwards to met the line at spawn. Aeghu would also make considerable progress on Shepherd South Station, finishing the bulk of the exterior as well as designing a viaduct to cross the ocean towards spawn.

May would also see the first edition of The Minecart Gazette released. This was a project spearheaded by Skelleton123, and would become a monthly newsletter where Line managers and NTN Managers would provide a progress update of their respective lines/worlds. Allowing an easy way for the community to stay up to date with the progress of the SRN and NTN. The Gazette is published every month in the announcements channel of the SRN/NTN Discord, and is also available as a written book in game that can be purchased at the SRN HQ for the price of one iron ingot per issue.

Players at Moor Station on the Akita South Line.

The month of July would see Slomo_1994 open Shepherd East Station on the 10th. Later on that month  misterblue28 announced the return of the SRN Network Maps. A build session took place on the 16th of July 2022, to flatten a snow biome to make way for the maps on Shepherd and Akita. This time around the record was smashed again, with both areas being cleared out in just under 4 hours. misterblue28 would add the current stations onto the maps and send them out to Line Managers later that month. July would also see Slomo_1994 start transferring the design for the second east station on Shepherd into survival. This is known as Kirwick Station, and will eventually be the site of Slomo_1994's main base. From there negotiations with both Caelon and Leon have taken place, with Leon set to have the third station on the Shepherd East Line, and Caelon to have a station on the Shepherd Ring Line. Skelleton123 would also begin constructing the second Shepherd West station this month. Montenator would post the site of the second west station on Akita up for the taking on the SRN discord, with MattKi01 agreeing to build it after Emberperch Station is opened.

The Network Grows

Kirwick Station and the town surrounding it. The base of Shepherd East LM Slomo_1994.

August would see Montenator open the second and third stations on the Akita South Line, those being Electric Grove Station, built by  NeoFiore, and Moor Station, built by Montenator. Moor Station also serves the town of Flowercliffe, which is located just west of the station. expedtadam would also scout out a location for the second Shepherd North Station and put it up for grabs on the SRN Discord. September would start to see many more stations completed. North Station on Akita would be the first to open this month, with Kirwick Station, the second station of the Shepherd East Line opening up shortly there after. MattKi01 would also finally finish Emberperch Station this month, and would open it alongside eybwam. expedtadam would start work on a design for Shepherd North Station, slowly building it up over the next month and opening it in mid-October. Montenator would also open the fourth station on the Akita South Line, Vista Station, at the start of the month.

The screenshot at the opening of Akita North Station.

The line managers started to set their sights on completing the second stations on each line, to try and get the Ring Line project up and running. Several of these stations started construction, with  DragonFire441 completing Caelon Station, serving the City of Caelon and  Luuna89 completing the station at the Marsh Mechanics Akita outpost, The Fire Forge. darparniox would host a line building session on the Akita North Line, where the line was built up to the site of the second north line station, Donkey Station, which was being built by  misterblue28. eybwam would also finish a design for the Akita East Lines second station, Reservoir Station, and start building that in survival. Skelleton123 would also continue work on Shepherd West 2, now known as Temple Station, with the upper portion of the station being largely completed and the line marked out between it and Shepherd West Station.

Players at the opening of Burrow Station, the last opening of 2022.

December rolled around, and Montenator would host a build session for the line between Vista Station and the fifth station on the Akita South Line, Burrow Station. The station itself would open up several days after the build session, on the day the server updated to 1.19. Ze_Tais would reach out to the Line Managers this month, being interested to build the third station on the Akita West Line. The Line Managers were keen on this idea, and also asked if Ze_Tais would be interested in finishing Shepherd South Station, since its designer Aeghu had since become inactive on the server. Ze_Tais accepted, and would get to work on the station and line, hosting a build session on Christmas Eve with Montenator which saw a large part of the viaduct completed. Slomo_1994 would begin work building the third station on the Shepherd East Line, that being Two Lakes Station. This station was located within the greater Leon territory, and would be the final stop on the line before reaching Leon Central Station in the City itself. Alongside building the station, Slomo_1994 would create extensive lore for the entire Shepherd East Line.

Entering 2023

Players at Shepherd GCS at the start of the Mega Opening.

Impressed by Ze_Tais' previous work on the SRN in Survival 4 and 5 and well as his enthusiasm for the project, the Line Manager reached out asking if Ze_Tais would be interested in becoming a line manager, Ze_Tais would accept, taking over leadership of the Akita West Line. Ze_Tais would also plan to finish Shepherd South Station prior to moving on to designing Akita West 3, which ended up being the biggest SRN station to exist yet.

The month of January would also see several stations whose construction had been ongoing for months finally come to a finish. In total, 5 stations were finished around the same time at the start of February. The first was Donkey Station, to which Akita North Line manager darparniox scheduled a line opening for on the 5th of February 2023. Over the next few days, Temple Station and Two Lakes Station were officially completed by their line managers. They would also be joined by South Station on Shepherd, as the final details for the track as well as the last interiors were completed. Lastly on the day of the line opening, Akita East Line Manager eybwam made a huge push to finish of Reservoir Station prior to the opening, and was successful. However, the completion of Reservoir Station was kept a secret prior to the opening, and was announced after the previous 4 stations were opened as a final surprise.

Players at Emberperch during the Mega Opening.

The opening on February 5th, now being referred to as a 'mega opening' was also momentous as it was the first time all 7 active line managers were online at the same time, this is always a challenge, as the line manager team straddles a huge range of timezones. In addition to all the line managers,  marbou9 a former Line Manager for the South Line on Survival 2 and 3, made a special guest appearance for the opening as well. The opening was advertised as an event in the main Discord and drew a huge crowd of about 40 players.

Later on that month, on the 26th of February, the 6th station on the Akita South Line, Pavilion Station was opened by Montenator. Its completion marked a total of 6 main line stations opening in the same month, which is a record for the SRN. Beating out the previous record of 5 stations which occurred in May 2021.

The CDNN would also make a return at the start of 2023, now being managed by  Txp_. For each monthly installment of the CDNN, the SRN Line Managers have created short segments highlighting all the progress on the SRN during that month. These segments generally last around 3 minutes.

Line Managers filming a short segment for the CDNN.

The month of February would also see progress properly begin on building the SRN HQ at Shepherd Spawn. Since the start of Survival 5, the HQ had been very basic, with a makeshift donations area being set up above ground. A few months into Survival 5 Skelleton123 would create a nice basement area for the SRN, which acted as the main storage area for the network for the best part of a year. However, at the start of the year, Skelleton123 would finish a design for a proper HQ building. Work then began on clearing out the basement storage area which was largely done by Slomo_1994 and Ze_Tais. The basement was subsequently demolished and filled in, ready for construction on the new HQ building to commence.

Twilight of Sur 5

As 2023 pushed forward the SRN HQ would finally be completed and opened to the public. It allowed an organized place for Line Managers and other helpers of the network to pick up resources from the basement area, and allowed a single go to drop off point for anyone donating materials. Despite that, the middle of 2023 saw relatively little in the terms of station openings, despite lots of work being done on lots of rail projects on both worlds. Tropical Station and Forgesmith Station would open on the Akita and Shepherd South Lines respectively, while Highlands Station, the third station on the Akita North Line, would also open around this time. Work on some larger rail projects persisted, such as the SE section of the Akita Ring Line, and the Akita West Line, would continue to make steady progress.

Outside of the server itself, the SRN had continued to increase co-operation with the CRN. In mid-2023 a special discord server was set up with the SRN Line Managers and many of the senior members of the CRN, to begin talks about hosting a Station Competition. This competition was planned to promote station building across all worlds and both networks, with the main focus being working on expanding the Ring Lines. Throughout July and August plans were set into motion and the rules, time frames and prizes for the competition were finalised with the help of  TigerNL representing the DCT. A day before the announcement for the competition was made, a special announcement by  renthedog was released in the Cyberdog Nation Discord Server, stating a policy change to the server resulting in only player over 18 being allowed to play come the start of Survival 6. As well as the announcement having a severe impact on the current Line Manager Team, the controversy surrounding the announcement, and the assumption that Survival 6 would be coming in the near future, the decision was made to push forward with the competition, despite the drastic drop in the player base almost overnight.

A Roadblock, a Competition and a Merger

The competition would launch and a modest number of people would start building stations over the next month, over that time, attention from the Line Manager Team would turn to completing and connecting the remaining stations on the network. First was the Shepherd South Line, which had seen its third, fourth and fifth stations be delegated to other builders by Montenator, after a successful build session, Cape Turtle, White Thorns and Pinewood Stations would open up on the 18th of August. After that, attention turned to Akita, with eybwam working with  strawberrysham to finish the third station on the Akita East Line, Buddy Holly Station. Meanwhile Montenator worked with  Cardnial_Omega and  bucherwurm31 to finish the last stretches of line connecting together the SE Section of the Akita Ring Line. Finally Ze_Tais hosted a massive build session to complete the sections of lines between 4 new stations on the Akita West Line, including getting help from  Kar204 to copy over a viaduct from Sandbox into the main server. These 10 stations were accompanied by several more branch line stations from  mrkalaspuff,  ChickenNoodle007 and  ReddestKnight to complete the roster of stations for a 15 station mega opening on Akita on the 2nd of September. Over on Shepherd, Slomo_1994 and eybwam made a final push to connect Leon up to the SRN which was successful. In addition to this, eybwam would connect Westpoint, Elysian Meadows and Sunshine Harbour up the Leon too, with a change at Leon Oldtown Station. DragonFire441 would also open Caelon Station alongside the other 5 stations for a final big opening on Shepherd.

The Station Building Competition closed near the end of August and judging commenced in early September, as of writing the results haven't been announced yet, but are expected to be soon. Two of these stations, Sunbeam Station, built by  SarahPantera100 &  Duckyz and Northeast Station built by  GrumpySalt, would be connected up to the main Akita network alongside  Paulchen007 's Green Coast Station, during a build session on the 13th of September. With the opening set to take place next week, it will likely be the final major SRN activity before the closure of Survival 5.

With another announcement by  Princess223 on the 1st of September, it gave the time frame for Sur 6's release to be in early to mid October. The previously announced policy changes would also upsettingly result in both Slomo_1994 and Ze_Tais having to step back as Line Managers upon the release of Survival 6, as they would no longer be allowed to play. Over the previous few months, several meeting had taken place with the CRN Leadership about officially merging the two rail networks for Survival 6, citing a unified group would get more work done, and it would reduce confusion in the player base. When it was announced Survival 6 would be on just 2 worlds, the decision to merge made even more sense. This resulted in the remaining line managers, expedtadam, darparniox, Skelleton123, Montenator and eybwam being joined by  XPModder,  H_Di_Chemici and  Minda905 from the CRN, to form a full team of 8 for the approaching Survival 6 worlds under the SRN banner. This change was publicly announced by expedtadam on the 9th of September 2023 alongside the announcement that all the transport networks would merge into a single discord (Dogcraft Transport Discord) for the beginning of Survival 6, encouraging even more cross communication and co-operation between the SRN, NTN, CSC and RHN.

Stations

Shepherd

• Grand Central Station

North Line

Labrador's GCS

• North Station
  

East Line

• East Station
• Kirwick Station
• Two Lakes Station
• Leon Central Station
  

South Line

• South Station
• Forgesmith Station
• Cape Turtle Station
• White Thorns Station
• Pinewood Station
  

West Line

• West Station
• Temple Station

Ring Line

• Caelon Station

Akita

• Grand Central Station

North Line

• North Station
• Donkey Station
• Highlands Station

Corgi's GCS

East Line

• Ember Perch Station
• Reservoir Station
• Buddy Holly Station

South Line

• South Station
• Electric Grove Station
• Moor Station
• Vista Station
• Burrow Station
• Pavilion Station
• Tropical Station

West Line

• MOTTO Station
• Mount Ravenhold
• Moon Heights
• Milk Mafia HQ
• Rolling Rail

Ring Line

Going Clockwise from Donkey Station:

• Donkey Station (North Line)
• Sunbeam Station
• Northeast Station
• Green Coast Station

• Reservoir Station (East Line)
• Bookmark Station
• Lakeworks Station
• Fire Forge Station
• Oztezarian Station
• Southeast Station
• Electric Grove Station (South Line)
• UFO Station - Unfinished
• Riviera Station - Unfinished

Branch Lines

Shepherd

• Westpoint - Branch Line from Leon Central Station
• Going South from Leon Oldtown Station → Elysian Meadows → Sunshine Harbour

Akita

• Sunken Mansion - Branch Line from North Station
• Bayou Line: Going East from South Station → Mojave Swamp → Fenswick → Lakeworks → Highland Heights
• Going North from Buddy Holly Station → Birch Junction → Mrkalaspuff's Base
• Deathfall Valley - Branch Line from Southeast Station

Station Images

• Below is linked two Imgur albums with all the main line/ring line stations and all the branch line stations on Survival 5. This also includes CRN stations. Main Line Stations Branch Line Stations (Will be added soon)