Annie's Virtual Pre-Grouping, Grouping and BR Layouts & Workbench

[Compound2632]

10 hours ago, Annie said:

and after that I'm going to play with my LSWR trainset.

 

That's the spirit!

[Annie]

4 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

A lovely, if unlikely, combination of a 1936 loco in post-WWII lettering with pre-1927 lined coaches and post-1927 yellow signal arms!

 

The viaduct is beautiful.

 

Will you be taking the line backwards in time? 

I don't run the Dukedog very often James because it's well out of my time period, but I thought I'd  take it out for a spin to check over the new layout.  The trackwork is a crime and the layout builder knows not a thing about signalling since there are signals scattered about everywhere in a completely random fashion.  But I think I might be able to do something with it if I take it a section at a time.  And yes I will be winding back the clock on the East Cornwall.  I'll aim at the pre-WW1 time period and see how I go.

 

That's what I'm doing with the North Cornwall line since it was in a right state as well, but bit by bit it's coming right.  I spent this afternoon working on Wadebridge and was able to get quite a bit done. It's starting to look a lot more like it should now which is encouraging.

 

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That's the spirit!

You betcha.  

[Annie]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

It would have to be one of those Iain Rice style Cameo Layouts, precisely modelled to the n'th degree. Ideal for P4 work too, plain track with a single point.

 

But dull in an operational sense, a Terrier and a couple of coaches once in a while, and a Down pickup goods in the morning with the corresponding Up service in the afternoon.

 

You could enhance it with some ambient sound...

 

 

 

 

Oh yes I do like that ambient sound recording Mr Hroth.  It would be just the thing for a slow paced layout like Godshill.  As you say Godshill would be a scenic modeller's delight, but not very interesting to operate.

I may have a go at a digital layout based around Godshill, but not for a while since I have plenty of other work to do on my Cornwall layouts.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

the layout builder knows not a thing about signalling since there are signals scattered about everywhere in a completely random fashion

Well, that’s never been a reason not to print articles in the model press, so I suppose there’s no reason to think it will apply for virtual layouts either...!

[CKPR]

Regarding Dukedogs, I've always regarded them as a honorary pre-grouping engines on the grounds that they were essentially Churchward engines assembled by Collett after the fact.

[Annie]

5 hours ago, Regularity said:

Well, that’s never been a reason not to print articles in the model press, so I suppose there’s no reason to think it will apply for virtual layouts either...!

Examples are four to five distant signals spaced out one after another on the line between stations and junction signals used as starter signals when there's no junction for them to control.

 

36 minutes ago, CKPR said:

Regarding Dukedogs, I've always regarded them as a honorary pre-grouping engines on the grounds that they were essentially Churchward engines assembled by Collett after the fact.

The equivalent of a modeller's kitbash in effect.  I've always liked Dukedogs.  In my teens I discovered that Dukedogs weren't as old as I thought and I can remember feeling somewhat disappointed.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, CKPR said:

Regarding Dukedogs, I've always regarded them as a honorary pre-grouping engines on the grounds that they were essentially Churchward engines assembled by Collett after the fact.

Churchward engines? Other than the firebox, almost Dean..

[CKPR]

8 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Churchward engines? Other than the firebox, almost Dean..

 I had forgotten about that mythical locomotive engineer, Mr Dean Churchward...

[Regularity]

3 minutes ago, CKPR said:

 I had forgotten about that mythical locomotive engineer, Mr Dean Churchward...

I think you missed out the middle surname. I always thought it was Mr. Dean-stroke-Churchward...

 

[Annie]

Track testing on the North Cornwall Railway.

I cheered myself up by buying a whole lot of Maunsell ironclads since i didn't have any.  I'm particularly fond of T9's and a while ago I purchased the T9 pack that Cameron Scott sells on his Darlington Works website.  Now I have more T9's than I could shake a stick at.

 

[Annie]

Book/Magazine Corner.

 

 

I received my on-line copy of Steam Days this morning and was delighted to discover the article on push-pull working on the Hants & Dorset.  I like push-pull sets and I've been developing an interest in the LSWR lately so that was a cheer-up for me this morning.

In the same magazine there's a long article on the American built Mogul locomotives that were imported by the Midland and others when British makers weren't able to cope with the demand for new locomotives.

[Annie]

Continuing with working on Wadebridge on the North Cornwall Railway.  The town is still a clutter of buildings some of which I won't end up using, but the station and yards are inching a lot closer to being completed.  With a general lack of buildings and other items for the LSWR  in Trainz I've had to get creative and use what is near enough rather than what is correct.  At least I have some lovely LSWR signals I can use thanks to a member of the creator group I belong to.

As you can see my coaches are in many shades of green, but the aim is to get most of them into Maunsell Olive.  One set will have to stay in Malachite though since it's a reskin with a complicated texture that I redrew over several days without realising that Southern green is a many splendored thing and the colour sample I used was the wrong one  

 

 

[Annie]

Wonderful!  The usb key I ordered from the Broad Gauge Society containing all their rolling stock data sheets has arrived.  Other societies that I've found to be a delight to order things from are the GER Society and the LNWR Society.  

 

This morning I decided to take a break from working on layouts and played trains with my Longridge 0-6-0 long boiler locomotive on the Grimwold branch on my Norfolk layout.  Just to make it a bit more interesting I used the 'advanced' steam controls.

 

The Longridge is shedded at Morrow so it was a short trip down the line to the mine branch.

 

 

 

I was able to add a few more paragraphs to 'Shunting Mistakes I Have Made'  while shunting together a train of empty wagons and ending up with the brake van at the correct end.  The concept of brakes is something the Longridge finds difficult, so with that along with needing to find just the right sweet spots with the regulator and reverser shunting was interesting to say the least.

 

 

Once out on the line though the Longridge rolled along very sweetly and is easy to drive.  With a functional brake van at the end of the train of wagons slowing down became slightly more certain which was definitely a good thing.

 

 

 

And safe arrival at Oakmarket yard.  All in all with shunting and then taking the empty wagons through to Oakmarket I spent an hour having a good deal of fun.  My mid-19th century engines are refreshingly different to drive as compared to the later engines in my collection and always help to cheer me up when I'm feeling a bit down.

 

[Annie]

Work is continuing on the Padstow-Wadebridge-Bodmin section.  Wadebridge is starting to look something like what it's supposed to, but there's still a lot more to do yet.

 

[Annie]

Testing under the advanced steam controls on a friend's ex-L&Y layout in TS2019.  The line has a wicked long steep gradient that makes the climb up to Crowcombe Heathfield on the Minehead branch look like a walk in the park.  It's very much a test of one's ability to drive an engine properly.

Gave me an excuse to get my L&Y toys engines out of my digital trainset box though.

And I really do need to shift myself to make some L&Y wagons instead of falling asleep all the time.

 

 

 

[Annie]

L&Y Class 23 saddle tank on quarry duties.

 

[Jake The Rat]

 

14 hours ago, Annie said:

Gave me an excuse to get my L&Y toys engines out of my digital trainset box though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Annie said:

L&Y Class 23 saddle tank on quarry duties.

 

 

Excellent. Where did you get these locos from? & would they run on Trainz 2012? I could use a few more L&Y locos on my 'Rhye on Sea' layout.

 

Quote

And I really do need to shift myself to make some L&Y wagons instead of falling asleep all the time.

 

L&Y wagons would also be very welcome. You already made a L&Y coal wagon, but there seems to be something wrong with the texture: it's flickering & looks like halfway hidden under a grey veil.

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Jake The Rat
added 1 smily

[ASMO]

The above effect usually happens when two textures are applied to the same model surface. Hope this helps.

[Annie]

2 hours ago, ASMO said:

The above effect usually happens when two textures are applied to the same model surface. Hope this helps.

The original model I reskinned had a texture fault known as 'z flashing' which as you say is caused by two textures trying to occupy the same space.  I didn't know this at the time and for some reason the fault didn't show up immediately.

It can only be fixed by editing the 3D mesh which I can't do since I don't have the source files.

 

4 hours ago, Jake The Rat said:

Excellent. Where did you get these locos from? & would they run on Trainz 2012? I could use a few more L&Y locos on my 'Rhye on Sea' layout.

The L&Y locos are older legacy payware from Paulz Trainz  and can be found here http://www.paulztrainz.myenet.info/inside/LMS.htm

 

They run fine in TS2012, TANE and TS2019 and while they are simple models and aren't ultra detailed they do what they are supposed to without any fuss.

 

[Annie]

L&Y testing on the Leadhills & Wanlockhead branch.  This is in TS2012.

The astute amongst you would have immediately noticed that the 20 ton L&Y coal wagons are not having any issues with their textures.  I'm going to do some further work on these, BUT they will be for TS2012 only and I'll put dire warnings in the config file as to what will happen should they be loaded into later versions of Trainz.

 

 

 

 

[Jake The Rat]

My screenshot of your L&Y coal wagon was also in TS2012, so maybe the Trainz version does not make the decisive difference & it's something else.

 

I've been looking for L&Y & LNWR locos on several sites, with paulztrainz among them, & I found the L&Y 3F & the 2F saddle tank, but he only shows pictures of them in BR livery. If he has them available in L&Y livery, I will definitely buy them, but of course I don't want to see any 'cycling lions' in a 1922 layout.

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Jake The Rat said:

My screenshot of your L&Y coal wagon was also in TS2012, so maybe the Trainz version does not make the decisive difference & it's something else.

 

I've been looking for L&Y & LNWR locos on several sites, with paulztrainz among them, & I found the L&Y 3F & the 2F saddle tank, but he only shows pictures of them in BR livery. If he has them available in L&Y livery, I will definitely buy them, but of course I don't want to see any 'cycling lions' in a 1922 layout.

He has them both in L&Y livery Jake because that's where I got my ones from.  When you place your order say that you want L&Y livery.  It's a good time to buy now because the US dollar is falling like a stone.

 

I don't know what the story is with my 20 ton coal wagon then.  I'm running TS2019 3.7 build 61388.  I have shadows switched off, anti-aliasing set to 4  at a resolution of 1280 X 1024.  My video card is a GTX 660 with its drivers up to date.  The textures didn't so much as even slightly flicker once during my test run.

[Annie]

Further progress on my representational pre-1904 GWR 3 plank open.  With my brain being all sleepy and screwy lately it takes me ages to get anything done.

The tarpaulin/wagon sheet was done using  the arcane hidden mysteries the information in The Great Hidden Tome the 2009 edition of Great Western Way.  My thanks to all those that helped me to obtain this information.

 

[nick_bastable]

very nice although I prefer tanagable models

 

Nick B 

[Annie]

38 minutes ago, nick_bastable said:

very nice although I prefer tangible models

 

Nick B 

Me too Nick, but with this illness I have I had to give up real world railway modelling.  I used to scratchbuild models, but now most tools are too dangerous for me to use.  And as well as that suddenly falling asleep tends to have bad effects on delicate handbuilt models.