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

[Caley Jim]

This might give you some inspiration.

 

 

Gleneagles station restored to Caledonian colours for the Ryder Cup in 2014.

 

I was pleasantly surprised a few years ago to find that Katoomba station in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, was in a similar colour scheme, though the main woodwork is a bit lighter.

 

Jim

[Annie]

9 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

This might give you some inspiration.

Thank you, - it's certainly a classic paint scheme Jim.  And it's nice too to see the old stations being restored instead of demolished by the modernists.

 

I'll box on with the artwork I started and see how it turns out.  Once I have it done with all the texturing adjusted properly it's not difficult to then use it as a template for further variations.

[Annie]

The 3 rail points and trackwork I'm using on 'Bedwood' are a wee bit tricky to set up so an important, but somewhat tedious part of working with them is testing the points with an engine to make sure they are working properly.  Perhaps it wasn't quite so tedious this time around since I had just taken delivery of a nice new 57xx for use on the Cornish Mainline & Branches route and I'd decided it would be the test engine for the day.

 

 

And we're off......  The brick buildings hiding behind the siding gate are meant to be a dairy factory.

 

 

For better or for worse I decided that there had to be a harbour with a wharf even though they are a lot of work to set up properly.  The swing bridge is a very old model from TS2004.  It isn't perfect, but I think it will do.  It's fully animated so it will open and close.

 

 

The river bridge on the line to 'Bedwood'.  

 

[Schooner]

17 hours ago, Annie said:

...there had to be a harbour with a wharf...

Hear hear!

 

I gave up my fight with that swing bridge, lovely to see it being used with intent in such a gorgeous setting. Keep on boxing!

[Annie]

1 minute ago, Schooner said:

Hear hear!

 

I gave up my fight with that swing bridge, lovely to see it being used with intent in such a gorgeous setting. Keep on boxing!

Thanks for the encouragement.  

 

Those particular swing bridges by the late Ben Dorsey are downright difficult to work with Schooner and require all manner of hidden and secret knowledge to set up.  No instructions, you just have to flail about and try everything you can think of until something works.  I used two of them at Windweather harbour on my Norfolk layout and I'm sure that's why my hair is now completely grey.

 

I'm continuing to work on 'Bedwood' with most of the work concentrated on the harbour.  Once I had what I wanted to do with this layout clear in my mind I trimmed back the layout boards and tidied them up with a facia.  I haven't made any decisions about what the layout room will look like yet.

I like the old part of the harbour, but I'm not sure about that very modern looking concrete wharf which I don't think is a very good match for the old stone built warehouses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

Better I think.  I made the textures for the harbour wall when I was researching how to go about building the harbour at Windweather and I was studying lots of photos of old harbour and canal walls.  I really like using this wall model which shouldn't come as any kind of surprise.  The concrete wharf was just plain wrong in every way and I don't know what possessed me to try it.

 

[nick_bastable]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

Better I think.  I made the textures for the harbour wall when I was researching how to go about building the harbour at Windweather and I was studying lots of photos of old harbour and canal walls.  I really like using this wall model which shouldn't come as any kind of surprise.  The concrete wharf was just plain wrong in every way and I don't know what possessed me to try it.

 

that needs a train ferry 

[Edwardian]

10 hours ago, Annie said:

Thanks for the encouragement.  

 

Those particular swing bridges by the late Ben Dorsey are downright difficult to work with Schooner and require all manner of hidden and secret knowledge to set up.  No instructions, you just have to flail about and try everything you can think of until something works.  I used two of them at Windweather harbour on my Norfolk layout and I'm sure that's why my hair is now completely grey.

 

I'm continuing to work on 'Bedwood' with most of the work concentrated on the harbour.  Once I had what I wanted to do with this layout clear in my mind I trimmed back the layout boards and tidied them up with a facia.  I haven't made any decisions about what the layout room will look like yet.

I like the old part of the harbour, but I'm not sure about that very modern looking concrete wharf which I don't think is a very good match for the old stone built warehouses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love this. It reminds me of how I see the GER Harbour branch and the WNR-GER Tramway coming into Bishop's Lynn.  

[Annie]

52 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

I love this. It reminds me of how I see the GER Harbour branch and the WNR-GER Tramway coming into Bishop's Lynn.  

Thanks very much James.  I'm enjoying how the harbour is turning out, but progress is a bit slow as I'm struggling with sleepiness at the moment.  I'm trying to strike a balance with the harbour so it stays relatively small and doesn't become inexplicably more than what the light railway serving it could cope with.

 

When I was growing up I often saw the small harbour at Onehunga when out and about with Mum and Dad on Sunday drives.  You could get a really good view of the harbour while crossing the wobbly old concrete bridge across the estuary.  That image of the harbour and the small coastal steamers  that served it has remained stuck in my mind.  It was also served by a meandering little branchline, - though it was in more of a 1920s-1930s township urban setting than 'Bedwood'. 

When last I checked they were talking about an 'exciting development' for the harbour which means that they are going to do something tasteless and ruin it like they seem to have done with most of historic parts of Auckland that I remember from when I was young. 

 

1966.

(Aerial photograph taken by Whites Aviation.)

 

Late 1950s

(Aerial photograph taken by Whites Aviation.)

 

In 1910.

(TransPress NZ)

Edited March 9, 2021 by Annie
More information

[Caley Jim]

10 hours ago, nick_bastable said:

that needs a train ferry 

Comme ça?

(Burntisland 1883)

Jim

[Regularity]

Ou comme çi?

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Regularity
Link to image

[Annie]

11 hours ago, nick_bastable said:

that needs a train ferry 

 

 

Oops sorry, - wrong fairy.

 

I do have this very nice small ferry though.  There are some train ferry models available for Trainz, but they are all huge and from the modern error so don't interest me at all.  Having lived on off-shore islands served by small and wonderful elderly ferry craft I do have a big soft spot for ferries of the ancient and intrepid kind. 

Unfortunately a band of callow modernist entrepreneurs bought out the ferry company, seized upon their licences  and proceeded to put horrible modern ferries with no character al all on the run out to the islands.  Call me strange, but I loved travelling on the old ferries in rough weather when it took three times as long to get home.  The new ferries were awful, whatever the weather the ride was smooth and it was all horrible plastic seats and bright trendy paintwork inside the cabins.

In the old days before the modernists ruined everything I got to know some of the crews and on looking in the wheelhouse one day I was told, 'Here take the wheel for a bit I'm going to make myself a sandwich.'  Wonderful times, absolutely wonderful times (sigh).

 

[richbrummitt]

That picture of the boards with the fascia on is the first time I think I have ever found myself wanting to climb into my monitor to play trains. It seems a very strange thing to use a train simulator for but there we have it.

 

My vote is for wallpaper with some kind of repeated scenes, where the drop match seems to require several lengths to make and the whole lot has a texture the depth that insects (and maybe small children) could play hide and seek in. Similar to what I remember from my grandparents' old house. There could be a chair that wobbles because the joints are a little worn. Oh, a rug too - and maybe a 'sleeping' dog? I'm not sure if that would be possible in a train simulator. 

[Annie]

11 minutes ago, richbrummitt said:

That picture of the boards with the fascia on is the first time I think I have ever found myself wanting to climb into my monitor to play trains. It seems a very strange thing to use a train simulator for but there we have it.

Yes I was all very doubtful about the Trainz Model Railway format as well when i first saw it, but once I gave it a try I absolutely loved it.  I'm still interested in doing historical modelling in Trainz, but sometimes I just want to get back to having a model railway layout again and specifically the old coarse scale 'O' gauge layouts I used to build before I got gifted this illness I live with.

I'm still making up my mind about the wallpaper & etc, but I know exactly what you mean though having had elderly relatives with interesting old houses myself when I was small.

 

2 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Comme ça?

(Burntisland 1883)

Jim

Yes! - exactly that.  We had a ferry exactly like that one on Auckland Harbour before the wicked modernists did away with it.  Ours was a car ferry though, but in all other respects it was essentially the same.

 

2 hours ago, Regularity said:

Ou comme çi?

Again yes.  Just exactly what I would like to have on 'Bedwood'.

[Annie]

Further work done on 'Bedwood'.  The harbourmaster's office and cottages are now in place.  The building is modelled on the one at Bude in case you are wondering.  Other bits and bobs such as a water tank, workshop and other various sheds have been placed as well to finish things off.   I had to do lots of adjusting of things to get the harbour completed since I'd put some parts of it in all crooked when I was sleepy, but it's all good now.

 

 

I haven't completely decided what to do with the empty layout board off in the distance yet.  Possibly some sort of junction station for the Bedwood branch to make a connection with, but first I want to get the branchline itself done before going off to have a look at it.

 

 

That shunting horse is fully animated and really can shunt wagons in case you were wondering about it.  And yes I know the horse shouldn't be where it can get accidentally run over while on the job, but it's an animated horse originally intended for use on a road and it's been repurposed as a shunting horse with an ordinary non-animated figure attached to at least make it look more or less right.  The immensely talented chap who created these animated horses unfortunately died some years ago and took his secrets with him to the grave.  Since then no one has been able been able to figure out how he did it all of which means that I'm just going to have to put up with a non health & safety savvy shunting horse and like it.

The Beattie well tank is another old digital model from my collection.  I have other fabulously finescale Beattie well tanks, but I think this old model suits running on 3 rail track very nicely in my opinion.

 

 

[Annie]

Wallpaper experiments.  I'm liking this one, - so I'll make it up into a six wall set and it can join the other wallpaper wall sets I've previously uploaded to the DLS.  

 

 

 

I've made other carpets sets, but I keep coming back to this one which was the very first carpet texture I put together.  One of the creator group members made the blue teapot  and some tea mugs for me a while ago since tea is essential when building a layout.

I tried out the layout room with 'O' scale furnishings as well as an 'O' scale sized door and with the floor height raised to suit 'O' scale model railway room sized people, but the room was suddenly the size of a small aircraft hangar so I put it back to being '00' scale which while still large as far as model railway rooms go was nothing like so intimidating.

 

 

Building 3 rail model railway layouts is making me happy instead of feeling all sad and flat and depressed so I'm going to keep on doing it until I feel better.  I might go back to doing my serious (no smiling!) railway projects again later, but we'll see.

 

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by Annie
Saying things twice twice

[Schooner]

*Watches. Learns*

[Annie]

When I laid out the river on the layout I didn't think to make it navigable and it presently has a road bridge and a railway bridge across it with not exactly useful amounts of clearance.  I think the road bridge can be taken care of with a hump backed arch bridge easily enough  since the types of watercraft on the river aren't outstandingly large and masts can be lowered to go through the arch, but the railway bridge is going to have to be some kind of lift bridge or another swing bridge.

Bridges look all very nice once they're properly installed and everything, but they are a right pain to get properly levelled and fitted into place.

 

This is the rolling lift bridge sited at the viaduct basin in Auckland Harbour here in NZ.  The photo was taken not long after it was installed in 1932.  It was shipped out as a kit of parts from Darlington by the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company in 1931.  Amazingly enough it's been preserved since our record for that kind of thing isn't very good, though it only does duty as a pedestrian bridge these days.

 

[Annie]

The river.  Snap taken in the surveyor editing facet of the Trainz simulator before starting work.

 

 

One down.  This lifting bridge was about the only choice as all the rest were huge and far too darn big for my little waterway.

Fitting it in place wasn't too bad, but I had to realign the trackwork which was a bit of a nuisance.  The old bridge was curved so replacing it with a straight one meant that I had to shift everything about to get a nice smooth alignment.  The signal box is a County Donegal one by Steve Flanders and has a nicely modelled interior.

 

 

Doing the road bridge is going to be awful, - I just know it.

[Annie]

Taking a break from bridges I mostly did other things this session, - such as finishing off the dairy factory and laying footpaths and roads.  I'm not entirely happy with some of the houses and shops in the town and I can see myself doing some modding and reskinning to fix them up how I want.

 

Essential picture of a rooster perched on the coal bunker by the engine shed.  You wouldn't know this was a sleepy country branchline if I didn't do that.

 

I realised that the signalman in charge of the river lift bridge would need to see boats approaching from the harbour so I changed the County Donegal signal box for one with windows in the back wall.

[Annie]

Experiments with shops.

 

[Annie]

This one took a lot longer than it should due to me falling asleep far more than I wanted to.  These old digital models have the occasional flaw in their meshes which means that I have to plan out window and door placement to make sure they don't end up in  a twisted mess.

The windows came from a texture library I'm a member of, but I ended up having to resize and redraw them to suit the row of cottages so it wasn't that much quicker than if I'd done them from scratch.

 

 

 

[Annie]

Yet another elderly Trainz model that I think is just fine for my coarse scale 'O' gauge layout.  Runs very nicely too.  And sorry no, - the crane isn't animated unfortunately.

 

 

 

Latest WIP picture of Bedwood.  Bit by bit it's coming together.

 

 

 

[Annie]

More of Bedwood.  I'm starting to get on with detailing now which is always satisfying.  I still haven't found a solution for that darn road bridge yet.

 

 

 

A member of the creator group has just released some new wagon loads to the DLS which will help me to dress up the harbour wharves a bit and make them look properly busy.

 

[Annie]

After making my previous update post I found a really nice stone humpbacked bridge while digging my way through far too many less than best bridges.  So finally that's all the bridges on the Bedwood section done.  I'm still making up my mind about Bedwood and I'm following the idea of it being an impetuous little local railway working in partnership with the harbour company, - something like the B.L.R. & H.Co. - which should take up lots of space on the side of an open wagon and look important even if it's not.

 

Edited March 13, 2021 by Annie
More words needed.