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

[Annie]

Various snaps from the new TANE install of my Norfolk layout.  Tree planting is continuing and I'm getting to grips with devising new schedules for the train services.

 

Tram engine No.040 at Hopewood Junction.

 

 

A view over Nodding Keep Halt.

 

 

No.4 at Moxbury.

 

 

No.4 approaching Nodding Keep Halt.

 

 

No.4 at Bleakhorse Road.

 

[Schooner]

9 hours ago, Annie said:

newcomers to the latest versions are having a lot of problems.

Can confirm!

 

Congrats on the successful move, can't wait to see what comes of it. More importantly, I hope you've found the development satisfying and the playing of trains fun! Looks glorious  

Edited December 22, 2020 by Schooner
Whilst oggling and typing, Spotify's shuffle played the theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Morricone, The Ecstasy of Gold). Curiously fitting, a recommended pairing for light railwaying!

[Annie]

Thanks very much Schooner.  It's certainly very nice to play trains without pauses and juddering as the aging simulator software does its best to catch up.  There's a fair bit of scenic tidying up to do as a result of the transfer to TANE and also work I've wanted to do, but had to leave doing anything about because I didn't want to put any more pressure on the simulator software.

I'm still getting used to how some things work in TANE, but overall it's all good.  I did think about transfering the layout to TS2019 instead, but decided that it would be too extreme a change that would do the basic character of the layout no favours at all.

 

25 minutes ago, Schooner said:

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Morricone, The Ecstasy of Gold)

Certainly interesting.  It's on YouTube so I had a listen.  Must be years since I last heard it.

[Annie]

28 minutes ago, Schooner said:

Can confirm!

The Trainz forum is always full of posts from newcomers to Trainz who have just purchased TRS19 and are having problems.  Not everyone knows about the forums or where to get assistance with problems which makes me wonder just how many of these newcomers cut their losses and give up.  For a while there even being able to successfully download TRS19 was an issue for a lot of people.

[simonmcp]

On the subject of the number of trees that you think you will have to add, it has always struck me how few trees there are in some of the early 20th century railway photos. I used to work for a nature conservation charity and we were plotting the natural habitat onto Ordnance Survey maps so it was something I had to observe and the contrast between the situation now and the old railway photos stood out. Perhaps it was the great number of wooden ships being built? Simon

[Annie]

49 minutes ago, simonmcp said:

On the subject of the number of trees that you think you will have to add, it has always struck me how few trees there are in some of the early 20th century railway photos.

 

Yes it is something that stands out in old photos and is very noticeable.  I often use 25 inch to the mile OS maps from the late 19th century as a guide for projects and they certainly are very useful for showing tree cover.  With my Norfolk layout it's not that I have to add lots of trees as I'm just replacing the ones that are missing as well as replacing older tree models with ones that are better.

 

 

[CKPR]

4 hours ago, simonmcp said:

On the subject of the number of trees that you think you will have to add, it has always struck me how few trees there are in some of the early 20th century railway photos. I used to work for a nature conservation charity and we were plotting the natural habitat onto Ordnance Survey maps so it was something I had to observe and the contrast between the situation now and the old railway photos stood out. Perhaps it was the great number of wooden ships being built? Simon

Probably because the railways were  mostly built across established farmland - IIRC, the deforestation of most of England had occurred by the 16th century for precisely the reason suggested, namely the building of the Tudor navy. The coming of the railways probably gave a massive boost to forestry that in turn boosted commercial forestry, which was then given a massive impetus by the Great War and the establishment of the Forestry Commission.

 

[Compound2632]

59 minutes ago, CKPR said:

IIRC, the deforestation of most of England had occurred by the 16th century for precisely the reason suggested, namely the building of the Tudor navy. 

 

A myth I'm afraid. There was a plentiful supply of home-grown timber for ship-building right up to the end of the 19th century. The myth is repeated re. the building of warships for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars exhausted supplies of home-grown timber. Commercial ship-building continued without a hitch through that period; the Naval Dockyards only suffered a shortage because the Navy Board was only willing to pay a standard fixed rate per cubic foot, not extra for specialised pieces*. Up until well into the 20th century most British woodland was intensively managed for building material, furniture-making, wattle panelling, basket-making, firewood, etc. - until the craftspeople concerned were undercut by mass-market products. 

 

See O. Rackham, Woodlands (Collins, 2010).

 

*This was part and parcel of systematic penny-pinching. If the war had gone on a year longer, Napoleon would have won - despite his defeats on the eastern front - because the British ships blockading the French ports would have started falling apart. Some of them, shoddily built in the first place, had been more-or-less continuously at sea for a decade. The ships most sought-after by the more ambitious commanders were captured French 74-gun two-deckers - superbly built to a scientifically-developed (pre-Revolutionary) design; one careful user (up to the point of capture), low mileage.

[DonB]

Not just 21st century accountants telling the plebs how much to spend. it has been endemic in industry for years, one only has to look at the historical annual reports of shareholder's meetings to see the pressure being put on company  chairmen to reduce costs and increase dividends. 

[CKPR]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A myth I'm afraid. There was a plentiful supply of home-grown timber for ship-building right up to the end of the 19th century. The myth is repeated re. the building of warships for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars exhausted supplies of home-grown timber. Commercial ship-building continued without a hitch through that period; the Naval Dockyards only suffered a shortage because the Navy Board was only willing to pay a standard fixed rate per cubic foot, not extra for specialised pieces*. Up until well into the 20th century most British woodland was intensively managed for building material, furniture-making, wattle panelling, basket-making, firewood, etc. - until the craftspeople concerned were undercut by mass-market products. 

 

See O. Rackham, Woodlands (Collins, 2010).

 

*This was part and parcel of systematic penny-pinching. If the war had gone on a year longer, Napoleon would have won - despite his defeats on the eastern front - because the British ships blockading the French ports would have started falling apart. Some of them, shoddily built in the first place, had been more-or-less continuously at sea for a decade. The ships most sought-after by the more ambitious commanders were captured French 74-gun two-deckers - superbly built to a scientifically-developed (pre-Revolutionary) design; one careful user (up to the point of capture), low mileage.

 I stand substantially corrected [note to self - do not rely on half-remembered school history lessons from when in Form 3B in 1978].

Edited December 22, 2020 by CKPR

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, CKPR said:

 I stand substantially corrected [note to self - do not rely on half-remembered school history lessons when in Form 3B in 1976].

 

I think that probably was the received view among historians half a century ago - history is always changing, as new research is done and new evidence unearthed.

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Up until well into the 20th century most British woodland was intensively managed for building material, furniture-making, wattle panelling, basket-making, firewood, etc. - until the craftspeople concerned were undercut by mass-market products. 

And the evidence can be seen for this on old OS maps with woodlots and woodlands deliberately set aside in the landscape.  Fields for crops are bare of trees except on boundary lines because you can't plough a field that's full of trees.  Fields also tend to be smaller than those of the modern error era.  Some real howlers of mistakes have been made by digital layout builders who have used Google Earth as a reference to build 1920s and 1930s layouts.  Modern town planning built around theories on greening the landscape should stand as a statutory warning to the digital historical modeller to be very careful with their research. 

Edited December 22, 2020 by Annie
more to say

[simonmcp]

Annie is right about field boundaries or hedges disappearing at a rapid rate since the mid 20th century if not before. When I helped plot the landscape changes for Cornwall Wildlife Trust in the 1990's, it was really shocking to note quite how many had been destroyed since the Ordnance Survey 1:10,560 maps we were plotting against had been produced. Simon

[Annie]

3 hours ago, simonmcp said:

Annie is right about field boundaries or hedges disappearing at a rapid rate since the mid 20th century if not before. When I helped plot the landscape changes for Cornwall Wildlife Trust in the 1990's, it was really shocking to note quite how many had been destroyed since the Ordnance Survey 1:10,560 maps we were plotting against had been produced. Simon

One of my interests is the Broad Gauge in Cornwall and the 19th century 25 inch to the mile OS maps for some districts show dozens and dozens of small sometimes odd shaped fields covering the landscape.  Move onto 20th century OS maps and the small fields are starting to be amalgamated into larger fields which I would imagine would reach its conclusion in the modern error era with very large fields set up for mechanised farming and monoculture of crops.  (I don't look at Uk maps printed after 1914 as they're too depressing)

[Annie]

Still plodding on with sorting things out with my Norfolk layout in TANE.  Presently working on the timetable scheduling and I'm hoping to improve things by no longer relying on portals to schedule trains, but instead using conventional model railway type storage loops and fiddle yard sidings.  I experimented with this with my Lickey Bank layout and the results of that have led me to try the same method out on my Norfolk layout.

The trains that run through on the joint line are still going to be scheduled by portals, but their scheduling is fairly simple and it's always worked fine.  It's still a puzzle though that all the GCR engines by Darlington Works simply stopped working one day.  Their entries are still listed in the scheduling, but for some reason they've stopped working.  Everything else by other makers in the same schedule lists is still working absolutely fine. 

 

Beyer Peacock single 'Sebastipol'

 

 

No.4 again at Moxbury.

 

 

'Sharpie' No.9 at Barrow Hills yard.

 

[Annie]

 

Well here we all are travelling onwards with hope in our hearts that 2021 will at least be a somewhat better New Year than the last one we got.  It's my hope too that the members of the parish will be able to enjoy a peaceful and happy Christmas despite the difficult times we are living in.

 

 

[Annie]

And hopefully there will be none of this........

 

[Jake The Rat]

Of all German words to me the most German is Schadenfreude, meaning the pleasure of other people's mishaps.

 

I haven't posted anything for a while; not because of inactivity, but because my Trainz-related efforts didn't lead to much presentable results.

What did I do in the last 2 weeks? I found a beautiful layout originally by Angela Halliday (angelah), updated to TS12 by stationbeem, named 'Compton Magna' & started backdating it to the 50ies & creating a session.

Then I wanted to do something Scottish & started creating a Highland Railways layout akin to this

 

...only to find out that there is another similar trackplan that I like better:

 

I'll get back to this soon...

 

Then I asked myself: if I would ever build a real model railway - where & how?

I'm afraid, N is too small for me.

... so it would have to be H0/00.

What do you call the room between the entrance door & the other rooms? 'Hallway' seems to be the word, but I'm not sure if this applies in my case, as 2.80 m is not a long way & 3.5 m² not much of a hall.

Anyway, that's the only option I can see: in the hallway, above the doors at 2.10 m height, around the walls on 30cm shelves.

I'm very much in doubt if I could build & operate it in reality (I would need something like a tennis referee chair), but I can definitely do it in Trainz.

An anti-gravity chair would be helpful.

 

 

& then I spent a few days in Canada

 

... but that's off-topic in this thread.

To me, Britain is the centre of the steam railway world, but it's not the entire world.  One day I might even do something German...

[Annie]

10 hours ago, Jake The Rat said:

What did I do in the last 2 weeks? I found a beautiful layout originally by Angela Halliday (angelah), updated to TS12 by stationbeem, named 'Compton Magna' & started backdating it to the 50ies & creating a session.

Yes Angela H. made some very nice layouts back in the day.  Very much a West Country woman her layouts were based on railways in the south of England she'd seen when she was growing up.  Unfortunately she developed a rare illness which gradually eroded her eyesight so she had to give up building layouts for Trainz.

 

10 hours ago, Jake The Rat said:

I haven't posted anything for a while; not because of inactivity, but because my Trainz-related efforts didn't lead to much presentable results.

Tell me about it.  My creative urges took a holiday for a while and I'm only just starting to feel like I want to do things in Trainz again.

 

10 hours ago, Jake The Rat said:

What do you call the room between the entrance door & the other rooms? 'Hallway' seems to be the word, but I'm not sure if this applies in my case, as 2.80 m is not a long way & 3.5 m² not much of a hall.

Anyway, that's the only option I can see: in the hallway, above the doors at 2.10 m height, around the walls on 30cm shelves.

I'm very much in doubt if I could build & operate it in reality (I would need something like a tennis referee chair), but I can definitely do it in Trainz.

And that's one of the reasons why I'd find it difficult to give up Trainz if I was suddenly cured from having narcolepsy.  After being able to build a railway model where lack of space was not a concern it would be difficult to get used to being constrained to the confines of a room or a part of a room.

[Jake The Rat]

10 hours ago, Annie said:

Yes Angela H. made some very nice layouts back in the day.  Very much a West Country woman her layouts were based on railways in the south of England she'd seen when she was growing up.  Unfortunately she developed a rare illness which gradually eroded her eyesight so she had to give up building layouts for Trainz.

Sorry to hear that. I like most of her layouts, & the only one I can remember that I didn't like was because of detail overload; it wasn't bad, it was just too good, at least for my taste.

I couldn't create anything comparable to 'Compton Magna' myself.

What I can do, is improve a few details here & there & make a halfways functional session. I guess it might be set somewhere on the Channel Coast, so I chose mainly Ex-SR locos & stock. It's far from finished though; a route of 12 baseboards should be able to accomodate at least 6 trains, maybe 8 or 10. In my current version there are 3...

A King Arthur...

 

... a Rebuilt Merchant Navy...

 

... & a Drummond 700.

 

Quote

Tell me about it.  My creative urges took a holiday for a while and I'm only just starting to feel like I want to do things in Trainz again.

 

Creativity comes & goes, & in my case it goes much easier than it comes. Sometimes I spend a few hours with Trainz & Trainz-related research & then I ask myself: what did I achieve tonight? Well... at least I learned a few things & found out a few things that don't work & I will not try again; but that doesn't provide a presentable screenshot.

I also have something, that quite often keeps me from staying awake: not an illness, but a cat. Cats sleep a lot, especially in winter, & the look of a sleeping cat can be very contagious.

 

Quote

And that's one of the reasons why I'd find it difficult to give up Trainz if I was suddenly cured from having narcolepsy.  After being able to build a railway model where lack of space was not a concern it would be difficult to get used to being constrained to the confines of a room or a part of a room.

 

Space is one point; the other two are money & craftsmanship. I admire the "real" model railroaders, but I won't try to do what they do. My layout on shelves is more like a thought experiment than a serious plan. Though... never say never...

 

[Annie]

There's an updated TS2012 version of Compton Magna by stationbeem that was uploaded to the DLS in 2017 that's a rework of Angela H's original layout.  I'm presently downloading that version into TANE to see what it looks like.

[AdamsRadial]

I got several of her layouts, including Compton, into TS2012 from the TRS2004/6 source, but the vegetation looked awful, particularly the replacement speedtrees. After a lot of work I got Compton so it was passable in TS2012/10, but after getting TC3 last year I've found all her layouts look so much better in there.

 

Something changed between TC3 and TS2009, the alpha layers suddenly bloomed with white edges, wrecking a lot of the billboard vegetation. TC3 displays them all correctly, although it does still have the alpha-sorting issue where the steam will sometimes vanish behind a tree that is actually the far side of the loco. A shame, since my favourite viewing mode is the outside camera. It's all about compromise, at least there is steam to view, unlike my 00 layout.

[Jake The Rat]

Replacing the trees & shrubs is still on my to-do-list. Things that look bad are always lower on my list than things that look wrong. The trees are ugly, but at least they are some sort of trees; the cars looked like 80ies, 90ies or even 21st century, & they were the first things that had to go.

[Annie]

Compton Magna is very much recognisable as Angela H's work due to the presence of various assets she always liked to use.  The old billboard trees still look reasonable in TANE so I won't be too worried about making them a priority for replacement. 

I ran TS2009 2.9 and then 3.1 for ages and all was well with regard to billboard trees.  It was the final 3.2 update, - which I think N3V is still giving away for free - , that brutally wrecked them all.  I have TC3 S&C, but the content manager doesn't seem to be accessible, - or am I doing something wrong?

 

 

 

[AdamsRadial]

I think TC3 S&C was a route rather than the full release, but I do know you could add improvements and extra content from their website so maybe you didn't fully install everything? I got my TC3 from Gamersgate last summer for £10, I can dig out the URL if you wanted to grab a copy.

 

I believe the TS2009 free release from N3V included the fourth patch that introduced various things locking people into the DLS, I stopped short of that patch and also the fourth TS2010 patch. Since I don't plan to upload anything to the DLS (I love using Sketchup too much), I don't see any need to have the final updates.