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

[Annie]

1 hour ago, AdamsRadial said:

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.

My copy came from Gamersgate as well so possibly I didn't add in the updated content after I installed it.  I'll have a check and see.

 

1 hour ago, AdamsRadial said:

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.

I never liked the final patched version of TS2009 so I kept my unpatched version archived safely away.  It runs fine on my Dell notebook, to my great surprise, -though I haven't given it a run for a good while now.

[Jake The Rat]

The free version of TS2009 started it for me, & I can't say anything about earlier versions. I think it was in summer 2017, when I was browsing through a collection of free computer games (mostly older versions of commercial games), not looking for anything special. Railway? Hmm... why not...

[Annie]

9 hours ago, AdamsRadial said:

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.

For some reason or another I had the Steam version of TC3 installed on my computer and not the Auran version that I'd purchased from Gamersgate.  The Steam version has no content manager access which is why I couldn't do anything with it except run the sessions.

[MikeOxon]

As we sit in the mid-winter gloom here, it's hard to think of a midsummer Christmas!  I notice, Annie, that your thread seems to be one of the few running throughout the holiday.  I wonder if anyone ever thought of reversing the names of the months at the equator, so that you could have December 25th in mid-winter too?  It would seem less of a problem than time zones cause, when it's all to easy to phone someone at unsocial hours

 

Mike

[Annie]

58 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

I notice, Annie, that your thread seems to be one of the few running throughout the holiday.

 

I would guess that other forum member's threads have shut down due to all manner of family responsibilities at this time of year Mike.  Since there's just me and my daughter and we are of the utter simplicity school of thought when it comes to Christmas we don't go in for any rushing about or spending money we don't really have to demonstrate how much we love/like others to whom we are related.

My time is my own so if I'm working on a project and I'm doing something that I think might be of interest I'll post about it whatever the state of affairs might be in the outside world.

 

58 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

As we sit in the mid-winter gloom here, it's hard to think of a midsummer Christmas!

The weather here has been a bit on the cool side as well as being grey and damp, - which is a state of affairs I like.  Later on in January and February the weather here gets hotter which I don't like at all.  It is a bit odd for me to be reading posts from northern hemisphere folk who are talking about white Christmases, but then I'm of a generation that had many relatives with an attachment to the 'Old Country' and grew up during the last fading shadows of the Empire.  All of which meant that most of our Christmas traditions were direct imports from Britain and Christmas cards always had pictures of snowy landscapes and robins perched on leafless twigs.

 

58 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

I wonder if anyone ever thought of reversing the names of the months at the equator, so that you could have December 25th in mid-winter too? 

That might cause a few problems Mike, but then if everybody stayed home and didn't go for holidays to other countries to bother and annoy the locals it might work.

 

58 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

It would seem less of a problem than time zones cause, when it's all to easy to phone someone at unsocial hours

With my random sleep patterns and usual state of possessing a disrupted sense of time it doesn't matter to me what time it might officially considered to be.  If I'm awake I do things, - if I'm asleep I don't; - or at least not 'here' in the Real World (TM) I don't.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

I wonder if anyone ever thought of reversing the names of the months at the equator, so that you could have December 25th in mid-winter too? 

 

Rebmeced works but I think Yluj would be found too tricky for most. We used to play that game with the reflections in the carriage windows coming home from London of a late evening - Notgniddap works well but self-censorship set in by the time we got to Didcot Parkway. Then we had children so no more West End nights!

 

Just looking in during the lull between the Boxing Day walk and starting to think about dinner, if you're wondering.

[MikeOxon]

Lovers of garbled station names should look up the London Underground Anagram Map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_anagram_map  which humourless London Transport lawyers had taken down, as infringement of copyright!  A Google search will, however, still find various versions.

[Annie]

We've got merry Christmas thunderstorms here this afternoon.

 

 

[Jake The Rat]

+5°C, windy, rainshowers... typical north German winter weather...

Speaking of anagrams... one of my many plans is a small layout with 2 stations, each with an Inglenook yard. One would be named 'Nicklegoon' (had to add a mute 'c' here), the other 'Glenkoonie' (had to add a mute 'e'). 

I also  found a German version: 'Kleinoog' or 'Kleinenoog' (in one case 1 'n' ist dropped, in the other 1 'e' added), meaning 'small island'. Some of the Frisian Islands end on 'oog', for instance Langeoog & Spiekeroog.

[Annie]

A test run in TC3 (Trainz Classic 3).  I've had TC3 for ages, but never did much with it for some unknown reason.  AdamsRadial had mentioned in a previous post that there were lighting differences between TC3 and the later versions TS2009 and TS2010, - and while chatting with some members of the creator group I belong to they told me much the same.

If I may quote one of the members.  'I believe N3V claimed to have improved texture handling after TC3. From the tests I conducted at the time it looked as though they upped the sharpening. Any chance of subtle shading resulted in cyan and magenta artifacts.'

 

While TC3 is certainly more 'primitive' (if I may use such a word) than the current crop of 64 bit Trainz simulators it manages to hold its own with running smoothly and looking reasonably nice for its age.  I think with a bit of care and attention to detailing any layout built in TC3 would look perfectly fine.

 

Edited December 27, 2020 by Annie
fumble brain

[AdamsRadial]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

I think with a bit of care and attention to detailing any layout built in TC3 would look perfectly fine.

The main route-building difference between TC3 and the TS2009-onwards is the introduction of 5-metre resolution for the terrain, which I first thought would be the Bees-Knees for my intended route, but in fact it makes almost no visible difference in the areas where I was anticipating better terrain. The biggest problem still remains: when you try to raise or lower the terrain to the track to form embankments and cuttings, the trackbed plateau is unrealistically wide. I need a cutting where the weeds on the sides would almost brush against the passing stock, but no way of doing it using the smooth-spline. Looking at TC3 and Hawes Junction I think the route-builders ignored the smooth-spline method and tweaked individual terrain points to get the best results they could.

[Annie]

I haven't tried building anything yet with TC3, but I am presently installing one of my favourite routes by Angelah to see what it looks like.  I'm having to do a lot of hunting for older dependencies at present since a good many version 1.3 - 2.4 assets ended up as Built-in assets in TS2009 and TS2010 which makes them useless for TC3 build 2.8

[AdamsRadial]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

I'm having to do a lot of hunting for older dependencies

I got most of mine from TRS2004/2006. TRS2006 was the hardest since it wouldn't let you save the built-ins to CDP. The dirty trick was open them for edit and copy the resulting folder content across then use import content. You need at minimum PevSoft's Image converter, and AssetX is also useful for some of the scenery splines.

 

I also converted some TS2009 assets back, the biggest problems I encountered were extra parameters in the texture files specifying things TC3 doesn't have. The trick here was again open for edit, copy the folder, edit the config to reduce the build number, and then mess around with the texture file until it stops complaining.

 

It's worth doing, routes like Hayling Island and Kent and East Sussex alone are worth the effort, then things like Over the Hills need a lot less work to get working as you've already got in most of the TafWeb and Jankwicz (?)  assets she used.

 

Rolling stock is much harder, the Isle of Wight O2 and coaches come straight in, but for many other items I ended up chopping around bogies and engine and config files from the TC3 content. Decapod's O1 and SECR coach stock work well, particularly on Kent and east Sussex, and I got a Terrier running for Hayling by using a TS2009 body on a bogie from a TRS2004 Terrier (or it might have been the Littleton tank).

 

A much greater challenge is the UKSomewhere route by DarkDan, a large amount of it doesn't come from the DLS, it's scattered around mostly european Trainz sites, but for the look and feel of the english landscape it is superb.

 

Really, this all belongs in the kit-bashing and RTR-modding section @)

[Annie]

3 minutes ago, AdamsRadial said:

Really, this all belongs in the kit-bashing and RTR-modding section @)

Well since it's digital kitbashing I think it's fine to keep it here Adam.  A lot of my own personal models are severely kitbashed from things that weren't really intended to fit together.

 

I use Kuid Finder for searching for mysterious missing assets.  https://www.trainzkuidindex.com/  It's a subscription website, but for its sheer usefulness the subscription is an absolute bargain.

A good many old TS2004 and TS2006 and earlier assets that are no longer on the DLS were saved and archived by Eastern European Trainz folk and are available to find with a little searching.  I am now very close to having 'A Kentish Winter' installed with all dependencies for the very first time since I first discovered this route by Angelah and I'm very much looking forward to running it in TC3.

'Hayling Island' would be the next on my list and after that I'll have a go at loading in the K&ESR Summer route.  Others of Angelah's routes will follow.

[Annie]

Well that was a bit unfortunate.  TC3 doesn't know how to do Winter.  

 

None of the Winter trees or textures rendered properly and it was just plain awful  

[AdamsRadial]

Maybe starting with the letter A was an unfortunate choice, perhaps choosing one of her routes from the opposite end of the alphabet won't be so unfortunate?

 

"I'll get me coat..."

Edited December 27, 2020 by AdamsRadial

[Annie]

3 hours ago, AdamsRadial said:

Maybe starting with the letter A was an unfortunate choice, perhaps choosing one of her routes from the opposite end of the alphabet won't be so unfortunate?

 

"I'll get me coat..."

It's a favourite route which is why I decided to try it first.  Strange as it might seem I have it in loaded into TS2019 SP1 and it's really good there.

 

Edited December 28, 2020 by Annie
added a picture

[AdamsRadial]

Definitely seasonal @)

[Annie]

Too sleepy to do anything the past couple of days, but this afternoon I did manage to do some running about on my Norfolk layout in TANE.

 

Moxbury.

 

 

 

Pollitt 4-4-0 at Mirely St. Marys.

 

 

Sharpie No. 10 leaving Brenton Wood and heading east.

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by Annie
fumble brain

[Annie]

More testing in TANE.  One of the E&GR's Hicks 0-6-0's on the regular coal delivery working to the gasworks at Moxbury.  It has just left the semi hidden loop sidings representing the E&GR on this smaller test version of my Norfolk layout.  The E&GR section still exists carefully archived away and I'm considering setting it up as a stand alone layout in which form I think it would be reasonably successful.

 

[Annie]

A '2020' we can like.  '850' class No.2020 at Plymouth in 1921. (Photo courtesy of the GW Society)

I like the '850' class saddle tanks and I chose them over all other GWR engines for Trainz when I'm setting up one of my usual country railways layouts.

 

[AdamsRadial]

To my mind the 850 were the most elegant saddle tanks of them all, and it is sad to think they all became pannier tanks just because of an obsession with having standard boilers and belpaire fireboxes. Swindon has a lot to answer for...

 

I have a 517 I like to trundle around routes when I am exploring them, it's nice and simple and doesn't look out of place in the out-of-the-way lines I like to visit. There's also an 0330 Beattie Saddle tank but it isn't textured as such, just coloured black in the time-honoured TRS2004 way.

 

I had to laugh at the crewman in his white overalls, it reminded me of my first career when I was chief engineer on Deep-sea Trawlers. I turned up in a white boiler suit and the Skipper guffawed and said "What do you think this is, a diesel-electric?" I stuck to my guns and always wore white, but I wouldn't have got any work in the Daz adverts.

 

Edited January 1, 2021 by AdamsRadial

[Annie]

1 hour ago, AdamsRadial said:

I had to laugh at the crewman in his white overalls, i

White overalls seemed to have been very much a pre-grouping era thing on most of the old railways.  I suppose the idea was it made footplate crew more visible while working around their engine to help prevent accidents.  In most of the old photos I've seen though 'white' with regard to overalls was a distant concept.  By comparison the driver of No.2020's overalls are positively pristine. 

[Annie]

I'm still messing around with my Norfolk layout.  The object this time is to extract the part of the layout that is covered by the Hopewood Tramway which is basically the landscape between Brenton Wood and Bluebell Wood/Bluebell Magna.  After a few false starts where I cut the section of layout off too short I did finally end up with something workable.

This version is very portal dependent since any attempt to tie all the tracks at each end of the layout into loop sidings would be a nightmare.  On the other hand it doesn't matter that much since traffic on the joint line and the BH&FER's now much truncated trackwork would only be background movement while I operate the Hopewood Tramway.

 

A view over Bluebell Wood showing the large GER-GCR Joint station and tucked behind it is the Hopewood Tramway's small station.  Just visible in the distance is Bluebell Wharf and the premises of the East Anglia Hygienic Fish Oil Co.  

 

[Annie]

The goods yard at Bluebell Magna.  The goods yards at Bluebell Magna and Elgar Junction are still included in this particular Hopewood Tramway project since it's a bit difficult to do trip working if there's nowhere to trip work to.  After much frowning and hand wringing I decided that the Barrow Hills good yard couldn't be included, but when I decided that the Elgar Junction goods yard had to go as well I quickly realised that I'd made a silly mistake and had to put it back.