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

[Compound2632]

37 minutes ago, Annie said:

 

I tracked down a copy of this book for myself.  A good few years ago now when I was working in finescale 'S' a friend photocopied some pages from their own copy of this book for me and I was impressed by the drawings.  Yes it's an old book now and judging by some of the second hand prices folk are asking for it it's a book that's still very much in demand.

 

I've just fished out my copy of this which I haven't looked in for many years - because it's in landscape format, it sits spine uppermost in my bookcase, so goes un-noticed. I'd forgotten what an eclectic mix of drawings it contains - some infrastructure as well as locos and rolling stock. It gets a bit "modern" by the end, though without exceeding its title.

[Annie]

From memory I was making some LNWR wagons with the aid of the photocopied pages, so I've never actually seen the entire book.  I was getting bored with scratching around looking for information so I thought it was high time I started to put together a little research library for myself.

[Annie]

Blatting about on an 'oldie but goodie' GWR layout 'Tristyn in Winter'.

Over the past couple of days I've been working on transfering a large French metre layout over to TS2019.  I knew it was going to be horrible and it was horrible with a very large number of asset files needing to be fixed after the move.  Some things like most of the trackwork was totally incompatible with TS2019 so that took a lot of work to get a placeholder substitute accepted until I could fix it all properly in the editor/surveyor side of the Railway simulator.

Hence the episode of running one of my GWR Atlantics about in the snow to blow all the config file editing out of my head.  We had our first warm day here today as Winter reluctantly let go of the weather controls and I didn't like it.  I don't like our Summer in the slightest since it makes all my symptoms worse.

 

 

 

[Annie]

'Theocritus' can now see where it's going since it has new spectacles.  The weatherboard isn't finished yet and John from the creator group I belong to still has some work to do on it, but a trial fit of the WIP weatherboard this morning certainly shows that he's on the right track (pun possibly intended).

 

[Annie]

And an update.......

 

[Marly51]

Annie - you should compile your images as an e-book! Great research and interpretations!
 

Marlyn

[runs as required]

On 08/10/2019 at 10:43, Compound2632 said:

 

The arrangements for the Waterford, Limerick and Western trains at Limerick Junction were even more convoluted than those for the main line ...

I once fell head over heels in love with a girl during a week-end student trip to Dublin when I discovered she came from Limerick (via the that extraordinary junction)

dh

 

PS

I really love those wintry scenes, hadn't realised it is possible to escape with snow scenes from that sunless world my computer students used to call "cadlight" 

Edited October 10, 2019 by runs as required

[RedGemAlchemist]

On 04/10/2019 at 14:28, Regularity said:

Well, if she puts it at the front of the train, it won't be a fourgon conclusion...

 

That saddle tank is nice to say the least, Annie. Is there any precedent for a SG version? 

Edited October 10, 2019 by RedGemAlchemist

[Annie]

4 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

 

 

That saddle tank is nice to say the least, Annie. Is there any precedent for a SG version? 

These Gooch Broad Gauge saddle tanks were very much made and designed for the 7ft ¼in gauge so they wouldn't translate over to narrow standard gauge without a massive amount of hacking about Red. 

These were big engines  and attempting to reduce them in their circumstances would take a good deal away from their character and appearance.

 

   

[Annie]

And today's Broad Gauge inspiration picture is........... The South Devon Railway's 4-4-0ST 'Castor' circa 1875 at Launceston.

 

Edited October 10, 2019 by Annie
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[Annie]

And the final version of the weatherboard.  For such a simple object getting the mesh shaped more or less correctly was a bit of a struggle, but I'm happy with this version John from the creator group has just sent me.

 

[Annie]

Weatherboards for all.

 

Theocritus.

 

Sappho.  And yes I know the safety valve arm is through the spectacle, but I think the valve arm was shifted over a bit later on in these engine's lives so I'm sort of stuck with it how it is since I can't change it.  Horace didn't get a weatherboard because I found a previously unfound photo of Horace that shows the engine wearing a completely different weatherboard so I'm thinking about it.

 

Arete.

 

Arke.

 

 

[Annie]

 

The tunnel on the Newham Branch that never was.

It will, - when the trackwork is all laid, - lead to a set of storage sidings.  The track in the foreground leads to a portal track at the baseboard edge before the drop into the Terrible Nothing.

In terms of sidings and the ability to store rolling stock the layout is lacking in this department so that's why I decided to install a fiddle yard board in the eastern corner of the layout where a part of the modern Confusion of Truro had been before.

After a break away from the layout it was nice to be working on it again.  The Newham branch trackwork is now ballasted and all the small scenery fixes that need to be done along this section have been completed.  The Newham branch was of course never laid to the Broad Gauge, but since all attempts by Steve Flanders and his team to create properly working mixed gauge track have ended in failure the only option is for the Newham branch to be laid to the Broad Gauge if it's going to be a functional part of the layout.

[Annie]

Turks Castle is my favourite old TS2004 Broad Gauge layout.  It was made with what was available at the time so it has more than a few historical errors with regard to buildings & etc, but I just like it.  Based on the Minehead branch it's nicely put together and the landscape is modelled very well.  As you've already seen I took the layout over to TS2019 and did all the odd fiddly bits with updating trees & etc, and then I converted it to standard gauge to give my mid-19th century models somewhere to play.  Well tonight I cloned the layout and converted it back to the Broad Gauge.

There's been a few upgrades with Broad Gauge track including the latest procedural track version that has the ability to automatically set point frogs and check rails in place; - that part is pretty neat and it does look good, but the sleeper spacing was all over the place and the attached ballast just looked terrible.  So I tried the updated versions of the ordinary Broad Gauge track I normally use and I didn't like them either.  Which means Turks Castle ended up getting the same version of the trackwork that it started out with.  I may go back and have another look at this later, but for now the line is open and trains can be run.

My new B&ER saddle tank once it arrives from Darlington Works will need somewhere to run and since it's being made to TS2019 specs my TS2019 updated version of Turks Castle seemed to be the best place for it.  I might do a more correct version of Turks Castle later which will involve making period correct railway buildings among other things, but for now it will do.

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

Broad Gauge inspiration picture.

 

[Annie]

Back working on the Cornwall Railway again.  

This is the WIP forced perspective view blocker that separates Truro from the storage yard.  From a distance details of individual buildings aren't really apparent and they are basic building like shapes with roof tops and chimney pots at different heights and it looks like a wider section of the city than it really is.

I tried some backscenes, but apart from not really being suitable for a 19th century city they just looked like backscenes and weren't very convincing.  So that's when I got the idea for trying out a forced perspective view blocker.

 

 

And this is where the storage sidings will be.  Easily a much bigger space than I really need, but if I wanted to I could dress it up a bit with a few warehouses and the like.  

 

 

The storage yard MPD and turntable.  I could have just done a couple of engine sidings and bare interactive coal and water tracks, but where's the fun in that. 

 

 

The tale of making faux silk purses from sow's ears might be done at last.  The underframes and brake gear on both the 4 and 5 plank wagons are back with being black (actually a really dark grey).  'Painting' these parts red brought to light a problem with the axleboxes on one side of the wagons being out of position so it was easiest to just paint them black again so the fault is harder to see.

John from the creator group is working on a wagon underframe and some other basic parts for me so I will eventually be able to make my own Broad Gauge wagon models.

 

 

I painted the small 4 wheel brake vans red.  And I also found Dave.  Dave was languishing lost and unloved in a file folder in the brake van files so I fitted him into position inside the brake van's verandah.  It's very plain that he was made especially for the brake van which I found a bit surprising since normally Paul of Paulz Trainz doesn't bother which such things.  In fact the whole brake van model has been nicely put together and it's plain Paul spent a while on it.  I should make some texture lettering masks for it and letter it BREAK VAN.

Unfortunately it's totally freelance and as far as I'm aware there never was a brake van like it on the Broad Gauge.  So if anyone asks me about them I'm going to say they came from the failed Falmouth-Sicily Isles tunnel project along with the E.B. Wilson well tanks.

 

 

 

[Annie]

Ran some trains this morning to get the feel of the layout again and to see what might need doing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NeilHB]

Lovely photos Annie. I do like the well tank, a charming little loco. 

[Annie]

Thanks Neil.  The E.B.Wilson well tanks are a firm favourite of mine.  They are of course a plausible historical 'what-if' since such engines could have been very easily built by E.B.Wilson for the Broad Gauge, but as far as I know they didn't.

 

According to GWR.org.uk's webpage on wagon livery the livery changed from brown to red sometime in the 1860s, but then also quotes an 1896 article that says red was used 'from the earliest days of the railway'.  Nobody is sure as to what shade of red it was either.  Since my layout is supposed to be set circa the 1880s I decided that all the early brown wagons I have needed to be painted red.  As to whether any of them would have still been in use in the 1880s is another matter entirely, but if I start getting too picky I'll end up with no goods rolling stock at all.

 

 

I have now joined the Broad Gauge Society so the arcane wisdom of the ancients will soon be mine to behold; - and that should help things along.  I have been given some BGS data sheets for some of the early wagons I have, but while they contain a good deal of information they say nothing about withdrawal dates.

[DonB]

Annie, I'm sure that you will have seen Mikkel's notes on early GWR wagon colours. There does seem considerable doubt regarding the shade of red, and when it was phased out.

 

On the subject of colours, in your post headed "Ran some trains this morning to get the feel of the layout again and to see what might need doing." ..(I do miss the old post numbers !). 5th Picture,  There is a rear view of a black and white cow, A Friesian  which breed were not introduced into the UK until mid-war years and much more widely  Post WW2.

I'm not sure which breeds were common in Devon and Cornwall in the Victorian era, but they would almost certainly have been brown. How's that for a bit of nit-picking?.

[Annie]

The cows are on the To-Do list Don.  Even for the period the original layout was set in the 1930s those cows would have been wrong.  Fortunately I don't have to change them all one by one since there must be a couple of hundred on the layout.  A couple of minutes work with the replace tool in the editing window and I'll have some more plausible cows in the fields.

 

At least with the wagon livery in the 1880's I know I'm on safe ground with red.  Here in New Zealand before our railways were messed up by 'modernisation' all our goods wagons were red and it would have only taken a minute or two's observation in any goods yard to see that red was a many splendored thing with all manner of shades of red to be seen depending on how long ago a wagon might have been last painted.  So on that basis I don't get too hung up about what the official shade of red was that the GWR actually used.

[Annie]

Another E.B.Wilson well tank has turned up at Truro.  With them being so useful for trip working and shunting I decided to sort out another one.  'Metis' was the mother of Athena and was the Titaness of wisdom and good counsel so I thought that would be a good name for the new engine.

As with my standard gauge well tanks my Broad Gauge ones are being gradually fettled so they run better.  The 'little engine that could' engine spec they came with has been replaced with a much better one that gives very good low speed control for shunting as well as making these engine's haulage capabilities much more plausible.

 

[Annie]

Further to fettling the E.B.Wilson well tanks I discovered that they were carrying almost seven times the amount of water that they were supposed to and just over twice as much coal.  A lazy way of taming an over exuberant engine spec back in the day was to increase the amount of water a digital locomotive was carrying.  Only problem with that is when a properly made engine spec is installed a too sluggish engine is the usual result.  The first clue I got was when I noticed that the well tanks never seemed to run out of water.  Even when they did a goods run to Penryn with all the steep gradients along the way the level in their tanks barely dropped.

Now that I have them sorted out in that regard I'll be very interested to see how they get on.

 

I can only work on the town at Truro for so long before I have to go away and do something else.  It's like some kind of endless curse trying to sort it out.  Now that I've managed to clear away a good chunk of the modern state of confusion that came with the original layout and can see the ground I have no idea what the original layout builder was thinking or even how he managed to build anything because the ground is all humps and hollows.  There are meant to be a few changes of level on the town site and I have no problem with that, but certainly not the way it is at present.

 

So anyway I decided to do some research about Chacewater station.  This is the earliest photo I've been able to find so far.  Later photos show that the wooden station building acquired a small awning and the stone built platform building on the other side acquired two larger awnings and became an island platform and then an unknown time after that the wooden signal box was replaced with a larger brick or masonry signal box further along the platform.  Later on the wooden station building was replaced by some 1930s brick abomination, but nobody of a pre-grouping persuasion cares about that.

I have an undated 'borrowed' ebay picture of the station with the wooden signal box still evident , no awnings and the track layout matches that of the 1906 OS map.  A GWR steam railcar and trailer is standing in the goods yard and the 'Cornishman' is running through the station at 60mph according to the inscription at the bottom of the picture.  It's actually a nice picture and I'm almost tempted to buy it.

 

 

Unfortunately the 1878 survey 25inch to the mile OS map isn't on the NLS site, but the 6inch to the mile map is and that was enough to show me what the track layout was like.

 

1878.

 

1906

 

Going by the maps it's highly likely that the only station building at the time period of my layout was the timber building.  It also looks like there was a narrow platform on the other side of the loop, but without a station building or shelter on that side.  There also seems to have been a small goods shed which is not there anymore on the 1906 map.

More Brunel timber viaducts are going to be needed as well once I make a proper start on this section.  It's a bit tricky getting the viaducts set in place properly, but I do enjoy doing it.

[Annie]

Brunel viaducts between Chacewater and Truro:  Chacewater and Blackwater.  Newbridge is a very ordinary stone viaduct across a stream.  Chacewater seems to cross a fairly deep valley, though it's not all that long, - possibly only six piers, 99 yards long.  No pictures of the Brunel viaduct seem to exist and the 1906 OS map shows it gone and replaced by the masonry viaduct that's still there today.

Blackwater is said to have been 132 yards long, but it doesn't look like it on the OS map.  The Wikipedia article notes that some of the viaduct lengths it quotes are uncertain.

Wikipedia confuses the Cornwall Railway's Penwithers viaduct as being the West Cornwall's property when it's the bridge near Newbridge that belongs to the WCR.  I'm not bothered about that one since the bridge I have there now is an adequate representation.  The WCR's Brunel viaducts were replaced in the mid 1880s, but would still be in place in my layout's time period.

 

I've just purchased a copy of 'Brunel's Timber Bridges and Viaducts' by Brian Lewis since it looks like I might be getting serious about building Broad Gauge layouts.  I was hoping to commision a South Devon Railway 4-4-0ST after the B&ER one is done, but our heat pump/heat exchanger thingy has broken down and it will need to be fixed since it will be needed come Summer to stop the house turning into a hot box.  Real life is no fun.  

[Annie]

An explore along the WCR part of the layout.  I've put a pause on pushing the 1880 Cornwall Railway on further than Ponsanooth since I really need to get the WCR side of the layout up to something like the same state with its scenery and trackwork before I start back on working on the line to Falmouth again.

 

The stone bridge across the stream near Newbridge.  All is reasonably Ok here apart from a crazy invisible sound file module that sounds like a raging torrent.  Once I find where it is it will be deleted with extreme prejudice.

From Penwithers Junction to here most of the line has been knocked into shape and all the mad vegetation beside the tracks severely cut back and suppressed.  Not far from here though the track ballasting comes to an end and after that it's the untamed wilderness all the way to Chacewater.

 

Blackwater.  The masonry viaduct is almost completely hidden by all the trees and a major clearance will be happening here before I even begin to think about installing a Brunel viaduct across this valley.

 

Chasewater.  Not quite as bad as Blackwater, but there's some landscape reshaping needing to be done before I can install a Brunel viaduct since the valley is far too shallow.

 

Edit:  If you look at this picture of Chacewater station again you can plainly see what the landscape should look like.  Chasewater viaduct is out of sight in the picture, but something the landscape beside the WCR line should not be is covered in trees!

Edited October 15, 2019 by Annie
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