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

[Schooner]

Hear him! Hear him!

[Annie]

Next will be a Broad Gauge covered van, a BG iron tilt wagon and a BG 6 plank coal wagon.  After the 6 planker there will be 4 and 3 plank wagons which will be really straight forward for Cameron to do since they all share many of the same components.

Since I now have the complete set of BGS rolling stock data sheets I hopefully won't be scrambling around looking for information like I was with my previous wagon commission.

 

13 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Annies Wonderful Wagons! Even better than Peco Wonderful Wagons!

 

 

 

Ha ha, I like that.  Really made me smile.  

[Annie]

In other news I became ever so slightly distracted by the Sixteen Mills website and in particular their 10mm scale page.  http://www.sixteenmills.co.uk/

Very tempting since I'm sure I could safely build those kits without doing any harm to myself should I fall asleep in the middle of it.  And the other thing is a 10mm scale wagon is more likely to survive narcoleptic mishandling where a model from the smaller gauges might not.

 

[NeilHB]

58 minutes ago, Annie said:

In other news I became ever so slightly distracted by the Sixteen Mills website and in particular their 10mm scale page.  http://www.sixteenmills.co.uk/

Very tempting since I'm sure I could safely build those kits without doing any harm to myself should I fall asleep in the middle of it.  And the other thing is a 10mm scale wagon is more likely to survive narcoleptic mishandling where a model from the smaller gauges might not.

 

They are lovely kits Annie - I built one in 7mm scale and it went together very easily with minimal fuss:

 

[Annie]

7mm is a possibility too Neil since I still have a sizeable amount of '0' gauge bits and bobs.  I miss making physical models due to issues around safely working with tools, but these kits look like they would be a good way to get past the issues around having to cut things out with edged tools.

[Northroader]

[Annie]

This is my sole surviving electric 3 rail '0' gauge engine.  I made it from all manner of odd down on their luck Hornby clockwork engine bits I had in the scrapbox along with some Carrette repro buffers, Leeds couplings and an Adams chimney and dome.  It's powered by a huge 12 volt can motor that just fits in the boiler and drives through a train of large plastic robotics gears that again just manage to fit inside the boiler.  When I sold most of my collection due to life happening nobody wanted to buy it which is their loss because it runs very well and at the last Hornby Collectors meeting I attended it hauled a train of 20 tinplate open wagons plus a brake van much to everyone's surprise.  Giving it some nice wooden kitbuilt wagons to bunt around would no doubt make it very happy.

 

[Annie]

And it's back to the digital trainsets.................

 

I'm presently working on the Minehead branch which originally was a Broad Gauge layout named 'Turks Castle' from TS2004 days.  I've always liked this layout, but the big problem with it was that before it was Turks Castle it was a BR era layout and all that was done was to take it back in time was to convert the track to Broad Gauge and replace people, vehicles and some buildings to suit the 1890s.

 

Turks Castle's strongest quality has always been the well modelled landscape which has been its main appeal for me, but increasingly it's been the errors with the station layouts that have been annoying me.

 

So hopefully without messing up the essential character of the layout I'm going to rebuild the stations and their surroundings to something closer to how they should be.  Minehead is where I'm starting this process from.  No pictures as yet because it's still at that stage of rebuilding where it looks more Beeching era than the late 1880s.

 

[Annie]

I'm doing a basic rebuild on Minehead to fix the track layout and remove any buildings that aren't right for the era.  The town near the station was a plonk down building horror show so I've given it a tidy up using the 1889 OS map as a guide.  A quick check of some old photos told me that I didn't have any buildings that were completely right for the town, but since it's mostly in the background it's not so critical.

The station building is from Helston and will do for now.  I've been given some station building meshes to play with so I'll see if I can do something better. 

The goods shed is from the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway and isn't correct for the location, but I do have a drawing for the goods shed so perhaps I might be able to prevail upon a 3D modeller to make one for me.

 

I cheated and used a two road engine shed, firstly because I didn't have a suitable single road shed, and secondly because I tend to have more engines than I should on the branch.

 

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that Minehead had a disc and bar signal as the bay starter,  The rest are slotted post signals.

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

On 05/09/2020 at 16:55, Annie said:

This is my sole surviving electric 3 rail '0' gauge engine.  I made it from all manner of odd down on their luck Hornby clockwork engine bits I had in the scrapbox along with some Carrette repro buffers, Leeds couplings and an Adams chimney and dome.  It's powered by a huge 12 volt can motor that just fits in the boiler and drives through a train of large plastic robotics gears that again just manage to fit inside the boiler.  When I sold most of my collection due to life happening nobody wanted to buy it which is their loss because it runs very well and at the last Hornby Collectors meeting I attended it hauled a train of 20 tinplate open wagons plus a brake van much to everyone's surprise.  Giving it some nice wooden kitbuilt wagons to bunt around would no doubt make it very happy.

 

 

Well, you know I've often wished I had an excuse to tackle this ....

 

[Annie]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Well, you know I've often wished I had an excuse to tackle this ....

 

And I have not forgotten that wonderful station either James.

I have my little 0-4-2T and a very old LSWR coach made from an ancient pre-war wooden kit as well as a variety of wooden goods wagons of a similar vintage.  Add in the large assortment of 3 rail track I happen to own and I have the makings of a very nice little BLT.  The only barrier is the incredible amount of junk and rubbish in my bedroom which seems to have grown up like stalagmites do little by little over time ever since I developed narcolepsy.

[MikeOxon]

On 05/09/2020 at 08:25, Annie said:

7mm is a possibility too Neil since I still have a sizeable amount of '0' gauge bits and bobs.  I miss making physical models due to issues around safely working with tools, but these kits look like they would be a good way to get past the issues around having to cut things out with edged tools.

There's always 3D printing, Annie.  You may even be able to convert some of your simulator mesh models into real-life objects.

[Annie]

11 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

There's always 3D printing, Annie.  You may even be able to convert some of your simulator mesh models into real-life objects.

It's a different kind of 3D modelling Mike so files for digital models won't work for 3D printing.  I thought the same thing until members of the creator group I belong to explained it to me.

[Edwardian]

20 hours ago, Annie said:

And I have not forgotten that wonderful station either James.

I have my little 0-4-2T and a very old LSWR coach made from an ancient pre-war wooden kit as well as a variety of wooden goods wagons of a similar vintage.  Add in the large assortment of 3 rail track I happen to own and I have the makings of a very nice little BLT.  The only barrier is the incredible amount of junk and rubbish in my bedroom which seems to have grown up like stalagmites do little by little over time ever since I developed narcolepsy.

 

I was going to build this and foist it upon you, then you were obliged to give up plans for any physical railway.  if you do manage to free up a shelf, I'll gladly have a go.

 

You know cardboard building construction is my comfort zone - think of it as providing me with occupational therapy - and once I've finished the Great gate of Minas Tirith in 1/56th scale, I'll need something to do! 

[Annie]

39 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

- and once I've finished the Great gate of Minas Tirith in 1/56th scale, I'll need something to do! 

Gosh!  I am in aware James.  That would be an outstanding cardboard construction project to take on.

Cardboard is my favourite medium too and I used to love working in card.  And I know just what you mean about it being good therapy.  I was very much in a world of my own when I was making models.

 

A nettle of irritation is starting to niggle at me over the Great Mess in my room so I shall do my best to spend an hour each day working on removing it.  I was doing this during our Autumn and I made some positive inroads into the Great Mess until I started  having increased sleepy episodes.

Simply calling up a renter of rubbish skips would be a fast solution, - only there is treasure interlaced between the rubbish so I have to carefully sort everything to make sure I'm not throwing anything essential or of value to the tinplate BLT project away.

[Annie]

SER Crampton inexplicably at Minehead.  The station building is one a member of the creator group made for me by cutting a larger GWR station model in half.  I will be having a go at reskinning it into something a bit closer to the station at Minehead.

 

 

SER Crampton at Dunster.  I've started work on Dunster by changing the track layout to the 1899 one as well as changing the goods shed and station building. There's other things still to do before it's finished, but I'm happy with progress.  I'm going to work my way along the branch rebuilding the stations one by one until it's all a bit closer to being representative of the branch in the 19th century.

 

 

Even more inexplicably a Manning Wardle built Crampton at Dunster.  I shouldn't really run it on the branch since it's hopeless on hills and needs a banker to get up them, but it's pretty thing and I like to watch the outside Stephensons valve gear when the engine is in motion.

 

[Jake The Rat]

Problems with 'Rhye on Sea', or likely with my whole Trainz12 database.

It all started with a CTD, after which I wasn't able to restart the program. So I did a database repair, first quick, then extended. Now I could start Trainz again, but 'Rhye on Sea' always froze, sometimes in surveyor mode, sometimes in driver mode, sometimes after a few seconds, sometimes after half an hour. The older the version, the longer it lasted, but nothing seemed to be really stable.

So I tried a few other routes; some worked, some didn't.

Last night I made backups of most of my Trainz content (lots of CDP files, all in all 8 GB) & I'm planning to set up a new clean database or even uninstall & reinstall the game tomorrow night; unless someone comes up with an advice, what I could try, before I take this ultimate measure. (& yes, I searched the Trainz forum, but found no easy solution. What I did find is Annie's advice, to use 'Fraggler' to defragment harddisks; a very useful program, but it didn't solve my problem.)

[NeilHB]

The Manning Wardle Crampton is a thing of beauty Annie - please can we have some more photos?  

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Jake The Rat said:

Problems with 'Rhye on Sea', or likely with my whole Trainz12 database.

It all started with a CTD, after which I wasn't able to restart the program. So I did a database repair, first quick, then extended. Now I could start Trainz again, but 'Rhye on Sea' always froze, sometimes in surveyor mode, sometimes in driver mode, sometimes after a few seconds, sometimes after half an hour. The older the version, the longer it lasted, but nothing seemed to be really stable.

So I tried a few other routes; some worked, some didn't.

Last night I made backups of most of my Trainz content (lots of CDP files, all in all 8 GB) & I'm planning to set up a new clean database or even uninstall & reinstall the game tomorrow night; unless someone comes up with an advice, what I could try, before I take this ultimate measure. (& yes, I searched the Trainz forum, but found no easy solution. What I did find is Annie's advice, to use 'Fraggler' to defragment harddisks; a very useful program, but it didn't solve my problem.)

Have you tried running Windows Disc Check  Jake?  I had a crash happen here when the power went off suddenly when TS2012 was running and TS2012 wouldn't start afterwards.  After trying a few things it was disc check that fixed it.

 

2 hours ago, NeilHB said:

The Manning Wardle Crampton is a thing of beauty Annie - please can we have some more photos?  

That can most certainly be arranged Neil.

 

Further work has been done on the Minehead branch with now three stations completed to the standard I want for this layout.

 

Minehead.

 

 

Dunster.

 

 

Blue Anchor.

 

 

My mucky SER Crampton snapped while doing test runs.

 

 

[MikeOxon]

18 hours ago, Annie said:

... Even more inexplicably a Manning Wardle built Crampton at Dunster.  I shouldn't really run it on the branch since it's hopeless on hills and needs a banker to get up them, but it's pretty thing and I like to watch the outside Stephensons valve gear when the engine is in motion.

 

 

Any chance of some video so that we can share your pleasure?

 

Mike

[Annie]

I think I can do that Mike.  

[Annie]

Reskinned station at Blue Anchor.  Minehead and Dunster will be next.

 

[Annie]

More Manning Wardle Crampton.  A fairly typical working with it needing some help on the climb up to Crowcombe Heathfield.

I took some video of the Crampton to show the Stephensons valve gear in motion, but I still have to process that.

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

 

[NeilHB]

Lovely photos and video - thanks Annie