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

[Edwardian]

4 minutes ago, Annie said:

Oh no!  I have female FBI X-Files investigators visiting my railway.  

 

The question is what are they doing in Somerset in 1889?  

 

No idea, though I suspect the Truth is out there!

[Northroader]

You can get the earlier version, even if not dressed for footplate work. ( I thought she was total class in this)

[Annie]

25 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

No idea, though I suspect the Truth is out there!

 

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

Can't really see that as a problem ...

 

 

 

The only problem with Scully is that you go to meet her for a pleasant evening out and find her elbows-deep in an aliens chest, with green ichor all over the place.

 

Then it ends up with pushing Duracells share price up a few more notches...

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

I now have a sudden urge to watch the X-Files again.  Not an entirely bad thing I suppose.

 

Back to the trainset.  I've been steadily working on overhauling the Minehead branch and I'm presently working at Stogumber.  With this old layout having been originally a steam era BR layout and then converted to the Broad Gauge with a minimal attempt at backdating I'm having to rebuild the track layouts at all the stations.  The other thing is that there are a lot of houses and other buildings that just weren't there in 1889 so it's been a major deletion exercise in some places.  Blue Anchor was a perfect case in point with a whole village having to be removed and field boundaries reinstated.

Working my way along the NLS's 25 inch to the mile OS maps (4 bob coloured version)  it's really struck me just how empty a landscape this was in 1889.  There were the farms and their associated buildings of course, but such towns as there were back then were very small.  Noticeably too they were usually at some distance from the stations that were supposed to be serving them.  Mind you that's not a bad thing since I don't have to spend time trying to model them.

 

[Edwardian]

30 minutes ago, Annie said:

I now have a sudden urge to watch the X-Files again.  Not an entirely bad thing I suppose.

 

 

Remember the Marlborough Man?

 

We were never sure who he was working for, the GWR or the M&SWJR. 

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Remember the Marlborough Man?

 

We were never sure who he was working for, the GWR or the M&SWJR. 

 

I thought he was a Master at the College. There was certainly something smoking there - they had their own coal wagons. (Or on hire etc...)

[Annie]

Stogumber station was a complete inexplicable mess that didn't even match up with what later OS maps showed was there so I had to do a lot of work on it before it looked something like it should.  One of the things the 1889 OS map showed was an an exit from the station platform that led to a fairly precipitous path down the side of the embankment.  It took a little bit of figuring out how I was going to represent it, but I'm happy with the result.

 

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Imagine walking up that in wet weather ........ 

[Annie]

That's what I thought too Malcolm.  I should be nice to the digital people on the layout and install a handrail.

[Northroader]

The approach road at Stogumber is on the other side of the tracks to the platform, as is the station building. (This is a sandstone version off the same drawing board as the Cornwall railway ones) and there used to be a small goods shed squeezed in there, as well, all dating from the opening of the line. You got to the platform by a barrow crossing over the track. As you say, the site is very cramped because of the slope of the hill.

[Annie]

1 minute ago, Northroader said:

The approach road at Stogumber is on the other side of the tracks to the platform, as is the station building. (This is a sandstone version off the same drawing board as the Cornwall railway ones) and there used to be a small goods shed squeezed in there, as well, all dating from the opening of the line. You got to the platform by a barrow crossing over the track. As you say, the site is very cramped because of the slope of the hill.

Yes I was going to use a small Cornwall Railway station building mesh I've got to create the station building at Stogumber Mr Northroader.  It's certainly an unusual station site with the station building being on the other side of the rails from the platform.  I've been able to find out some good detals about the station building here - http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/taunton-to-minehead-wsr.html  The difficulty as aways is unthreading Churchward era and preservation era modifications from what things looked like in the 19th century.  I'm having to make some compromises due to the correct models not being available, but I should end up with something plausible.

 

With the station on the original layout being such a mess I'd really like to do Stogumber justice and make a decent job of it.  My general approach has been to try things in place often as a placeholder while I find out more information and then move things about and adjust their final positions according to the fruits of my research.  This is perhaps the big advantage of working in a digital medium in that making alterations doesn't involve sawing things up or hacking into scenery and creating messes that need to be swept up after.

[Annie]

I think I now have Stogumber in a state of finish that I can live with.  Compromises were made due to using what models were available, but overall it's not too bad.

 

I had to do some landscape bashing editing in order to get everything laid out properly and ideally I should have done a lot more re-contouring than I did to more closely follow the prototype location, but the problem with that is I may have ended up with more of a mess than what I started with.  The landscape sculpting tools in Trainz are quite coarse and the landscape grid is not particularly flexible so I could see that I'd have problems with the station yard being right on the edge of an embankment.  Any attempt to raise the ground on the other side of the boundary fence would more than likely have made it difficult to keep the station yard level.

 

The Cornwall Railway building is a placeholder for the present time until I can sort out something better.  I need to try and do something about the types of station buildings found on the B&ER and Cornwall Railway anyway since it looks like I'm going to be staying with projects based on the old Broad Gauge lines for the foreseeable future.

 

Cramptons are still to the fore.  I'll get tired of them eventually and put something a bit more correct on the branch once I get around to it.

 

Shock horror!  The cattle vans are 19th century LNWR cattle vans.  Most of my mid-19th century goods wagons are either GNR or LNWR in origin.

 

As you might have guessed I have a lot of 1850s coaches.

 

The cattle dock isn't really correct, but it's the one I decided to use on the branchline; - not that there's a brilliant range to choose from anyway.  At least if they are all the same design in a sandstone kind of colour they stand a chance of not looking out of place.

 

A handrail has been provided on the steep path down the embankment.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Annie
more to say

[Annie]

I own more than a few Crampton engines, but the ones that don't get taken out of my digital trainset box very often are the LCDR Cramptons. Slightly longer than the SER Cramptons I also own and with a domed boiler instead of a domeless boiler they are much the same design as the SER Cramptons. Like all my mid-19th century engines and rolling stock I purchased them from Paulz Trainz, but the LCDR Cramptons have never been listed on Paul's website and I had to ask Paul if he would sell me three of them. Unlike my SER Cramptons which are in three stages of weathering from slightly mucky to very mucky I could only get the LCDR Cramptons in pristine condition. It shouldn't have been a reason not to run them, but I just seem to prefer to run the SER Cramptons instead.
Anyway I got them out today to have a proper look at them and you might see more of them from now on.

At Minehead on my WIP 1889 version of the branchline.

 

 

Between Minehead and Dunster. All this flat countryside is supposed to be criss-crossed with drainage channels, but I've been avoiding putting them in place.

 

 

 

A pause at Dunster. I still need to change the station platform.

 

Blue Anchor. Named after the Blue Anchor hotel near the coast. Another platform that needs to be changed for something more correct.

 

In the 1880's this whole area was almost completely deserted except for the hotel and a couple of farmsteads. After WW1 houses began to be built near the station.

 

On the way to Watchet.

 

 

And finally Stogumber. On the original TS2004 layout Stogumber was a mess and didn't look anything like how the station and its yard was supposed to be. So far this station has taken the most work to get sorted out, but I know in my bones that Watchet is going to be a lot worse.

 

 

[Schooner]

In addition to the wonderful modelling, that's a really pleasing formation  Lovely stuff as ever Annie!

[Annie]

Thanks Schooner. It was only just today that I remembered I had the horsebox and carriage truck in my digital trainset box so when I setup the train of coaches for the LCDR Crampton I decided to include them in the train.

[Annie]

Stogumber's new station building.  I have this awful tendency when I'm having a bad time with sleepiness to think everything I do is no good, but on this occasion I think I didn't do too bad a job with the textures for this little building.

 

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

Stogumber's new station building.  I have this awful tendency when I'm having a bad time with sleepiness to think everything I do is no good, but on this occasion I think I didn't do too bad a job with the textures for this little building.

 

 

Are there drawings for this building? Because I want one on the KLR now!  

[Annie]

1 minute ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Are there drawings for this building? Because I want one on the KLR now!  

No drawing that I have Red, but if you go to this webpage about half way down you'll find a number of photos of the original building.

 

http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/taunton-to-minehead-wsr.html

[Annie]

Something just a little different.  I used to have a NER layout when I was using Trainz TS2009, but then my interest moved down south and the NER got forgotten about.  I was poking about in my digital trainset box and i rediscovered my 1860 Bouch 4-4-0s, - so I installed one into my old Scottish 'Cairnrigg to Balessie' layout along with some chauldron wagons and a NER brake van and gave it a run about.

It's surprising just how modern the Bouch 4-4-0 looks for a 1860 design.

 

 

 

[Annie]

Passenger train at Lynborough station.  I'm doing nothing much at the moment due to being a lot more sleepy than usual.

 

[Annie]

Cheering myself up by running coal trains on Lickey bank.  This is an old Trainz Classic 3 layout and the layout builder has modelled Lickey bank as closely as possible to the prototype.  Same for the station layouts at Bromsgrove and Blackwell.  

The LMS Garratt is a bit of a cheat, but since I own several of them I thought I'd use one of them.  Forty five 7 plank wagons and a brake van made up the train which according to Trainz stats is 500 tons of coal.

 

Descending.

 

 

Ascending.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Northroader]

Going up without at least one jinty on the back is a bit ambitious.

[Compound2632]

To be narkingly pernickety (a) the mineral flow west of Birmingham was chiefly full down the Lickey and empties up, although there was undoubtedly some anthracite going in the opposite direction and (b) I'm fairly sure that the Beyer Garratts never worked west of Birmingham, or possibly even west of Derby. They were mostly allocated to Toton with some at Hasland, working up to Cricklewood. Good pictures nevertheless!

Edited September 21, 2020 by Compound2632
All important "never" inserted!

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

Going up without at least one jinty on the back is a bit ambitious.

I know.  The Garratt is waaaaay more overpowered than it should be.  I could have taken a 100 wagons up Lickey except I would have had problems with fitting them all into the unloading loop.  I'm going to have to take a closer look at them sometime and fix their engine spec files.

 

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

To be narkingly pernickety (a) the mineral flow west of Birmingham was chiefly full down the Lickey and empties up, although there was undoubtedly some anthracite going in the opposite direction and (b) I'm fairly sure that the Beyer Garratts never worked west of Birmingham, or possibly even west of Derby. They were mostly allocated to Toton with some at Hasland, working up to Cricklewood. Good pictures nevertheless!

I did wonder about that, but that's how the coal delivery flow with the interactive loader and unloader was set up by the original layout builder; - Coal has to go up the hill, not down.  I can change that around though with a bit of work since I would prefer the traffic flow to be correct.  

 

One day perhaps I'll have a layout where the Garratts can work on a legitimate basis instead of being somewhere where they never were.  They are a lot of fun though and they sound absolutely amazing when hauling a heavy coal train.  They are basically my 'cheer up' engines that I run when I'm not having such a good time with this illness I live with.