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

[MikeOxon]

That's a relief - trains again

 

It looks as though you have a lot of shunting to do next.

[RedGemAlchemist]

46 minutes ago, Annie said:

No. 125 heads off in the other direction with a load of lumber to shunt off at Bluebell Sands and where there's also some goods vans to pick up before heading through to the goods yard at Elgar Junction on the GCR-GER joint line.  Please note the MR open wagon.  All the goods yards on the layout have at least one example of the breed.

 

Goods vans collected and it's onwards to Hopewood on Sea and then onto the line out to Elgar Wood and the junction with the big railway joint line at Elgar Junction.

 

A friendly race with the grocer's van.  Not that it really was a race since the maximum speed on this section of the the tramway is only 25 mph and the driver of the van wanted to arrive at Hopewood on Sea without all his teeth having been shaken out of his head.

 

Tramway junction.  The line to the left goes to Elgar Wood and the other line follows Old Mill Lane before making an end on junction with the Windweather Tramway.

 

Watched closely by three warehouses overlooking the goods yard at Elgar Junction No. 125 leaves the brake van in a handy siding.  The model I use for the Hopewood Tramway's brake vans is based on a GNR brake van of the 1850's.

 

The six goods vans on the goods shed siding are the ones that No.125 has to collect after leaving its train of wagons in the reception sidings.  No doubt the GCR yardmaster will be demanding to know what idiot put those wagons there, but Hopewood Tramway engines are only allowed to drop off and collect wagons in this yard and nothing more so if there's a handy space that's where wagons will get put unless somebody says they can't.

 

Waiting in the loop before running around the train and heading back to the tramway.

 

And this is the GCR passenger train that No.125 was waiting for.  Once it clears the section No.125 will be heading back home again.

 

A little later in the day and we find No.125 shunting at Hopewood on Sea.

 

Lovely. It's very nice to see 125 in it's pre-KLR days.

[Annie]

7 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

That's a relief - trains again

 

It looks as though you have a lot of shunting to do next.

There's several industries served by the tramways as well as traffic in timber, sand and agricultural produce so there is quite a bit of work for the three G15s on the layout to do.  I'd spent so long building up the layout and getting all the bugs out of it that I'd almost forgotten what it was like to operate it.  Now I'm at the point where the railway side of things is just about working how I want I'm able to spend as much time as I want just playing trains instead of having to constantly cut short an operating session in order to fix something.

I like shunting and I like driving pick up goods trains and doing trip working and the tramways are very much designed around that.  Some of the goods yards are deliberate shunting puzzles, but without taking anything away from their function as a goods yard and being awkward just for the sake of being awkward.  The network of sidings at the sawmill and furniture factory at Elgar Wood is perhaps the most extreme puzzle, but despite the bewildering maze of tracks there is actually a logical plan to it with the way wagons need to be shunted in order to bring logs into the sawmill and lumber, sawdust and finished goods to be taken away for delivery elsewhere.

 

[Annie]

 

I had one of these when I was a wee kiddie and I was completely delighted by it.

Must've been where I got my love of shunting from.

[RedGemAlchemist]

52 minutes ago, Annie said:

 

I had one of these when I was a wee kiddie and I was completely delighted by it.

Must've been where I got my love of shunting from.

Oh, don't let me near one of those! It would end up as something entirely different!

[Compound2632]

Hmm - somebody needs to have a look at the axleboxes on that Midland D299 5-plank open...

[Annie]

Yes I know they're not right since the base mesh is for an 1923 RCH wagon and the underframe and body are one piece and can't be separated..  If I can find a decent 5 plank body mesh I do have a proper underframe model I could use to make the wagon look more like it should.

[Annie]

It seems the more I refine and bug fix my GER & etc layout the more bugs pop up.  The morning semi-fitted GCR goods train leaving from Bluebell Woods was wanting to leave the GCR-GER joint line that goes directly to its destination and cross over at Brenton Wood Junction to the old ex-B&FER single line that is nothing like so superbly engineered, has a lower maximum speed limit and goes the long way around to its destination.

Trainz AI is like that though.  It would rather try and 'short cut' through a lot of rusty old sidings with a 5 mph speed limit that take the direct clear path that's right in front of it.  The only way to avoid this is to place markers on the route the train has to follow and list them in its scheduling.

 

Since a GER Y14 in charge of a train of bolster wagons is dispatched at around the same time as the semi-fitted goods train to go and collect logs from the forestry site at Barrow Hills and bring them back to the sawmill at Elgar Wood the wayward GCR 9J and its train was being a right pain with blocking what should have been a clear line.  I placed a 'This-way-you-idiot' marker on the GCR-GER line at Brenton Wood and everything with these two morning goods trains now seems to be working fine.

 

Speaking of class 9Js I now have a couple of extra through goods trains added to the timetable schedule that are hauled by 9Js so I'll be able to enjoy my 9J engines afterall.  The class 1B that majestically traverses the layout at 15 mph with a train of innumerable 5 plank open wagons is still a feature of the timetable though.  In all the time it's been listed in the schedule it's never wanted to duck off anywhere and has stayed on course.  Plainly a very reliable and sensible engine.

 

Edited December 15, 2019 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Annie]

Tram engines.  Some of my tram engines are a little bit 'what-if' imaginary rather than being actual GER prototypes.  With playing trains a lot more lately I've been getting reacquainted with them.

 

H.T.Co.  No.7 started out as an older tram engine model from TS2006 days that was a bit wrong in its overall dimensions and some of its detailing wasn't quite right so I decided create the backstory that the Hopewood Tramway built it themselves using an elderly second hand 0-6-0 tank engine as the starting point for their tram engine.

Using all kinds of bits that weren't intended to fit together and a carefully chosen engine spec I ended up with a tram engine with a larger boiler than a GER C53 and a lot more attitude.  It's a bit of bruiser, but then it has to be since it's used to shunt the sawmill yard.  No.7 is nicely controllable at low speed and has the ability to shift loaded log bolsters around the light curves of the sawmill yard without slipping or stalling.  No.7 does other work as well, but the sawmill yard is its main job.

 

 

 

W.T.Co No. 022  (there's a No.025 as well) started out as an odd model of GER tram engine a member of the creator group I belong to made that was about a third too long for a C53 tram engine so in my usual fashion I set to work on it using the usual collection of bits not meant to fit together and came up with what I call a class C53B tram engine.  My C53B's run on a pair of Heisler articulated bogies and they have a twin cylinder steam engine inside the wooden bodywork next to the boiler.  The backstory is No.022 and No.025 are previously unknown experimental designs sent out for practical testing on the Windweather Tramway.

Make believe they might be, but for moving heavy train loads of lumber away from Windweather Harbour they are perfect for the task.  The trackwork on the harbour wharves abounds in tight curves and isn't always exactly level so conventional engines struggle with working the wharves where the C53B's have no problems at all.

They are beautifully controllable at low speed, but always sound as if they are going faster than they really are due to their geared transmission.

 

 

No.022 on a stock train working.  A bit of a change from hauling lumber.

[Annie]

Approaching Great Marsh in No.022 out on the Windweather Loop Line.  I haven't shown anything of Great Marsh before, - mostly because the town is still an assemblage of plonk down buildings and not finished yet.

A lot of agricultural traffic originates at Great Marsh as well as livestock traffic.

 

 

[Annie]

E&GR 'Sebastapol'  piloted by ex-H.T.Co. No.5 takes the express through to Eastlingwold from Moxbury.  A luggage van with a rush order of lavender biscuits from the W.N.R. heads the train of GER coaches and unusually for this service an LNWR 6 wheel saloon and luggage van has been attached to the rear of the train.

I was lucky enough to be able to take some snaps as the train left Bluebell Magna.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

More news from my GER & etc layout. 

I've decided to put my WIP Cornwall 1880s layout on hold for the moment as I'm going to move it over to the latest TS2019 version of the simulator and there's no point in doing further work on it that I might have to do all over again in TS2019.  My commissioned B&ER 4-4-0ST is being made for TS2019  and no doubt once I've saved up my pocket money a bit I'll be commissioning other Broad Gauge engines so keeping my Cornwall project in TS2012 is a bit daft really.

So for the duration of our nasty hot Summer I'm going to be playing trains on my GER & etc layout and catching up with all the little jobs on it that have needed doing for a long time.

 

Another Y14 has been assigned to the layout.  I have a rule that all engines officially assigned to the layout must be unique with no duplicate numbered engines.  So a few minutes work in Paint.NET and No.555 was born.

This Y14 model is quite old and it was reskinned into GER blue by Rob Dee who is a real master at doing this kind of thing.  Originally the model was in BR condition so Rob calls his version 'representational' rather than being an exact model of a Y14 in GER condition.  With any GER engines for Trainz being a bit rare I'm happy enough to make use of Rob's version.

 

Signposts!  As I've been doing things around the layout I've been installing more signposts at road junctions.  Individually they are a small thing, but I think over time they will add up to making my little imaginary world look like a place where people do actually live instead of being a bare landscape with a lot of plonked down buildings like so many Trainz layouts I've seen.

 

'Sebastapol' on test.  A problem I was having with my single driver engines is that many engine spec files don't seem to take much notice of the diameter of the driving wheels, - and while this might not matter so much for some engines with average sized wheels with my single driver engines they end up sounding odd with too many exhaust beats per wheel rotation.  The model single driver engine might be running well enough, but it sounds like no single driver engine that was ever made.

I'm testing a variety of two cylinder steam engine sound files which essentially work well, but it's a case of matching the sound to the individual engine.  My ex-Hopewood 2-2-2T engines are still wanting to sing basso after the latest sound file change, - though perhaps not quite so deeply as before so I might have to accept that for the time being.

I found an engine spec file that works properly and the difference is profound.  The difference is especially noticeable at lower speeds with those big driving wheels slowly rotating and the exhaust beats coming evenly spaced in an almost languid fashion.

 

[Regularity]

Just for grins, and info, the Y14s had 15 spoke driving wheels, which look quite different to 16 spoke wheels, as the symmetry is rotational but not radial.

[Annie]

Ah, - I did not know that Simon.  The original maker of the engine must've used some wheels he already had from another project instead of making a new set.

[Regularity]

10 hours ago, Annie said:

Ah, - I did not know that Simon.  The original maker of the engine must've used some wheels he already had from another project instead of making a new set.

The Johnson 477 which came before the Y14 - which had slightly bigger wheels - did have 16 spokes, however.

(The things you pick up, operating East Lynn!)

[MikeOxon]

i suspect some of the modellers on this site do not realise how much work has to go into building 'virtual' models.  Rivet counting is alive and well on the computer as well

Edited December 17, 2019 by MikeOxon
modified wording for clarity

[MikeOxon]

On 14/12/2019 at 16:38, Annie said:

I had one of these when I was a wee kiddie and I was completely delighted by it.

Must've been where I got my love of shunting from.

I remember one of those, too.  See it in action at:

 

 

[Regularity]

29 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

i suspect some of the modellers on this site do not appreciate how much work has to go into building 'virtual' models.  Rivet counting is alive and well on the computer as well

Hence, "for grins". (I realise that we are probably in danger of violently agreeing here: it's all a question of how one defines authenticity in one's modelling. Which is entirely personal.)

Also, it looks wrong, not because of the number of spokes, but because of how it affects the symmetry.

(And Annie appreciated knowing this. 

[MikeOxon]

I think 'Regularity' makes a good point.  It has something to do with what birders call 'jizz'.  Some features are amazingly important in defining the 'character' of a particular vehicle, even though they might seem minor, whereas other, much larger, errors can be tolerated because the result still captures the essence of the prototype.

 

For example, the recently-released 6-wheel carriages from Hattons are, as far as I am concerned, ruled out for GWR uses, because of the square-cornered windows.

[Regularity]

It's what psychologists refer to as the "gestält": the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and it is the pattern which is most important.

21 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

For example, the recently-released 6-wheel carriages from Hattons are, as far as I am concerned, ruled out for GWR uses, because of the square-cornered windows.

I am sure you could produce so little corner pieces, by punching holes in 10 thou plasticard, and cutting around the square about the circle after cutting through it vertically and diagonally. (If that makes sense to you, then you've got the idea. If it doesn't, it possibly will never come to you.)

Easier to add an inverse quadrant than scrape it out.

 

Did they fix the issue with the width of the panels at the ends?

 

[Compound2632]

22 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

For example, the recently-released 6-wheel carriages from Hattons are, as far as I am concerned, ruled out for GWR uses, because of the square-cornered windows.

 

Puzzled by that - as far as I'm aware the Hattons carriages are still at the design stage and all the sketches show round-cornered panelling.

 

[Compound2632]

On 16/12/2019 at 10:21, Annie said:

E&GR 'Sebastapol'  piloted by ex-H.T.Co. No.5 takes the express through to Eastlingwold from Moxbury.  A luggage van with a rush order of lavender biscuits from the W.N.R. heads the train of GER coaches and unusually for this service an LNWR 6 wheel saloon and luggage van has been attached to the rear of the train.

I was lucky enough to be able to take some snaps as the train left Bluebell Magna.

 

 

 

Nodding with approval at the LNWR 6-wheelers there. Classy.

[MikeOxon]

35 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Puzzled by that - as far as I'm aware the Hattons carriages are still at the design stage and all the sketches show round-cornered panelling.

 

The panelling is good - it was just the square-cornered window openings that 'jumped out' at me.  I used it as an example of how a small thing can affect the overall 'jizz' of the model - and as Regularity has point out, it would not be too difficult to correct. 

[Regularity]

Aye, you cut something like this, keeping the blue bits:

 

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Nodding with approval at the LNWR 6-wheelers there. Classy.

I have quite a few very nice LNWR coaches Mr Compound.  On my GER & etc layout they get represented by  the 6 wheel saloon and perhaps a 6 wheel luggage van as well being attached to a scheduled passenger train from time to time.  I don't think I could explain away justify any more of an LNWR presence than that on my sprawling little railway empire.