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

[MikeOxon]

I think your new engine looks splendid   I like your chosen dark green colour and that last image with the mixed train of carriages is wonderful.  Once you are used to driving her, how about some video?  It's made me feel like starting a 4mm scale model.

[Annie]

Yes I'm very pleased with that shade of green.  I 'borrowed' a colour sample from your own research into the shade of green that was used during the Broad Gauge era and passed it on to Cameron to use on the model.  By this date Gooch valve gear was in use which makes it different to drive as compared with the 'Bogie' class engines with their gab gear.  The test train was 77 tons and the new engine seemed fine with that on the part of the Minehead branch I did my test drives on.  Not stunningly powerful, but very steady and it did best when properly driven which is something I really liked.

I'll try doing some video later on, but I don't know how it will go as I'm struggling a lot with sleepiness at the moment.

[MikeOxon]

12 minutes ago, Annie said:

 

I'll try doing some video later on, but I don't know how it will go as I'm struggling a lot with sleepiness at the moment.

No rush.  It seems you're having a bad time at present with the weather.  Not sure that dull and drizzly here is great either

[Annie]

17 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

No rush.  It seems you're having a bad time at present with the weather.  Not sure that dull and drizzly here is great either

Swap you your dull and drizzly for our horribly hot and humid.  Today would have been about the worst it's been and I have to be careful when moving around the house since sudden sleep episodes are keen on stalking me at the moment.

But once the sun went down and temperatures became more sensible I was able to do some work on the old TS2004 layout 'Turks Castle' which is a very good model landscape wise of the Minehead branch in the early 1890's.  I installed it into TS2019 a while ago and have been gradually updating and detailing the layout to a better standard since it was built with what was available at the time.  The arrival of the B&ER saddle tanks has certainly given me an incentive to push on with it.

[MikeOxon]

i expect you are aware of the BGS 'Broadsheet' special issue (No.73) covering the B&ER 4-4-0ST.  You can obtain a memory stick containing all back issue of 'Broadsheet' from the Society.  I find it an invaluable resource.

 

Your wonderful train looks as though it might be derived from this photo of B&ER No.68, taken at Watchet in 1874:

 

 

Mike

 

 

 

Edited February 1, 2020 by MikeOxon

[Annie]

No,68 was a Vulcan engine so it was among a number of reference pictures that were used to create the digital model.  I went for the later GWR condition as opposed to 'as built' since I wanted to model the 1880's era and there was nothing available for this era except Steve Flanders 'Prometheus'  which never would have gone anywhere near the Minehead branch.

 

Fortunately Steve Flanders has made a wide variety of Broad Gauge coaches so I can assemble higgilty-piggilty passenger trains to my heart's content.

 

I've been meaning to buy the back issues of the Broadsheet on memory stick from the Society, but haven't got round to it yet.  I most probably won't be getting back into any serious research again until our Autumn arrives and my brain starts working again.

Edited February 2, 2020 by Annie
More to say.

[Edwardian]

On 25/01/2020 at 16:20, Annie said:

I call this picture 'The driving lesson'.

 

My first reaction was "in which case, I hope he's paying careful attention to everything she says"

 

 

 

On 28/01/2020 at 07:11, Annie said:

 

E&GR No.3 on the GCR-GER joint line.  

 

E&GR No.8 at Brenton Woods on the joint line.  I

 

 

 

Delightful shots, all, though please remind me if you would, what are the prototypes for E&GR nos. 3 and 8?

 

On 31/01/2020 at 12:54, Annie said:

 

Isn't she beautiful.  The B&ER 4-4-0ST I commissioned has now been sent to me and I'm all of a quiver about driving her for the first time. 

 

In other news the weather is horrible here.  The Australian bushfires are now so large that they are affecting the weather in the Tasman Sea and along NZ's east coast.  The temperature is stiflingly hot during the day and it stays hot even at night.  I've been having all kinds of random crashouts into deep sleep which is very frustrating to say the least.

 

No snaps to show you of what I've been doing since I haven't been much motivated to sort any of them out for posting on the forum.

 

On 31/01/2020 at 16:56, Annie said:

Not that anybody cares, but these are some snaps from doing a test run with my new B&ER 4-4-0ST.

There's some odd small details I want to see if Cameron can sort out for me, but otherwise the new engine drives very nicely indeed.  The advanced steam controls work well and this is a very different engine to drive on the 'advanced' controls as compared with my much fettled 'Bogie' class engines.

 

A contrast. A GWR 'Bogie' class from TS2004 days and the new Vulcan 4-4-0ST made for TS2019.

 

 

 

 

 

I think the new B&E tank is superb.

 

Given the contemporary photograph, I do not see visual discrepancies in relation to the points mentioned by Esteemed Northroader.  

 

She certainly looks the part and has great presence.

[Annie]

The sun's gone down and the temperature has dropped so I can function again.  These are some odd snaps taken while working on and testing things on my GER Norfolk layout.

 

Claude Hamilton!  The new section that the joint line makes a junction with is supposed to be a GER cross country line of some modest importance that runs approximately diagonally from one corner of the new section to the other.  The only station on this section, - Mirely St. Marys, - is pure GER so GCR trains have to wipe their wheels and be on their best behaviour when running over this section.

But the main thing is that I can run what would be just about brand new, for the time period of my layout, Claude Hamilton 4-4-0's over the new section on express trains from somewhere to somewhere else.  I couldn't justify running a Claude anywhere else on my layout before so it's nice to have one rush through every two hours or so.

 

 

 

Further work has been done on the new B&FER section with a new station at Bleakhorse Road (pictures later), but the station and town at Foxwood hasn't missed out on getting further attention.   Station Road (What else would it be called) has now got some houses and shops lining the street which helps to make Foxwood look like it's a reasonably important station and not just a whistle stop.

This section of the B&FER  is right on the very edge of the layout boards so nobody should step out of the back doors of their houses until I can get around to adding the next lot of scenic boards to this section.  It will also mean that the fudge of using long rows of trees and back scenes to mask the layout edge will be able to be done away with.

Gradual replacement of hedges with post and rail fencing on the railway boundaries is proceeding, but it's going to take a while to get it all done with the layout being the size it is now.

 

 

 

Platforms!  Replacement of all the BR era platforms with pre-grouping ones is just about done.  Some of the old platforms from the early days of the layout were installed when I wasn't very good at it so there were yawning gaps between platforms and coaches which must've made train travel somewhat of a trial for the inhabitants of my layout.

 

Adjustments in progress at Lodge.  Lodge is a little station that would like to grow up to be more important.  Lodge has also just had all its ancient low resolution station buildings from the earliest days of Trainz replaced with better ones.

One problem I had was that none of the various coach types I run on the layout have either the same footboard width or the same footboard height. In the end I used the GER 6 wheelers as measuring coaches since their footboards were the widest and overall that seems to have worked out Ok.

 

 

New platform at Hayward.  Hayward has new station buildings too.  Seems the B&FER were much taken with the station buildings on the M&GNJR so they built ones just like them.

 

 

The big station at Brenton Wood was the biggest challenge. (Sorry I took more pictures, but I messed them up)

Four different lines converge at Brenton Wood and it has three long platforms with lots of buildings and platform furniture.  The only pre-grouping platform I could use was wider than the original platforms as well.  So nearly everything at Brenton Wood station needed to be adjusted  and the trackwork needed to be realigned as well.  BUT I'm awfully glad I did it.  Oh and I forgot to mention that all the new platforms (and re-adjusted old ones that were pre-grouping suitable) are now four scale inches lower than they were before.

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

56 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

My first reaction was "in which case, I hope he's paying careful attention to everything she says"

 

 

56 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Delightful shots, all, though please remind me if you would, what are the prototypes for E&GR nos. 3 and 8?

 

Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway Beyer Peacock single of 1856 James.  Because the models have number plates with E&GR on them I invented my imaginary Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway so I could run them on the layout and it all sort of snowballed from there.  No.8 is in reboilered condition with the large brass dome, but I asked the maker of these models to add a custom cab of my own design to No.8, - so I guess that makes it a proper Eastlingwold Beyer Peacock now.  This was a very successful design by Beyer Peacock and the engines had long working lives.

 

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

I think the new B&E tank is superb

 

Given the contemporary photograph, I do not see visual discrepancies in relation to the points mentioned by Esteemed Northroader.  

 

She certainly looks the part and has great presence

I agree and I'm completely delighted with her.  The washout plugs are missing though and I have asked about them.  The problem is though there are different numbers of washout plugs depending on which boiler an engine has so possibly Cameron may have decided not to include them in light of no solid information to go on.  The engines are scripted for four different numbers so in effect I now have four new engines on the Minehead branch.

 

 

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

The sun's gone down and the temperature has dropped so I can function again.  These are some odd snaps taken while working on and testing things on my GER Norfolk layout.

 

Claude Hamilton!  The new section that the joint line makes a junction with is supposed to be a GER cross country line of some modest importance that runs approximately diagonally from one corner of the new section to the other.  The only station on this section, - Mirely St. Marys, - is pure GER so GCR trains have to wipe their wheels and be on their best behaviour when running over this section.

But the main thing is that I can run what would be just about brand new, for the time period of my layout, Claude Hamilton 4-4-0's over the new section on express trains from somewhere to somewhere else.  I couldn't justify running a Claude anywhere else on my layout before so it's nice to have one rush through every two hours or so.

 

 

 

 

 

Those do look suspiciously like reliveried Midland Bain 54 ft corridor carriages behind your splendid Claude...

[Glenn652]

Hello all!

Long time follower of the thread here but only recently decided to get an account as I now have something to offer.

 

I’ve recently been working on backdating a fictional route in Train Simulator from the 1950s to around the 1910 era, For people who have this game/and or know of it you will know that, although there are now plenty of Pre-grouping locos now  the routes and assets are not plentiful. 

 

Ive been trying very hard by doing a lot of cross references and bodging to come up with something remotely decent. 

 

The first step was acquiring a prototype and the most logical step when choosing something like this is what’s available, I settled on GWR in the 1910s as that has the most assets readily accessible to us wether that be in terms of stock or station clutter. 

 

Its very much a work in progress, Currently I’m waiting on a couple of reskins for red distant semaphores and a few more posters. 

Edited February 2, 2020 by Glenn652

[rocor]

It appears that the fourth regeneration of a famous time lord has made a trip to Norfolk in the days of the GER.

[MikeOxon]

1 hour ago, Glenn652 said:

Hello all!

Long time follower of the thread here but only recently decided to get an account as I now have something to offer.......................

 

Its very much a work in progress, ...................................

 

It looks a very interesting project.  you should start a thread of your own so they we can follow your progress.

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Those do look suspiciously like reliveried Midland Bain 54 ft corridor carriages behind your splendid Claude...

Yes Rob Dee master reskinner reworked the Midland coaches into becoming representational GER coaches.  With no one being interested in creating genuine GER coaches it's a case of making do with reskinning what's available.  The GER 6 wheelers I run on the layout are also reskinned Midland coaches.

[Annie]

57 minutes ago, rocor said:

It appears that the fourth regeneration of a famous time lord has made a trip to Norfolk in the days of the GER.

Yes he appears from time to time among the passengers at stations and can be seen riding in the carriages of various trains.  He's a part of the passenger set for Trainz and plainly the person who created the set was a Doctor Who fan.

[Hroth]

Looking at the picture of Lodge, its not surprising that the Doctor is interested, there's a lot of "odd" activity going on there!  Actually, with all those white double circles scanning the place, I wouldn't be surprised if Captain Scarlet turned up in an SPV looking for Mysterons......

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Glenn652 said:

Hello all!

Long time follower of the thread here but only recently decided to get an account as I now have something to offer.

Hi Glenn, welcome to the thread.  that's 't other simulator isn't it?  the one made by Dovetail.  You've done some very nice work there and your project is coming along very well.

 

I work using Trainz Simulator with my GER Norfolk layout being an on-going build in TS2012, though I'm starting to use TS2019  for my Broad Gauge GWR projects.

[Annie]

1 minute ago, Hroth said:

Looking at the picture of Lodge, its not surprising that the Doctor is interested, there's a lot of "odd" activity going on there!  Actually, with all those white double circles scanning the place, I wouldn't be surprised if Captain Scarlet turned up in an SPV looking for Mysterons......

That was a snap taken in the editing side of TS2012 Mr Hroth.  The white circles mark where model assets such as track have been connected together.

[Glenn652]

Did a few comparison shots last night from the unedited route and the 1910s version. 

 

Here you you can see 40 years of change, Once someone gets around to doing broad gauge il do an even earlier version me thinks.

 

: As a side note someone mentioned that the benches on the route were 1930s spec, luckily thanks to old Decapod there’s some Pre Grouping style GWR benches that I’ve been able to implement.

Edited February 3, 2020 by Glenn652

[MikeOxon]

32 minutes ago, Glenn652 said:

Did a few comparison shots last night from the unedited route and the 1910s version. ............

 

 

 

Your shots have excellent realistic-looking scenery, which look better to me than most Trainz shots that I have seen.  It would be interesting if one of our simulation experts could give their impressions of the relative merits of the two systems.

[Glenn652]

36 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

 

Your shots have excellent realistic-looking scenery, which look better to me than most Trainz shots that I have seen.  It would be interesting if one of our simulation experts could give their impressions of the relative merits of the two systems.

Thanks very much! 

 

On the subject of merits, The two sims is subjective to taste il be honest, There’s no clear cut winner or looser. 

 

I prefer Railworks personally for the realism factor as I work with locos in real life, Trainz has far more varied content however, What I’m doing in Railworks is something that has not been attempted in any capacity as to garner more of a following in the subject of Pre-Grouping.

 

Not a single Pre-grouping route exists in Railworks, I’m hoping to change the status quo. 

[Annie]

Personally I don't like the Dovetail Train Simulator's control interface and I find it buggy and clunky to use, but that could be just me and the cognitive deficits I have due to narcolepsy.  The other thing I don't like is that I would not be able to re-texture and create rolling stock like I do if I was using Train Simulator (no 'z').

Trainz is largely based around readily available freeware, - though of course you have to buy the simulator in the first place.  You can buy additional routes if you want to, but you don't have to and there's plenty of free ones to choose from.  I use a fair bit of third party payware in Trainz, but that's my choice because in some cases the items I particularly want aren't available anywhere else.  The pre-grouping era is undergoing a rise of interest in Trainz which has lead to a good many more era appropriate models being available from content creators which is certainly a good thing.

 

That said I do acknowledge that Train Simulator does achieve a  very good level of realism where as with Trainz in its latest incarnation (2019) it can be a fight all the way with buggy problems with the hi-tech materials and lighting/shadow systems  that it uses.  I do use TS2019, but I don't use any hi-tech stuff as i keep it simple and run it like it's 64 bit TS2012.

I do wish the 'advanced' steam controls in Trainz were better, but I do Ok with them (My grandad would be proud).

 

Certainly the lack of pre=grouping routes and the overemphasis on the modern error was something that put me off Train Simulator so you are certainly doing a good thing there with your project Glenn.

[Edwardian]

On 02/02/2020 at 11:27, Annie said:

 

 

Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway Beyer Peacock single of 1856 James.  Because the models have number plates with E&GR on them I invented my imaginary Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway so I could run them on the layout and it all sort of snowballed from there.  No.8 is in reboilered condition with the large brass dome, but I asked the maker of these models to add a custom cab of my own design to No.8, - so I guess that makes it a proper Eastlingwold Beyer Peacock now.  This was a very successful design by Beyer Peacock and the engines had long working lives.

 

I agree and I'm completely delighted with her.  The washout plugs are missing though and I have asked about them.  The problem is though there are different numbers of washout plugs depending on which boiler an engine has so possibly Cameron may have decided not to include them in light of no solid information to go on.  The engines are scripted for four different numbers so in effect I now have four new engines on the Minehead branch.

 

 

 

Oh dear.  The right era for the opening of the Castle Aching & Birchoverham Railway.  Mind you, scrapped 1905-1912, perhaps one might have been sold off and traveled south instead ....

 

No, I have a roster of 30 WNR locos as it is!!!!!

 

Actually, I have been considering Pratchett's Disc World railways and had thought to found the aesthetic in that of the Globe World's 1850s, with singles predominating, and these caught my eye as a goo match. I think this would be perfect for the A-M&SPHR!

[Hroth]

On 02/02/2020 at 15:23, Annie said:

That was a snap taken in the editing side of TS2012 Mr Hroth.  The white circles mark where model assets such as track have been connected together.

 

I appreciate that, but why pass up a good opportunity for a gag when it presents itself?  

(I almost mentioned the flights of green and red birds too....)

 

28 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

... and these caught my eye as a goo match.

 

Eye goo, eh?

 

Sorry, its MOT time and the car needs servicing and at least a pair of new tyres so I'm just trying to distract myself from potential cost over-runs...

[Annie]

31 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Oh dear.  The right era for the opening of the Castle Aching & Birchoverham Railway.  Mind you, scrapped 1905-1912, perhaps one might have been sold off and traveled south instead ....

They were a standard BP design and they were sold to railways in Europe and one even went to Australia.  That's how I justify the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling having them since in the history of the line they were purchased new around the 1860's direct from the makers.  I could potentially have more BP singles on the layout since I purchased quite a few of them, but I might be overdoing it if I added any more of them to the roster.  For the present time at least I shall say that the others are working elsewhere on the E&GR.

The final NBR rebuilds certainly did the ex Edinburgh & Glasgow BP's no favours with regard to aesthetics, but it's plain that they were still doing good work at the time.

 

I think a BP single would do very nicely for the A-M&SPHR.  They do have a certain understated Victorian elegance to them which makes them one of my favourite engines.

 

No.8 again working a train of GER 6 wheelers through to Great Mulling.