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


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I’ve come to realisation that I’m going to have to get a couple more reskins, I forgot this even existed in this period so it was a real Slaps Forehead moment, Establishment advertisements painted on buildings.

 

Shide Station, IOW, late 1800s - Early 1900s.

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Evening trains.

 

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And yes I know that point motor shouldn't be there, but somehow that one got missed when I removed them from the 30 odd points/switches/turnouts at Moxbury.  Ruined an otherwise quite nice snap, - Grrrrr!

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2 hours ago, Glenn652 said:

I’ve come to realisation that I’m going to have to get a couple more reskins, I forgot this even existed in this period so it was a real Slaps Forehead moment, Establishment advertisements painted on buildings.

 

Shide Station, IOW, late 1800s - Early 1900s.

6A2FC789-74EF-4B32-BB44-0FD2A0A197A7.jpeg

There have been posts about this kind of signage on buildings here on the pre-grouping forums, but I can't remember where they are now.  It's certainly something I should have a look at for my own Norfolk layout.

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1 hour ago, Annie said:

There have been posts about this kind of signage on buildings here on the pre-grouping forums, but I can't remember where they are now.  It's certainly something I should have a look at for my own Norfolk layout.

This signage is often referred to as 'ghost signs'.  A Google search on those words will find loads of examples in various cities.

 

One of my favourites in Wigan:

Uncle_Joe's_Mint_Balls_Factory_-_geograp

Edited by MikeOxon
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3 hours ago, Glenn652 said:

I’ve come to realisation that I’m going to have to get a couple more reskins, I forgot this even existed in this period so it was a real Slaps Forehead moment, Establishment advertisements painted on buildings.

 

Shide Station, IOW, late 1800s - Early 1900s.

6A2FC789-74EF-4B32-BB44-0FD2A0A197A7.jpeg

 

A nice illustration of a pre-motorcar road surface too.

You can see how fine the top dressing of a Macadam road is, well broken up by iron-shod vehicle tyres.

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16 minutes ago, Glenn652 said:

And promised, The distant signal signals are now period correct! 

 

Now once that Brunel signal is finished that’ll be the track infrastructure done bar the point rodding.

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Very nice.  I still have a lot of gantry distants to do which will be tedious, but on the other hand I can't stand the sight of all those yellow distants so it will have to be done.  As for point rodding I tried it on my attempt at the Looe branch and said never again.  Point rodding in Trainz is downright difficult to do since nothing fits together very well and the yellow circles and arrows on the end of the splines make it impossible to see what you're doing.  Some Trainz folk have managed to do it by sheer bloody minded persistence, but I'm not one of them.

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The E&GR's ancient Longridge long boiler 0-6-0 on a mineral working from the quarries on the Grimwold branch.

Presently attempting to set up a schedule for mineral trains which is a bit tricky since they are slow and I have to fit their timings around the passenger services.

 

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9 hours ago, Annie said:

The E&GR's ancient Longridge long boiler 0-6-0 on a mineral working from the quarries on the Grimwold branch.

Presently attempting to set up a schedule for mineral trains which is a bit tricky since they are slow and I have to fit their timings around the passenger services.

 

V7luyAJ.jpg

 

IL8Wjd7.jpg

 

More passing loops?

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6 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

More passing loops?

Soooooo many passing loops, soooo many more signal boxes :blink:

Once I started to extend my GER Norfolk layout out to include the actual affiliated (imaginary) lines in all their faded glory instead of being just represented by a portal I quickly discovered that something more than single line light railway solutions were needed.  Some parts had to be double tracked to prevent horrible  traffic tangles and the GER lines through the main joint station at Brenton Wood now include a goods relief line.  The E&GR branch line to Grimwold is still a single line as is the long rambling B&FER line between Brenton Wood and Bluebell Magna, - and if it wasn't for the loops and M&GNR type layby sidings these single lines wouldn't function at all.  The Grimwold mineral branch will remain single line forever more since only a madman with more money than sense would consider doubling it, - but while it would be perhaps more efficient to double track the B&FER line between Brenton Wood and Bluebell Magna it would completely take the fun out of working trains between these two stations.  Anyway the B&FER is always scratching for funds so doubling the line would be an expense too far which definitely puts it out of the question.

 

Edit:  I've been off line since the power supply for our Wi Fi access point/router decided to die after putting in ten heroic years of service.  After a lot of digging about in boxes in our computer parts storeroom my daughter and I found a suitable power supply and now normal service is resumed.  The Wi Fi access point thingy itself is going to need to be replaced soon since it's also fast moving into decrepit old age so I shall have to search the interwebs for a more modern replacement.

After nearly going blind peering at the tiny screen on my little clockwork Dell notebook I hauled a slumbering Win 10 machine out of the computer storeroom and got it working.  After the Xeons it's a bit lightweight and tinfoil like in its case and the processor is only an Intel i5 of no great prospects with the RAM being only 8 Gb instead of double figures, - but it will do for now until I can get my new Xeon machine up and running.

Edited by Annie
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Test snap taken after transferring my GER Norfolk layout over to my newly built Intel i5 powered computer 'Lesser Thoughts'.

Transferring my 199 Gb TS2012 folder to 'Lesser thoughts' took aaaaaaaaages, but at least it all seems to have transferred over without any problems.  Perhaps I'm too used to huge Xeon computers that are made of boiler plate and have enormous amounts of galvanic-etheric thing-a-ma-bobs inside them and can turn the space-time continuum inside out in an instant, but despite its very ordinary specification and case made from tinfoil 'Lesser Thoughts' seems to be doing Ok.

 

I'm suffering from Endless Tuesday Syndrome at the moment.  I was away dreaming in the Dreamworld for days and when I woke up it was still Tuesday.  Folk who have narcolepsy often suffer from time displacement where their body clock tells them that it's a different time/day to what it is agreed to be in the Real World (TM).  I'm sort of used to it now, but it can be very confusing at times.

 

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I'll most probably make all your eyes glaze over now by explaining why 'Lesser Thoughts' is doing a much better job of running my TS2012 trainsets than 'Deeper Thought' could

 

'Deeper Thought' with its eight Xeon processing cores, 16Gb of RAM, and a very good and powerful graphics  card runs the later 64 bit versions of the Trainz simulator wonderfully well.  This is because all of its resources can be used to their full extent which is where a Xeon computer excels.  The individual core processor speed can often seem to be only average and nothing much, but Xeons like to go in for the 'we are legion' approach to handling data which means that they are capable of doing much more than a cheaper cut price retail quad core made to a lower standard processor with a higher speed rating.  It's the wide river moving more water than the fast rushing steam approach to handling data.

 

Now older versions of Trainz like TS2012 are 32 bit software so they can only use two computer cores and 4Gb of RAM.  TS2012 also does most of its graphics processing in the main computer cores (CPU) and only sends the processed data to the graphics card for a light dust off and polish before it's displayed on a monitor screen.

All of which means that 'Deeper Thought' was struggling to run my now sizeable GER Norfolk layout.  It could only use two of its slower rated processing cores and a quarter of its RAM (memory) and the powerful graphics card was barely doing anything at all.

 

Now 'Lesser Thoughts' with its faster older generation 3.1Ghz quad core processor is actually the better choice since with only using two much faster cores it can more than adequately handle the necessary graphics processing better than 'Deeper Thought' with it being restricted to using only two of its slower (but exquisitely made) processor cores.  Since the graphics card doesn't have to do much 'Lesser Thoughts' is fitted with an older generation, but good in its day graphics card and I'm now getting anything up to five times a higher frame rate than I was with 'Deeper Thought'.  And the images on screen are rendering sooooooo much better as well as everything running much more smoothly.

 

I was going to convert my GER Norfolk layout over to running on one of the later Trainz simulators; - which would have been sooooooo much work to do just thinking about it sends a cold shiver down my spine.  But now I don't have to (Yay!).  I'm going to use 'Lesser Thoughts' to run all my older versions of Trainz and the new Xeon computer, - 'Deepest Thought', - will be used for running the later 64 bit versions, TANE and TS2019.

 

Sorry about all the computer geek stuff, but when it comes to railway simulators it's difficult to not end up becoming something of a computer expert along the way as well.

Edited by Annie
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interesting comments about your computers.  It just shows how software not designed to make use of multi-parallel processors and loads of RAM cannot take any advantage from them.  TANE seems to run reasonably well on my i5 laptop with 64-bit Windows and SSD, even though the graphics card is nothing special.

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Yes it's all fascinating stuff Mike.  Even though 'Deeper Thought' is an older generation Xeon computer it can run anything in TS2019 at 50% across all cores absolutely faultlessly without raising a sweat whereas it was struggling to run my Norfolk layout in TS2012.

I5 processors are reasonably good and for most purposes there's no need to go up to a later generation and more expensive version.  I purchased 'Lesser Thoughts' a while ago for a very cheap price ex-lease from a computer recycler and I'm sure one of the reasons I got cheap was that it had an i5 processor and not the later i7 processor.  It came with a posh 'Coolmaster' case too which is very nice if a bit tinny.

 

TANE can be persuaded to run on laptops just fine so long as you're not trying to push all the graphics siders hard over to the right.

 

31 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Yes, but does it have all those discy bits whizzing around at the top? (Like what the BR TOPS computer had in 1970)

Yes I remember all the science fiction films on the telly when I was much younger and how they'd have big tape reels turning back and forth on the computers and there would be some huge panel with lots of winking lights that the villain usually got thrown against and electrocuted towards the end of the movie.

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4 hours ago, Annie said:

... I purchased 'Lesser Thoughts' a while ago for a very cheap price ex-lease from a computer recycler and I'm sure one of the reasons I got cheap was that it had an i5 processor and not the later i7 processor.  ........

 

Re-cycled computers can be great buys - often more powerful than most rather higher-priced new computers!  I think i5's and i7's run concurrently but the '7' has more on-board cache, to keep all the cores busy.

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5 hours ago, Northroader said:

Yes, but does it have all those discy bits whizzing around at the top? (Like what the BR TOPS computer had in 1970)

 

Or Benny Hill hacking the Turin traffic control computer in The Italian Job...

 

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They don't make 'em like they used to!

 

Edited by Hroth
Spelin and trimming....
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Test snaps taken at Brenton Wood.  The images seem a lot sharper and more clear than those I was taking before when I was running trains with 'Deeper Thought'.

 

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(Once I know the new trackwork at Brenton Wood is setup correctly I'll add the frogs and check rails to the points)

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