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

[Annie]

Very nice Glenn.  I like the sound as it operates too.  That seems to be something that gets left out in Trainz and the only signals that I have that make a sound as they operate are some 1860's signal.  All the rest are silent  

[Edwardian]

14 hours ago, Annie said:

A little further work on Great Marsh.

 

 

My Norfolk trainset was running flawlessly well so I settled into a good session of trip workings along the Windweather Tramway and the Hopewood Tramway.  The goods yards along the tramways are a bit shunting puzzle like and it had been so long since I done any proper trip workings on the tramways that I was able to collect a lot of material for a possible little booklet entitled 'Shunting Mistakes I Have Made'.

 

Terrier 'Hopewood' at Barrow Hills.  Barrow Hills has quite a tricky little good yard to shunt since it's very much hemmed in by the surrounding landscape and doesn't have a lot of siding space.  And for a little station in the middle of nowhere it's quite busy since local passenger trains from both the Windweather Loop and the E&GR stop and run around their trains there before heading off somewhere else.  Just to make it a bit more tricky goods trains from the E&GR make regular stops in the long goods yard loop to have wagons shunted on and off before proceeding onwards.  I had a lot of fun and entertainment here figuring out how to drop off two loaded coal wagons and pick up three empty ones without getting in the way of the scheduled trains.

 

 

For some reason the other snaps I took didn't turn out very well, but here's 'Hopewood' on the way to Great Marsh.  The passing loop is new and is essential if I want to continue with my trip shunting habit.  The goods yard at Great Marsh is still being adjusted and fettled and once the PWD crew sign off on it there will be a lot of new stock workings and agricultural produce traffic for me to play with.

 

 

Looking good.  Presumably visitors from Gallifrey represent an acceptable anachronism!

[Annie]

14 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Looking good.  Presumably visitors from Gallifrey represent an acceptable anachronism!

I can well remember keenly watching the original black and white series of Doctor Who back when I was young so when I saw that there was a Tardis model available for Trainz I downloaded it and it's usually ended up somewhere on most of my digital layouts.  Perhaps this the first time I placed it in a town, but with the Doctor often being seen travelling by train I thought it would be nice to save him a long walk when he gets off the train at Great Marsh. 

Can time travelling devices actually be called an 'anachronism'?  No doubt a topic for endless debate with the answer possibly being '42'.

 

[Glenn652]

News on the signals.

 

They've now been added to the route in three select points, That might be too many however but I really like how it looks with a Dean Goods passing it as it adds so much flavour alongside the standard Semaphores. 

[rocor]

28 minutes ago, Glenn652 said:

News on the signals.

 

They've now been added to the route in three select points, That might be too many however but I really like how it looks with a Dean Goods passing it as it adds so much flavour alongside the standard Semaphores. 

 

Pedant alert!. Machine formed round hay bales, you may wish to consider when they first appeared.

[Annie]

4 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

Pedant alert!. Machine formed round hay bales, you may wish to consider when they first appeared.

I have to agree since they would be well and truly a post-WW2 modern innovation and definitely not seen during the pre-grouping era.

 

Apart from that Glenn the new signals look great.  

[Glenn652]

1 hour ago, rocor said:

 

Pedant alert!. Machine formed round hay bales, you may wish to consider when they first appeared.

Still in the process of removing period inaccuracies on the route, Seems a smaller job than changing the benches from 1930s types to Victorian GWR benches.

 

Im also sure there’s still some electric 50s lamps about but I’m struggling to find them. 

[Annie]

I've converted the odd carefully chosen BR era route to pre-grouping times and where there are largish towns on the route it can be quite challenging to clear away all the anachronisms.  Black rubbish sacks and wheelie bins, rubbish skips, modern signage, people wearing modern clothing and/or using cell phones, - the list goes on.  It's surprising just how long it can take on a well detailed route where the buildings themselves and most of the railway infrastructure is fine for the pre-grouping era, but nearly all the smaller details are too modern. 

[Annie]

My GER Norfolk layout is running really well now with no problems with the scheduled trains and how they slot into my working timetable.  So I played trains with it for ages and ages and did a lot of trip workings and then for some reason I suddenly felt really tired and fell asleep for hours.  After dream travelling for days I come back and it's endless Monday.  For some folk that might be considered to be a horrible nightmare, but for me it's just annoying.  I have a good mind to write a stern letter of complaint to whoever is in charge of the great celestial clock about their sloppy attitude towards managing the flow of time.

 

But never mind all that that.  I took some snaps and managed not to make so much of a mess of them this time.

 

The joint GCR-GER yards at Elgar Junction were a part of the layout from the beginning only they were never used much except for daily trainload of sawn lumber from the Hopewood Tramway.  With the E&GR line to Great Mulling now complete as well as the big goods yard at Moxbury also sorted out goods trains have somewhere to go that doesn't involve a portal.

I now have various vans and wagons at most of the goods yards (large and small) on the layout that are to go to particular destinations.  Some are a straight forward collect job, others need a good bit of shunting puzzling to assemble them into a train.  All of which leads me to showing you some snaps of Y14 No.555 in change of a short van train from Elgar Junction yard to the goods yard at Great Mulling.

 

Leaving the yards at Elgar Junction and heading east involves a short stretch of wrong road running along the joint line to Brenton Wood.

 

 

Crossing from the GCR-GER joint line to the (ex) B&FER goods relief line

 

 

Now on the E&GR mainline having not long left Oakmarket.  About a quarter of a mile ahead are the junctions for the E&GR goods relief line.

 

 

Now further on with the goods relief line running between the up and down lines.  The up and down lines are just that with wrong road running completely forbidden.  The goods relief line is bi-directional though and doing the signalling on this three track section took a lot of work and made my head hurt, BUT it's all good now and it works as it should.

I'm using LSWR and NER lattice gantries combined with GWR signals on this section of the E&GR.

 

 

Having mentioned the trainload of sawn timber that gets taken through to Elgar Junction yard each day.  I thought I'd show you a snap of the Hopewood Tramway's almost a GER C53  that they built themselves from a down on its luck (unidentified) second hand 0-6-0T and all manner of odd spare parts they had in the workshop stores.

('Oh no she's going to tell the story again!' the long time followers of this thread cry out in anguish)  The Hopewood Tramway's homebuilt tram engine started out as an older GER C53 model from TS2006 that had more than a few inaccuracies so rather than just send it to the archive hard drive of shame I decided that it was going to become the Hopewood Tramway's homemade version of a C53.  After much fettling and a certain amount of texture work I ended up with a very capable workhorse of a tram engine.

It's actually quite a brutal old thing and a lot of fun to drive.  Shifting trains of logs as well as sawn timber is a tough job since the train loads are heavy and take a a lot of effort to move as well as good brakes to make them stop once they are moving.

 

 

Having said I'd played trains for ages here's E&GR No.3 in charge of the evening passenger service from Great Mulling to Moxbury.  Not long after this I fell asleep whether I wanted to or not.  It was all awfully good fun though.

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

Another shocking hot day with me knocked out asleep, but I did manage to have a look at testing a 3ft 6in gauge Manning Wardle tram engine that I had archived away.

Much fettled to run really well I used this engine on an older layout I built up and I was curious how it would do on the tramways on my Norfolk layout.  Trainz doesn't actually need the wheels to be at the right gauge for a narrow gauge engine to run on standard gauge track.  It doesn't need couplings and buffers to be at the right height either or even of a compatible type.

Unfortunately while I could could easily enough convert this nice tram engine to standard gauge its buffer beams are too low to fit it up with standard gauge buffers and couplings.  I can't raise the height of the engine either since that was set by the 3D modelling software when it was made.  Annoying really since I'm short on tram engines on the tramways and I don't have too many options.

 

 

[NeilHB]

That's a rather cute MW tram engine Annie! Perhaps it needs an adaptor wagon so that it can work with the SG stock? 

[Annie]

I think I have some wagons that I can fudge a converter wagon from so I'll have an experiment and see what I can come up with.  If knew anything about 3D modelling I could contrive some plug in conversion pieces to raise the buffer height, but I don't so I can't.  

 

I have an assortment of 'Export' 3ft and 3ft 6in gauge Manning Wardles and while I know where some of them were exported to I don't really know anything about this particular 0-4-2T tram engine.  It's about as wide as some standard gauge engines which tended to be a little awkward with platform clearances & etc when running with most NG rolling stock, but it runs really well and it would certainly be very useful.

 

My only other recourse would be to put together another of the freelance 2-4-2T tram engines.........

 

 

Or sort out another of the modelled too short G15  (G13¾) tram engines.  I can get away with having G15's by bending history and claiming the scrapped ones were purchased by the Hopewood Tramway instead, but they are a very small clockwork sort of tram engines in their G13¾ guise and don't have much puff.

 

 

The GER would not have been all that keen on handing out a C53 tram engine since they would have all been committed elsewhere.  And the likelihood of the Hopewood Tramway building a second homemade version of a C53 would be fairly small, but I haven't written off the possibility just yet..

 

[Annie]

I've decided to fit some buffers to the MW tram engine that are of the kind intended to be used with chauldron wagons as well as ordinary SG rolling stock.  They are dumb buffers, but this is all an experiment anyway to see if it's possible to convert the engine to standard gauge use.  On the Windweather Tramway it will only be used as a goods engine so the dumb buffers should be fine at least for now.  It is of course much lower in cab roof height and its boiler fittings, chimney & etc than a normal SG engine so possibly some of the places it will be going to such as Flinders Mill, - presently represented by a portal, - have limited clearance issues.

The main thing if this conversion works is that I will have an engine that can work trains away from Tenpenny Wharf and run though over the Hopewood Tramway to its destination without having to stop at Hopewood on Sea goods yard to hand over the train to a properly certified tram engine.  That's what the Terriers are having to do at the moment and since two G13¾ tram engines are usually needed to take the train further it all starts to get a bit messy.

[Annie]

Some snaps.

 

A nice little engine, but its well tank only holds a cup full of water and its bunker only five lumps of coal so not a great deal of use on the long rambling tramways on my layout.

 

 

And after a lot of frowning while making new attachment points and adjusting them and various other little jobs I present the Windweather Tramway's new No.3.

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

I'm pleased with how the new No.3 turned out.  I'm still somewhat brain fogged and sleepy, but despite that I was able to do the necessary attachment point editing on the engine's body mesh to fit the new buffers and couplings as well as change the footplate crew with only a couple of minor mistakes that was able to fix without any problems.  The mesh editor I'm using has the capability to adjust attached objects in three dimensions as well as three axes of rotation.  But it's all done blind in that I have to study the model in the simulator and make an educated guess as to the needed position of the attached object, - then close down the simulator and enter in my educated guess into the mesh editor.  And then take a look at it again in the simulator.  Once I have it approximately correct I can make fine adjustments down to a millimetre of movement if I want to, but it's rare that I have to go that fine.   Having been doing this kind of thing for a while now my educated guesses as to the correct position for an object tend to be very close so it's now not quite so tedious as when I first started modding digital models.

 

BUT the big thing is that I actually wanted to do it which I'm taking as a very good sign that the difficulties I was having with my narcolepsy symptoms are actually receding.  Hopefully this will be a continuing trend as I have all manner of projects that have been put on hold due to my brain being too fuzzy to do any kind of constructive work on my models.

[MikeOxon]

Pleased to read of your uplift in motivation.  I hope it continues.  You don't have to have narcolepsy to suffer these lapses on interest but i'm sure it doesn't help and I hope the symptoms improve.  I was interest to read your revelation that the gauge of the engine wheels doesn't matter in Trainz.  Perhaps i can play with a Broad Gauge engine on my Cornwall line and add a few more anachronisms to those already present

[Annie]

Thanks Mike.  An engine in Trainz doesn't actually have to have wheels at all to run.  If an invisible bogie is fitted underneath the loco body it will run about quite happily on whatever track it might get placed on.  Of course this does tend to look very strange so it's not a great idea to do it.  Properly animated wheels set to the correct gauge are by and large a cosmetic thing intended to enhance realism, but don't have anything to do with how an engine runs on digital trackwork.

Sooooo, - yes you can run Broad Gauge engines on the 1930's Cornwall line just fine if you want to.

[Annie]

The worst thing I find about setting up a new computer is getting all the software I use to do texture work set up the way it was on my old computer.  

[Hroth]

9 hours ago, Annie said:

The worst thing I find about setting up a new computer is getting all the software I use to do texture work set up the way it was on my old computer.

 

Its a pity that most software doesn't allow the export/import of user settings, it would make the task of transferring from an old computer to a new one (or after having to reinstall the OS and user software for that matter!) far less stressful!

[Annie]

Being brought to a halt in the middle of doing something because a new software install is lacking something that I had installed on my old Win 7 computer is annoying to say the least.  At least I've been able to cast some of WIn 10's annoying 'enhancements' into the outer darkness where they rightly belong.  The first thing I did was install Open Shell so I could have a Win 7 desktop again which is a big improvement over that stupid arrangement that is inflicted on Win 10 users.  Next Cortana was dragged away in chains and thrown into a darksome dungeon where she will be imprisoned forever (Mwahah, ha ha......).

 

So bit by bit I'm licking 'Lesser Thoughts' into shape, but it's plain annoying to have to stop using a computer that was working well just because Microsoft decided to turn off security updates for Win 7.

[Annie]

Y14 No.564 with a load of logs from the forestry camp at Barrow Hills.  The woods there are dark and mysterious so the forestry workers must be brave men indeed.

 

I've been struggling all day with being sleepy and crashing out asleep so often I was starting to feel really annoyed about it.  Feeling better I decided to have a session with working and shunting the sidings at the big sawmill at Elgar Wood, but couldn't quite manage to shake off the last of the brain fog............... which led to me misjudging the Y14's braking distance with a heavy log train and running it's tender into the buffers at Elgar Wood yard and derailing it.  Derailments can't be fixed in Trainz so that left me with a Y14 without a tender which brought play to a close.  

 

 

In other news one of the members of the creator group I belong to has started to make some GER locomotives which has me feeling very excited.  

 

GER E10 Class

GER T26 (E4) Class

GER T19 (D13) Class

GER S44 (G4) Class

GER F48 (J16) Class

GER G58 (J17) Class

GER M15 (F5) Class

GER Y65 (F7) Class

 

Plainly he's not going to have that list done and dusted for a while so I will have to be patient.  The GER class M15 is going to be the first to be built and he told me that he's already done the wheels and will be working on the frames next.  I can't do 3D modelling for toffee, but I've been helping out by giving him useful texture files from my own modelling archives.

 

Photo credit: GER Society.

[Annie]

A snap taken while working on my layout.  This is the fairly spectacular river bridge on the E&GR's Grimwold branch.  I've tried more than once to take snaps here while driving trains and for some reason I've never been able to take a snap that looks any good.

 

 

 

[Annie]

More snaps.  I've been able to do a bit more texture work over the past couple of days which has been good.  I take things slow and don't try to rush and try not to get annoyed with myself when I discover I've been doing nothing but stare into empty space for the past ten minutes.

 

The Hopewood Tramway has owned one of these 2-4-0ST's for a while now, but theirs is fitted with double buffers because it does varied kinds of shunting jobs on the parts of the tramway that aren't under strict tramway regulations.

I've always liked these engine so I thought I'd kit a couple out to work on the E&GR doing the kind of jobs they were actually originally designed for.  I was going to paint them in E&GR green, but I ended up texturing them to match the Hopewood Tramway's 2-4-0ST.  Somehow to my mind an LNWR style livery just seems to suit them best.

 

 

For a good while now I've been trying to make up my mind whether or not to have bogie coaches on the E&GR.  Up until now the affiliated (imaginary) lines have been firmly in the 6 wheel coach only camp, but with the increasing traffic on the E&GR and with the E&GR expresses (actually they are semi-fast trains, but the E&GR calls them 'expresses') covering some very real distances now a coaching stock upgrade was needed.

 

For someone who doesn't model either the NER or the LNER I have an awful lot of those companies' rolling stock.  I've always like the look of NER coaches so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the E&GR's 6 wheel coaches are modified and re-textured NER coaches. 

I like the look of the 1904 arc roof bogie coaches, but at 49 feet they are longer than I want.  The 52 foot clerestories are out of the running for the same reason, but the D48 thirds and the D49 brake thirds seemed to be just what I wanted.  I can't remember how long they are, but they are shorter than 49 feet.  

With their shorter length and classic late 19th century appearance they are about the best fit for the E&GR.  The models themselves are fairly basic with a simple 'deceive the eye' method of representing panelling, but their texture work was not very good.  The greater majority of coaches on the layout are teak coaches with textures that have either been created from scratch by me or else reworked and enhanced so I had no fears about reworking these coaches into E&GR teak.

I put together 5 coaches in all, two D49 brake thirds in the later E&GR lettering style; two D48 thirds, - one in the earlier livery with company crests and the other with the later lettering style with no crests; - and a D48 third found itself upgraded to a D4? first in the early livery style.  I won't do any more than that for now.  The E&GR is really short on Carriage siding space so I'll have to do something about that before any more bogie coaches put in an appearance.  I do need to sort out some more 6 wheel luggage vans and composite coaches though so that should keep me quiet for a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by Annie
appalling spelling mistakes

[Annie]

I changed the bogies on the NER coaches to Fox bogies, but wouldn't you know it they had a different ride height.  So that meant that I would need to adjust the height position on the coach body mesh using my editing tool.  Doesn't sound like much does it?  BUT every coach has four stages of LOD which meant that there were four meshes per coach to adjust; - so all in all that's eight adjustments to be made for each coach.

It wasn't a difficult job, just tedious, - and now the number '0.499' is permanently etched into my memory.  

 

I am glad I did it though.  I prefer the Fox bogies to the NER ones, - and it allows for the possibly that the E&GR copied the NER designs rather than buying second hand. 

[Annie]

It rained for the first time in a month here.  Lovely steady rain that fell for the whole day.  With the way things are in Britain at the moment I guess the last thing you want to hear about is rain, but for me this was heaven.  The temperature was finally bearable for the first time in weeks and I felt really well and wasn't troubled by sleepiness the entire day.

 

Some snaps.

I had the inspection train out and about on the layout today.  This pretty little engine is perfect for examining the line since from its footplate I can see any faults with trackwork (or anything else) very clearly indeed.  It's a little pocket rocket though with phenomenal powers of acceleration.  I had its top speed dialled down to 25mph, but even so its ability to rapidly reach 25mph after a signal stop was downright unbelievable.  I think it has an engine spec that's just a wee bit too good for it so I think I'll have to look around for an engine spec that's more the right size for it.

 

 

 

And at the other end of the scale here's E&GR No. 04 shunting a train of wagons of casting sand at Great Mulling  (casting sand must be something that wizards use, so I guess it must be different to the ordinary sort of sand).

No. 04 usually works on the Grimwold mineral branch, but I wanted to see how useful it might be for trip working smaller consignments to Oakmarket and Great Mulling.