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

[Martin S-C]

It seems these railway staff are produced in a big factory sausage machine contraption thingy and merely cut off to length as required, like GW pannier tanks.

[Annie]

7 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

I'm intrigued as to why the two point levers on the left are the opposite way round, meaning they have to be operated with the signalman's back to the track , rather than facing the track?    

 

Jim

It's called me not noticing I'd got it wrong Jim.  Lovely accurate models of McKenzie & Holland levers they are too and I use them a lot on my digital model railways.

 

 

[Annie]

5 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

Great work as usual. The Barrow Hills signalman looks happy with his lot in life. Do the passengers animate/circulate? I see different ones in the two images of Tenpenny (great name BTW!)

Thanks Martin.  The passengers aren't animated, but they do circulate with the simulator changing them about every hour.

 

The model figures I use were made by a lovely older gentleman from the creator group I belong to and there was much discussion about them while they were still in the development stage.  While it's possible to make utterly lifelike figures the poly count is seriously terrible and they eat up a lot of computer memory as well.  I do have a few seriously nice model figures, but it's not a good idea to stand them close together in groups if you're not running something like my old Xeon workstation to play Trainz on.

The aim was with these new figures was to produce simple basic figures that would look Ok at a distance and not be resource hungry and by and large that aim has been achieved.  He made a large collection of various types of workman figures and men at work figures which were very much sorely needed as there'd been only about four Uk steam era workman figures available for a long time which made it a bit difficult to create any kind of believable scene around a goods yard & etc.

The signal man in the Barrow Hills signal box is from an even older batch of figures made back in TS2006 days so again he's a bit basic, but seen through the window at normal viewing distances he's Ok.  Signal boxes with no one in them don't inspired a lot of confidence when I'm out and about driving trains on my layouts.

[Annie]

7 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Wonderful scenic work Annie

Thanks very much James.  I'm finding now that I'm getting somewhere near the kind of scenes that I want to create on the layout even though some areas like the salt marsh looked like they weren't going to ever come right for far too long.

 

Some pictures.

 

A Y14 testing out the newly laid trackwork on the GCR-GER joint line.  At last the horrible TS2004 era track is GONE!

 

The scenery on the new M&GNR section is gradually getting there.  Getting rid of all the horrible  'painted cardboard' scenery splines made for the biggest improvement.  The trackwork is still a bit horrible in places though.

 

Compound!  Yes I know it's too late for the period of my layout, but fancied giving it a run and the 3 cylinder steam sound files for this engine are just sooooo nice.

 

 

And while on the subject of inappropriate engines this one got a run too.  When I first downloaded the layout this GNR Single driver couldn't stay on the track and would constantly derail so things are getting better since It made it from one end of the M&GNR section to the other just fine this morning.

 

 

A spot of random testing on the newly laid GCR-GER joint line.

Departure from Brenton Wood station which is the 'big' station on the line.

 

 

Valleyfields, - which is the original layout I took a slice out of when I put together the Hopewood & Windweather Tramway, - was conceived around a double track mainline designed for fast running so the GCR-CER joint line has the highest speed limit at 70mph of all the various lines on what is now quite a large and rambling layout.  Faux 2-4-0T M&GNR No.6 was doing 50mph with a 100 ton train when I clicked the shutter.  It wasn't half chewing through the coal though.

That background view looks a bit familiar.

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

After being knocked out asleep for hours and hours I needed a project to get my stupid fogged up brain thinking again.  Making new attachment points and then setting the wheels in the right position and at the right heights certainly did the trick, but it was a generally slow and frustrating exercise.

The new Hopewood Tramway No.5 will be mainly used on the Moxbury branch (That's the GER single track branchline that generally wanders over the landscape and mostly serves several small stations in the middle of nowhere.) as well as those parts of the Hopewood & Windweather Tramway that aren't under roadside running restrictions.  I gave No.5 a test run over the still horrible in places M&GNR line to see if everything was working properly and it was fine.

 

There's still things to do before I'll call No.5 complete and finished, but it does run very nicely in a not especially powerful kind of way, though once it has it's single driving wheel wound up it does get along fairly briskly.  The engine spec is basically a modified Terrier one so nothing startling there, but I did give No.5 a right shrieker of a whistle to make up for it.

Coal and water consumption seem to be very modest which is always a good thing.

 

 

Why did I do it you might ask? - well mostly because I can, - and also with the many pictures of small single driver tank engines appearing on the forum lately I thought I'd have a go as well.  When I purchased the original NSR class 'B' tank engine from Paul of Paulz Trainz he gave me a whole bundle of them for free so I guess I'll have to find a use for them all somewhere and somehow.

The backstory is that Hopewood Tramway purchased an old single driver engine for very little money and then had it rebuilt to resemble their No.4 2-4-0T tank engine which also had been purchased cheaply a year or so earlier from somewhere undefined and rebuilt.  I have a lovely clear image of an 1890's Beyer-Peacock makers plate that I'm thinking about using, but we shall see......

 

 

No.11 on a passenger service from Kings Lynn (portal).  It seemed somewhat audacious at the time to fit a bogie to one of my Sharpies and make a 4-4-2T out of it, but I have to report that the conversion has been entirely successful.

 

 

Decent tank engine cab interiors for Trainz are hard to find so my Sharpies use an LBSC one.  The steam gauge and the water glass are animated and display the correct levels according to how the game engine is actually working the locomotive.  The regulator, brake controls and reverser are animated too and function very convincingly.  The boiler pressure reading is a bit too high for a Sharpie, but that's because I'm using a Fowler 2P engine spec.  One day when I'm bored I might do a custom edit on the engine spec file and lower the boiler pressure, but otherwise the engine spec seems to suit the Sharpies very well making them useful, but not overpowered.

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

Another project is working on the teak 6 wheelers I did sometime ago and making a version without the Met type door vents.  This is old artwork I did ages ago for litho sides for tinplate coaches and I don't think I could manage to do something like this now.  I haven't got the door vents how I want them yet, but I feel I'm making progress.

 

[Martin S-C]

Anything with 3 axles is good - locos, coaches, sausage vans...

[Annie]

Shockingly sleepy, but here's some pictures of the bridge over the salt marsh.

 

 

 

[Annie]

I most probably spent as much time on this as I would one of my serious models.  There was some unexpected problem solving along the way when a stray artifact in the normal map laid a dark streak across the van's roof.  I hadn't struck something like that before and I spent too much time closely examining the van's texture before the penny dropped that it was the normal map that was doing it.

I will refrain from running a block train of 30 of these van to justify the time and effort put into it, but I will most probably make a No.1 van as well and that will be all that the van's owners can have to call their own.  Possibly these are very special crabs that are being transported, - hand reared by mermaids or something of the sort.

[Martin S-C]

My motto is railway modelling should be fun, first and foremost. If you are too serious I find it loses its appeal. I like this van, its so very obviously for humour that it's fine. No-one could mistake it for anything prototypical.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Martin S-C

[Annie]

Yes exactly that Martin.  This van is a bit of fun and along the way  with putting it together I learned some new things about making digital wagon textures.  I've already set up my Cromer fish trains to have a couple of these vans in the consist along with my very serious and correctly modelled GNR fish vans.  As you say it's all for fun.

I have further plans for the base van texture and with the sign writing removed and some alterations to the ironwork it will do nicely as a Windweather Tramway van.

 

Edit: I posted a picture of the Cromer Crab van in my wagon and coach building thread on the Trainz forums and everybody wants one.  Just a little bit of final checking and I'll be uploading it to the DLS.

'Nuvva Edit:  I'll have a go at a repair plate lettered as you suggested in the Castle Aching thread Martin.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Annie
more to say

[Martin S-C]

Ha! I would love to see that plate Annie.

[Annie]

Your wish is my command........

 

 

Essentially I adapted a real repair plate image I had to make this.  Since it's going to be reduced to about 10% of this size I didn't do anything fancy with it.  It should be reasonably readable on the completed model at that size though.

[Caley Jim]

Presumably 'Sideways sidings' were accessed via a wagon turntable, or perhaps a traverser!  

 

Jim

[Annie]

Sounds very likely Jim.

 

[Martin S-C]

Love it.

[Annie]

Considering I only put the single driver tank engine No.5 together as a bit of an experiment that I wasn't all that sure about I've quickly discovered that it's a completely useful and practical small engine.  With the engine spec it has the boiler pressure is only modest, but the boiler itself is surprisingly efficient and as a result No.5 is reasonably economical on coal and water usage.  Those six old 4 wheel coaches is about its limit, but since the countryside is by and large completely flat it does alright with them.  A little slow to get moving as it winds up it's driving wheel, but once under way No.5 gets along quite briskly.  All in all a success I'd say.

 

 

I was playing trains along the Hopewood Tramway tonight.  If that Bentley can't beat the train its owner will need to have sterns words with the Bentley agent he purchased it from.

 

 

Possibly having too much fun.  There was this horrid modern airfield in need of correction so I fixed it.  I think it's much better now.

 

 

 

And Steve Flanders has just released his digital model of the 'Great Eastern'.  I don't care if it's an anachronism as opinion seems to be that if the 'Great Eastern' had been used as intended by Burnell it most probably would have lasted into the early 1920s; - so I'm going with that theory.

Don't know what it's doing off the Norfolk coast though.

 

[Martin S-C]

Running aground probably!

[Annie]

I know Martin.  I had it following the sea route I laid down for my my small coastal trading vessels and it was a bit of a squeak in places along the buoy marked channel between the sandbanks.  If I'm going to use the model I'm going to have to place more layout boards down so I can make the ocean along the coast a lot wider so 'Great Eastern' would be sailing much further out to sea in deeper water.

[Annie]

More Great Eastern.  I've added on 7 more layout boards to the sea along the coast which is equivalent to three and a half miles by half a mile increase in the seascape on the layout.  Not hard to do, just mind numbingly tedious.  I have to say it does look a lot better now as the drop off into the Great Nothing is a lot less obvious from most of the usual viewpoints along the coast.  This means that I can give Great Eastern its own route further out to sea since it's presently using the sea route for the small coastal trading vessels on the layout which does look a bit odd at times.

Fun fact:  In Trainz ships can be setup as a 'locomotive' and they run on invisible tracks laid on the surface of the water.  I usually have a couple of trading schooners circulating while I'm playing trains and it certainly adds to the general feel of the scene to see them passing by.  Great Eastern though is enormous and it's a bit hair raising to see it move into the turn past the Hopewood on Sea promenade pier looking like it's about to knock a great chunk out of it as the bow swings around.

 

 

 

[Martin S-C]

I like that last image a lot, where the ship is starting to disappear in the distant haze.

[Edwardian]

I like this, Annie.  What a 'presence' the Great Eastern is, rather goose bump inducing.

 

I love the ornate pier in its desolation, suggesting an underdeveloped resort, which put me in mind of the West Norfolk's Wolfringham/Shepherd's Port, beloved of Nearholmer. 

 

The shot where the line runs out in the sand near the lighthouse made me think of the SER at Dungerness. 

 

Edited March 14, 2019 by Edwardian

[Annie]

Thanks James and Martin 

 

There's been others of the classic 'big ships' from the first third of the 20th century been made available for Trainz from time to time, but I never bothered with them.  However when Steve Flanders announced that he was building a digital model of the Great Eastern that really caught my interest and made me sit up and take notice..  He had quite a few annoying and irritating problems with it along the way, but the final result is really something.  It's not ultra detailed because it's intended to be a ship sailing past in the background kind of model, but that doesn't mean it's rough about the edges or anything.

I've given Great Eastern it's own sea route a bit further out to sea so now it does the disappearing and reappearing in the haze/sea mist thing very nicely indeed.  And I do know what you mean about the goose bump thing James as this ship has a very real presence on the water. 

 

Yes I tried to do a mini-Dungerness kind of thing with the lighthouse spit James and I'm pleased with how it turned out.  For such a simple seeming piece of scenic modelling it actually took a lot of work with getting the details with sand and gravel textures right before it all came together.  A forum member at NGRM who lives on the Norfolk coast gave me a lot of advice about sand and shingle progression along the coast as well as what the local geology along the coast is like and that was a big help.

 

And yes James I'm please with your comment about Hopewood on Sea having the appearance of an underdeveloped resort because that was exactly what I was aiming for.  Great hopes that didn't quite come to fruition.  Hopewood on Sea still sees a good amount of daytripper traffic during Summer, but nothing like what was hoped for and the grand hotel that was planned for Hopewood on Sea  by the town worthies was never built due to lack of money.

Winkle Bay further along the coast on the Windweather Tramway section was also a place where great hopes were raised for a resort, but there things never got off the ground at all and it remains as a bleak section of the coast with a small station halt, fishermen's shacks and old abandoned dinghies rotting in the shingle.

 

[Annie]

 

So Massingham......  https://maps.nls.uk/view/120847949

 

I know you've said there is a WNR connection to the M&GNJR somewhere near Massingham James and now that I've actually got the M&GNJR section on my layout running properly so the trains behave themselves and don't bump into each other I've started to think about the WNR and its relationship to the M&GNJR.  The part of the layout that has the M&GNJR line to Melton Constable as well as the GER line to Hunstanton is a bit strange in that the original layout builder entirely did away with the considerable amount of Norfolk separating the two lines and they are actually physically quite close together with a good deal of scenic fudging providing a visual separation.   The WNR would be somewhere in the narrow band of landscape between the two lines of railway, but this wouldn't be too much of a problem as I can use portals to represent the WNR itself and only model the junction connections. 

The lines to Wells, Cromer, Great Yarmouth and Norwich City and Kings Lynn are represented by portals and now that I've mastered the esoteric digital magic involved in making portals accept trains as well as generate numbers of trains assembled into the formations I want my fear of this mystery has lessened to the point where I'm using this technology on other parts of my huge rambling layout such as the GCR-GER double track main line on the original Valleyfields section.

I had a look for a map of the WNR in your Castle Aching thread, but couldn't find one, but that could just be because I'm sleepy and my brain was being extra dumb.  If you do have a map James could you post it here and I'll start to think about how to go about laying in a WNR connection.  I know there is one as well to the GER near Wolferton, but I haven't done a great deal of work on the GER line to Hunstation yet apart from annihilating anything that didn't fit the pre-grouping era. 

 

A map showing the parts of the GER and M&GNJR represented on my layout.

Edited March 14, 2019 by Annie
more to say and added a map

[Edwardian]

Mapping the WN is well overdue.  I must tackle this without further delay!