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

[Annie]

Wow! That's brilliant Northroader.  I was vaguely aware of the Wiki page going on in the background while I was taking a break, but I hadn't taken a look at the project until just now.  My wits are still a bit scattered at the moment, but I'll see if I can make some kind of a start on sketching out a basic history of my little railway empire.

[Northroader]

Don’t blame me, but I do like the idea. It’s Gary (Blue Lightning’s site) but he’s very coy about who put him up to it. I wouldn’t say anything about stuff painted red, though. Looklng forward to your additions.

[BlueLightning]

and coy I shall stay, not my place to "out" them, and I'm not they they would want to be revealed, although a fair few people do know who it was. The site had approval of a few of the main contributors before it happened, but I am very happy with it, and so far it seems to work, so I am also feeling quite proud!

[runs as required]

Hi Annie

Thanks for your post. Streuth! I think you antipodeans say

this pre-grouping cotner of the Web is becoming more and more a tangle of parallel universe virtual  worlds!

I misread your post and rather enjoyed a Demonic Black Goods

I think it should storm through the night being thrashed to make up time

dh

 

[Annie]

Yes I can just imagine it, - all dark & stormy night, - and sparks and hot coals being blasted from the chimney.

 

Don't worry I'm fine, - I just hit a bad patch with my symptoms and my mood kept wanting to slip off and fall into a pit full of black dogs.  I'm gradually coming right, - just a bit foggy brained and sleepy so I can't concentrate on anything all that well.

[sem34090]

Not strictly pre-grouping (the second one definitely isn't!) but some more DTG Sim screenshots...

 

[Annie]

I'm still very sleepy and spending a lot of hours each day asleep so I'm not doing much.

Perhaps I should try something different to refresh my mind a little so I don't end up staring at my sprawling railway empire and just wanting to go back to bed again because it's all so daunting

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

53 minutes ago, Annie said:

I'm still very sleepy and spending a lot of hours each day asleep so I'm not doing much.

Perhaps I should try something different to refresh my mind a little so I don't end up staring at my sprawling railway empire and just wanting to go back to bed again because it's all so daunting

 

Aah, the old country. 

[Annie]

Tonight I played around with an interpretation of the Leadhills branch if it had survived into BR days, though managed to get myself horribly confused over the session timetabling and ended up with a traffic snarl up on the mainline, but it was still a bit of fun all the same.  The layout is not mine by the way and it has excellent scenic work with the landscape stretching for a couple miles either side of the railway lines so it gives a wonderful impression of the railway being a small part of the landscape rather than dominating it.

Please excuse the sight of BR era locomotives and rolling stock.

 

The simulator said the 8F had 973 tons on the drawbar, - and oh the sound of the locomotive working hard was just so delightful and was music to my ears.

 

 

 

 

The 9F Standard was in preservation condition, but decent 9F models are a bit thin on the ground so I guess that's why it was used.  All the engines and rolling stock on this layout are as it came out of the box and I haven't changed anything, - yet.  Eventually it would be nice to take it back to Caley times, but for the meantime I just play trains on it when I want a change of scene.

 

[sem34090]

As  you have seen from my most recent TS screenshots, occasionally ones needs to escape from pre-groupingism and into modernity (this is 1962, right?! What do you mean by 2019? Next you'll say they claim they've put men on the moon! ).

 

Nice shots, and glad to see you're gradually coming back.  

[Edwardian]

7 hours ago, Annie said:

I'm still very sleepy and spending a lot of hours each day asleep so I'm not doing much.

Perhaps I should try something different to refresh my mind a little so I don't end up staring at my sprawling railway empire and just wanting to go back to bed again because it's all so daunting

 

 

Always brings a little light into our lives when you start posting again.

 

One possible source of mental refreshment could be in the penning of Achipedia Entries.  I have found that creating a basic entry has not been too difficult, then I return to it and add further dribblings from my fevered imagination as and when the fit takes me, but it's easier for having made a start.  

[Annie]

Thanks very much for your kind comments Sem and James.  I should give some thought to mapping out the histories of the various small lines of my sprawling empire that ended up combined and patchworked together under the GER's umbrella.  Possibly taking them one at a time might be less daunting than trying to write the whole history in one go.

 

Apart from what you see on the Leadhills layout I actually also have a lot of early BR (BRITISH RAILWAYS) era engines and rolling stock suitable for the Scottish border country.  If I get motivated enough one day I might change the later period BR stock on Leadhills over for my early era stuff.  Despite my strong pre-grouping leanings I do find the early BR era interesting and I even have a border country layout that I've done a lot of work on set in this time period.  Possibly I should dust that off to help me get my motivation back since it's about 95% finished and fully operational.  Ex-WD 2-10-0's on long coal trains feature significantly.

 

I'm still sleepy and randomly dropping into microsleeps, but at least I'm starting to feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel even if I can't see it sometimes.  I'm not much good at following what's happening on the pre-group forum at the moment, but I will make the effort to check in from time to time even if some of the pictures I'll be posting aren't exactly pre-grouping ones.

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

Tonight I played around with an interpretation of the Leadhills branch if it had survived into BR days, though managed to get myself horribly confused over the session timetabling and ended up with a traffic snarl up on the mainline, but it was still a bit of fun all the same.  The layout is not mine by the way and it has excellent scenic work with the landscape stretching for a couple miles either side of the railway lines so it gives a wonderful impression of the railway being a small part of the landscape rather than dominating it.

Please excuse the sight of BR era locomotives and rolling stock.

 

The simulator said the 8F had 973 tons on the drawbar, - and oh the sound of the locomotive working hard was just so delightful and was music to my ears.

 

 

 

 

The 9F Standard was in preservation condition, but decent 9F models are a bit thin on the ground so I guess that's why it was used.  All the engines and rolling stock on this layout are as it came out of the box and I haven't changed anything, - yet.  Eventually it would be nice to take it back to Caley times, but for the meantime I just play trains on it when I want a change of scene.

 

Looks more like the WCML near here to me!  The 8F is going past the site of Wandelmill signal box, a few miles from where I sit.   It was no more than a block post to break the section between Lammington and Abington.  The A702 Edinburgh to Abington road, which passes through Biggar here, is in the background of the second photo.  Not sure about the station, but could be Elvanfoot, which was the junction for the Leadhills and Wanlochhead Light Railway.

Jim

[Martin S-C]

Wasn't the Leadhills branch in Scotland? South-central area? I think I have a collection of maps of the line when I was looking for another route to build in MSTS about, oooh, 15 years or more back.

[Caley Jim]

4 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Wasn't the Leadhills branch in Scotland? South-central area? I think I have a collection of maps of the line when I was looking for another route to build in MSTS about, oooh, 15 years or more back.

As I mentioned on my post above, the Leadhills branch left the WCMl at Elvanfoot, just north of Beattock Summit, and ran to Leadhills and Wanlockhead in the Lowther Hills, the latter being the highest village in Scotland.  It's main purpose was to take the products of the lead mining industry in the area.  There is a lead mining museum at Wanlockhead and a narrow gauge railway now runs on the upper part of the route.  The branch was operated by the Caledonian Railway and was closed by the LMS on 2nd January 1939. 

 

There is a self-published history of the line by Alistair Ireland ISBN 0 9516271 1 2, published in 1990 and revised 1996, but it doesn't appear on any web search, so may be out of print..

 

Jim

[Martin S-C]

Cheers, its is the line I was thinking of, quite steeply graded IIRC.

[Annie]

4 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Looks more like the WCML near here to me!  The 8F is going past the site of Wandelmill signal box, a few miles from where I sit.   It was no more than a block post to break the section between Lammington and Abington.  The A702 Edinburgh to Abington road, which passes through Biggar here, is in the background of the second photo.  Not sure about the station, but could be Elvanfoot, which was the junction for the Leadhills and Wanlochhead Light Railway.

Jim

 Yes the station is Elvanfoot Jim and the 8F was running on the WCML .  From the layout builder's description and notes about the layout it looks like he was very familiar with the area and spent some time there.

I was just messing around on the mainline this running session and didn't do anything along the branch to Wanlockhead.  The mainline section ends at portals at each end and it would be no longer than a mile in length altogether.  I was attempting to sort out the portals because they were sending trains through too frequently which made it impossible for trains from the branch to access the station.  The fact that the signalling didn't seem to be working properly wasn't helping either.

[corneliuslundie]

I seem to remember a post or two somewhere about the preserved line on the Leadhills branch - or was it something in a magazine?

Jonathan

[Caley Jim]

18 hours ago, Annie said:

 ....... The mainline section ends at portals at each end and it would be no longer than a mile in length altogether. ...

Might not be at Wandelmill then as that is some 7-8 miles north of Elvanfoot.  Much of the countryside around there is all very similar.

 

Jim

[Northroader]

May I just pick the brains of folks who can manipulate this virtual stuff, please? Is the programme you’re using called Train Simulator, and if so you just buy it and do a download? Im just interested in things like the goods wagons Annie’s popping out, rather than driving trains along a network.

[Annie]

The simulator I use is called Trainz Railroad Simulator.  And you can purchase it here as a digital download: -  http://www.trainzportal.com/product/pc

 

There are a number of versions with the latest being TS2019, but I will warn you that there are some problems with TS2019 that are supposed to be attended to in the next update.  I do use TS2019, but mostly to run older layouts and models to take advantage of the new 64 bit game engine and graphics engine & etc.  By doing that I've largely avoided most of the issues some Trainz folk are having.

All my rolling stock models are made in the older TS2012 version of the simulator and they work just fine in the later versions.  Making models specifically for the later versions is a lot more difficult, - especially the latest TS2019 version, - which has more than a few of the older long time creators of Trainz models up in arms.

 

To basically dip your toe in the water and see what it's like I'd advise that you go for the TS2012 version which is still available and does exactly what it says on the tin.  A lot of models have been made that will work in this simulator and a lot of content creators like me are still making models for TS2012 since the later simulators are harder to work with.

I will warn you though that the bundled content and routes that come with TS2012 are pretty cruddy choices (in my opinion) if you're wanting Uk content.

TS2012 does have some problems that were never fixed like odd pauses when the simulator is running, but the later versions have a lot of bugs too and people were very upset when the bug fixes caused yet more problems.

 

Hope this helps and if you have more questions just ask.

[sem34090]

I should add that there are two sims referred to as TS2019 - One being Train Simulator 2019 (made by Dovetail Games and is the one I use) and the other being Trainz Simulator 2019 and it is the latter to which Annie refers.

[Northroader]

..and there’s a train sim, and a windows download, and an Apple download, and a American one I cant even get the train going, which I don’t really want to do anyway, and...arrgh!

[Annie]

Which one did you end up buying Northroader?

[Northroader]

I haven’t bought anything yet, I did a free download (Apple version, cos that’s what I’m on, not windows)  for a Train Simulator 2015 North American thingy, which is nothing like what I want.

add: the piece of kit I’m trying to get into is going on about Microsoft Games/ Train Simulator.?

thanks for your interest, but there’s a gap in my capabilities.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Northroader