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

[Annie]

Rant warning!  Everytime I try and search for anything to do with the Great Western Railway on Google I get webpages about some modern error interloper company that has claimed the name despite not being worthy to clean the toilets at even the most minor station on the most minor branchline of the pre-grouping era GWR.  It doesn't matter if I use 1880 or any other year as a keyword there the nasty striped toothpaste tube objects are squatting on the rails like some reject set prop from Star Wars.

 

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

 

 

[Annie]

Something nice to calm my nerves and cool my anger.  'Corsair' on the original TS2004 version of the 1892 Minehead Branch route, - 'Turks Castle'.

 

 

 

Edit:  And something else nice, I asked Steve Flanders who made most of the Broad Gauge models I use about the peaked station over roofs that were a feature of many pre-group era GWR stations and he said that he should be able to sort something out as he agreed with me that it was something that was very much needed..

 

Steve is looking for good clear drawings of the original Broad Gauge station at Reading so if you know of anything he'd be very grateful.  The drawing that is published in some GWR books is too low resolution to be useful just in case you were thinking of those.

Edited August 23, 2019 by Annie
more to say

[sem34090]

Don't worry, even superior companies (to the GWR) suffer the same fate...  

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBGB820GB820&biw=1366&bih=657&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=LAJgXbDpJ6ii1fAPnuqDoAs&q=southern+railway&oq=southern+railway&gs_l=img.3..35i39l2j0l8.3715.6464..6794...2.0..0.114.1403.17j1......0....1..gws-wiz-img.......0i67j0i10i24.V_QGZ6n9ozw&ved=0ahUKEwiwr7fJo5nkAhUoURUIHR71ALQQ4dUDCAY&uact=5

 

[Annie]

What a pack of idiots.  Fair enough if they want to be a daft shower who can't run a railway, but why besmirch the names of the real historical railways while doing it. 

[Schooner]

On 23/08/2019 at 10:15, Annie said:

...and deleted about a third of Truro which cheered me up a lot.

You and me both

 

Your post brought a smile (as does your modelling) as I found myself being conveyed through the above, 'courtesy' of...

On 23/08/2019 at 15:27, Annie said:

...some modern error interloper company that has claimed the name despite not being worthy to clean the toilets at even the most minor station on the most minor branchline of the pre-grouping era GWR...

...this afternoon.

 

Keep up the good fight

 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Schooner
Phone induced multi-quote fail, rectified 25th August

[Northroader]

If you’re after Brunel overall station roofs, the one at Frome is still there. Its just a double track width, so not as big as some. Anyhow, I’m pottering off tomorrow on that railway you don’t like for a week’s holiday down west.

[Annie]

 

 

Very nice.  Thank you for telling me about Frome Northroader.  How did BR miss not knocking that down and putting up some horrible bus shelter thing in its place.  Nice to read that it's a listed building too.  

It is a bit unusual too in the the post grouping GWR had a station rebuilding program in the 1930s and many of the old Brunel era stations got demolished and replaced as happened at Truro and elsewhere.

There's a lot of detail in the Wikipedia pictures that will be very useful too, but it would have been better if they'd waited for the icky DMU to leave before clicking the shutter on one of the pictures.

 

There's some pictures around of Frome station before it got any love and it looks very woebegone so it's a wonder some BR cretin penpusher didn't have it demolished like so many other early 19th century stations were.

 

[Annie]

WIP snap of the Brunel viaduct I'm installing at Truro.  This is a model based on the one that was at Moorswater which was classified by the Cornwall Railway as a Class 'D' whereas the viaduct at Truro was a Class 'A'.  The difference being that a Class 'D' has two struts per span and continuous laminated wooden beams above the stone piers and a Class 'A' has three struts and no continuous beams.  It's still recognisably a Brunel viaduct though even if it's the wrong type, but most people wouldn't know the difference anyway (except you lot because I've just told you).

 

 

The Brunel Viaduct at Truro.

 

 

It was while I was fitting the viaduct into place after deleting the stone viaduct that was there before that I discovered just how tightly Bob Cooper packed his trees together while modelling the town.  Trees take up a lot of computer memory and with the way they were all jammed together with hardly any space between the trunks I could see the reason why the frame rates were so poor whenever I've run trains on this layout.

I still have a bit of house and street deleting to do around the viaduct and a lot of the trees will be going too since there's just too many of them.  I've found a few 1870s pictures of the area around the viaduct as well as the nearby Carvedras tin smelting works and church so I should be able to make this area look a lot better.

 

Edit: The Moorswater viaduct.  I got to know this particular picture fairly well when I was trying to replicate the Looe branch and failed miserably.

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Annie
More information

[Annie]

The devastation of Truro continueth ......  I was thinning out some of the mass packed trees and I thought my cordless mouse's battery had gone flat and it wasn't working, - but it was!  The trees were so densely packed together that I was deleting them and I couldn't see any difference.  No wonder my graphics card has trouble trying to render anything in this area, - the memory hit must be enormous!  And while my graphics card is a step or two behind the current technology it's still considered to be a good graphics card by today's standards.

 

Everyone who builds layouts in Trainz knows about 'fudging it with trees'.  That's for an example where say a building isn't quite right, but its roof line looks Ok and maybe one end of it is acceptable so a few trees are placed to mask the bits that don't pass muster so well.  Notice that I said a 'few trees', - not hundreds packed together tighter than the trees in Mirkwood!

[Annie]

Don't you just love it when maps cut a town in half.  Anyway I have roughly patchworked the area I'm working on together.  It's a slightly big BMP file so it might be slow to load if you want to click into it for a closer look.

Basically Truro in the late 1870's- early 1880's was still clustered over by the river which is off the map (and off the layout too) on the right hand side.  Everything on the left hand side of the railway and the viaduct is open fields with only small number of what I would guess are farmhouses and rural buildings scattered widely.  The modern town straddled off along St. Georges Road away to the left after clustering around the railway station and yard.  Looking at a modern map (briefly and with great care) I can see that Bob Cooper has copied the modern town and not the town shown on the 1930's OS map.  He does say in his notes that he made use of Google Earth which is always going to lead any researcher into the past astray if they aren't careful.  What this means of course is acres more house and street deleting has to be done and by the time I'm finished there might be only a quarter of Truro left to search for the taint of modernity and bring to a state of correction.

 

There is an old large cemetary on the 1880 OS map (up towards the left middle part that isn't there) and I did find it on the layout while cutting my way through the trees.  By my reckoning it's in the wrong place, but since it's going to be surrounded by open countryside once I've finished removing the rest of the modern town I'm going to leave it.  I don't want to get into trouble for disturbing the digital dead and besides if I moved it (so much work!) I'd only end up with a cemetary that's still in the open countryside in a slightly different background area of the layout so I wouldn't gain anything.

 

[Edwardian]

5 minutes ago, Annie said:

Don't you just love it when maps cut a town in half.  Anyway I have roughly patchworked the area I'm working on together.  It's a slightly big BMP file so it might be slow to load if you want to click into it for a closer look.

Basically Truro in the late 1870's- early 1880's was still clustered over by the river which is off the map (and off the layout too) on the right hand side.  Everything on the left hand side of the railway and the viaduct is open fields with only small number of what I would guess are farmhouses and rural buildings scattered widely.  The modern town straddled off along St. Georges Road away to the left after clustering around the railway station and yard.  Looking at a modern map (briefly and with great care) I can see that Bob Cooper has copied the modern town and not the town shown on the 1930's OS map.  He does say in his notes that he made use of Google Earth which is always going to lead any researcher into the past astray if they aren't careful.  What this means of course is acres more house and street deleting has to be done and by the time I'm finished there might be only a quarter of Truro left to search for the taint of modernity and bring to a state of correction.

 

There is an old large cemetary on the 1880 OS map (up towards the left middle part that isn't there) and I did find it on the layout while cutting my way through the trees.  By my reckoning it's in the wrong place, but since it's going to be surrounded by open countryside once I've finished removing the rest of the modern town I'm going to leave it.  I don't want to get into trouble for disturbing the digital dead and besides if I moved it (so much work!) I'd only end up with a cemetary that's still in the open countryside in a slightly different background area of the layout so I wouldn't gain anything.

 

 

Go for it, Annie.

 

The Brunel timber viaduct looks superb, and I commend your digital demolitions.

 

Look forward to the back-dated Truro in all its broad glory.

[Annie]

Thanks James.  Considering when I started I'd only changed all the track on the original layout to BG just for a bit of amusement, but somehow the more I looked at it the more I found myself disagreeing with what the original layout builder had done.  And somehow it all just ran away from there.  

[Edwardian]

21 minutes ago, Annie said:

Thanks James.  Considering when I started I'd only changed all the track on the original layout to BG just for a bit of amusement, but somehow the more I looked at it the more I found myself disagreeing with what the original layout builder had done.  And somehow it all just ran away from there.  

 

It'll be worth the effort, and I am enjoying the fruits of your research in terms of the old maps and photos that you and Northroader are coming up with, so it's a fascinating line for the topic to take.

[Annie]

As much as my imaginary tramways & etc are all good fun I've had an urge to do something involving the Broad Gauge for a long time.  I came close with the Looe branch and the Liskeard & Looe and the Liskeard &  Caradon, but I didn't really know what I was doing and how to properly fit a prototype railway into the landscape so it all ended in frustration.

Hopefully now with a lot more experience under my belt I'll make a better job of it this time around. 

[Annie]

Sharpies get everywhere.  No please, - I know you're all horrified, - but there is a good reason for me assembling a Broad Gauge 'Sharpie'.  My 'Sharpies' are much modified and fettled for reliable running and they track very well over all manner of track configurations and I wanted an engine that I knew well to be my testing engine as work on the layout proceeds.  So I put this little inspection train together; - and six wheel coaches are very good for detecting track problems even in the digital world.  Just to make it proper and official my 'Sharpie' has a Cornwall Railway monogram on its bunker sides, - mostly because I found one on-line and it was a shame to waste it.

I particularly wanted to check out the section of the layout that has the line to Camborne just so I'd know what I was up against.  Truro to Falmouth is my main concern at the moment and the line to Camborne will get its turn after that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The good news is that the trackbed is very good so when it comes to sorting out the trackwork properly I shouldn't have any problems.  The signaling is a mess and makes no sense, but I sort of knew that already.  Most of the line passes through a rural landscape so mostly all that needs doing is cutting back all the shrubs and trees that are too close to the track so it looks like a pre-grouping line and not something from the BR dismal error.  The stations and yards are in the main not good at all, but they are going to be all rebuilt anyway so that doesn't really matter.  Towns?  There's nothing much at all at Chasewater, but Redruth and Camborne look like they could become another Truro exercise (oh joy!).  Otherwise it will be changing out buildings that are too modern for Victorian era ones which shouldn't be difficult, just tedious.

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Annie
Added Cornwall Rly Monogram

[Annie]

A friend on the Auran/N3V forum did this for me.

 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Annie
fumble brain

[Annie]

Nothing to do with the Cornwall Railway, but here's a nice Broad Gauge photograph to start off the day.

 

 

A member of the creator group I belong to pointed out that there was an older model of Frome Station for Trainz so I went and downloaded it and was slightly horrified by it.  BUT I am presently working on it and doing my best to improve its textures.  Pictures later once I'm happy with it.

It might get temporarily used at Truro as a placeholder until Steve Flanders can send me the over roof parts he's working on.  He asked me to be his beta tester for the over roofs so I'm feeling pretty excited about that (yes I know I don't get out much).

[Annie]

Unfortunately a somewhat blurry photo, but this was taken during the vandalism change of gauge conversion at Truro.  Interesting because it shows the BG era signal box with what looks like a water tank on the other side of it and a corner of the goods shed.  It's noticeable that the signalman standing in the doorway of his signal box seems to be holding his head in despair.

 

[Annie]

Broad Gauge Society interactive map link  http://www.broadgauge.org.uk/history/bg_gauge_map.html

 

Show very nicely all the railways using the Broad Gauge on a sliding time scale.  Gets a bit tragic the closer you get to 1890 though  

[RedGemAlchemist]

3 hours ago, Annie said:

Nothing to do with the Cornwall Railway, but here's a nice Broad Gauge photograph to start off the day.

 

 

A member of the creator group I belong to pointed out that there was an older model of Frome Station for Trainz so I went and downloaded it and was slightly horrified by it.  BUT I am presently working on it and doing my best to improve its textures.  Pictures later once I'm happy with it.

It might get temporarily used at Truro as a placeholder until Steve Flanders can send me the over roof parts he's working on.  He asked me to be his beta tester for the over roofs so I'm feeling pretty excited about that (yes I know I don't get out much).

Very nice. Don't see many 4-4-0 saddle tanks. 

[Annie]

You did on the Broad Gauge Red.  There were several different classes of them.

 

[Annie]

Aaarrgh! - coming up for air.  The devastation of Truro continues, but it's like there is no end to it.  The area to the left of the viaduct and above St. Georges Road is chock full of houses, roads and buildings that should not be there.  It's plain the original layout builder was working off Google earth images because apart from a small housing development next to the viaduct there should be nothing but open fields if the layout was supposed to set in the 1930s as he claimed.  And the amount of detailing he put into all is strange because he covered up a lot of it with trees. 

 

When I started this I was lucky to be getting 7-10 frames per second in surveyor in the Truro area and when I left off for a break just now I was getting 35 frames per second.  I know that sounds like geek speak, but the difference in memory loading on my computer is very noticeable and it's making it a lot easier to work on this part of the layout.  (Poor 'Deeper Thought' I work you so hard sometimes)

 

You can see the cemetery in this screenshot.  It should be right up by the edge of the layout.  I think I know how to move it in one piece using a copy and pasting technique in surveyor and I'll give that a try.

 

 

The cathedral is in the wrong place by about a third of a mile and even if it was in the right place (well off the layout) the time period I'm aiming for is before the cathedral was built.   The cleared patch was home to some buildings that don't match anything on the OS maps.  I only checked as far as the 1930 map after steeling my nerves against the horrors of Churchwardism and I certainly wasn't going to look at any 21st century maps seething with the taint of modernism.

Almost this whole area above St. Georges Road and to the right of the viaduct needs to be open fields with a farm and tree nursery up by the top edge beside the viaduct.  The edge of the old town will be at the far right.

 

 

I don't drink anymore due to having narcolepsy, but I couldn't half go a pint of Guinness at the moment. 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Annie
fumble brain

[Edwardian]

Fascinating, Annie.

 

I suppose, were the cathedral in the right place, hence on scene,  you could model the foundations!

 

I realised that i knew nothing about Truro Cathedral until now, the first Anglican new-build cathedral since 1220!

 

Wiki Page

[RedGemAlchemist]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

I don't drink anymore due to having narcolepsy, but I couldn't half go a pint of Guinness at the moment.

Try non-alcoholic Kopparberg cider if you can get it in your part of the world. It's awesome. 

[Annie]

4 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Fascinating, Annie.

 

I suppose, were the cathedral in the right place, hence on scene,  you could model the foundations!

 

I realised that i knew nothing about Truro Cathedral until now, the first Anglican new-build cathedral since 1220!

 

Wiki Page

Yes the foundations would be a possibility if it had been in the right place, but fortunately the whole question of the cathedral is not something I have to worry about.  I can understand why the original layout builder squeezed it in so as to have an unmistakable Truro landmark, but its presence throws everything out with trying to get the old town mapped out correctly.

 

I'm glad to say that the devastation of Truro is over or at least for now.  As you can see the town has buildings in it wouldn't be correct even for the 1930's in Cornwall.  They will get demolished soon enough, but for the meantime I'm going to leave the town alone and work on getting the viaduct aligned correctly and the station and station yard sorted out.

The cemetery can be seen at the top of the picture in its new position.  I may need to adjust it about a bit, but that's not difficult to do now that I know how to cut and paste sections of scenery.  I'd like to find out a bit more about it so I can generally scenic the area properly and make sure that the boundary walls are a reasonable match.