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

[corneliuslundie]

There is a very similar shunting horse for MSTS. It appeared with one of the free routes for use on the Wisbeach Tramway. Same issue about needing tracks though. I have never investigated his works but I assume he is just a locomotive in disguise.

Jonathan

[Annie]

Essentially the horse is just a horse model standing on top of a short invisible motorised bogie.  When the shunting horse was first made available there were a lot of modifications of it made including having it draw carts and other such horse drawn vehicles on roadways.  After a while interest died off and I haven't seen any discussions about the shunting horse for a very long time.

Mostly I need the horse to shunt wagons on and off the wagon turntable rather than having the wagon turntable sitting like a decoration in the station yard.  No doubt as I get used to it I'll find it handy for other jobs as well and more invisible access tracks might get laid in the goods yard.

[Compound2632]

I do like the fiddling around to get better wagons. I don't know much about broad gauge wagons but from my knowledge of standard gauge GW red wagons, I'd say the solebars and headstocks should be red too. Not sure about the ironwork below the solebars - bit of a moot point; of course they were grey when GW wagons were grey in the 20th century but it's anybody's guess if that means they were red in the red period.

 

You set me off looking for shunting horses - I rather like this example of Hull & Barnsley motive power.

 

New Street station pilot, on hand for when your Webb compound won't start.

 

Last shunting horse at Paddington, 1925.

 

The Midland railway had twice as many horses as locomotives - not all used for shunting by any means:

 

 

NRM DY 9123, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

 

 I should think this 2:1 ratio of flesh-and-blood to iron horses would be typical of any large company handling its own delivery and collection cartage services. (The Caledonian contracted this to Pickfords, I believe.)

Edited September 30, 2019 by Compound2632

[Edwardian]

19 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

The Midland railway had twice as many horses as locomotives - not all used for shunting by any means:

 

 

That was due, no doubt, to the need to place two horses on each duty, the result of the Midland's notorious "small horse policy".

[Compound2632]

Just now, Edwardian said:

 

That was due, no doubt, to the need to place two horses on each duty, the result of the Midland's notorious "small horse policy".

 

Ha ha. I refer you to the photo above. Note the superb finish too - not the result of numerous coats of varnish, I hope. 

[Caley Jim]

21 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

........(The Caledonian contracted this to Pickfords, I believe.)

It was actually Wordie & Co (maybe they became part of Pickfords).  Their flatbed carts had their name on the back and ' Caledonian Railway ' along the sides. 

 

Jim 

[Annie]

52 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I do like the fiddling around to get better wagons. I don't know much about broad gauge wagons but from my knowledge of standard gauge GW red wagons, I'd say the solebars and headstocks should be red too. Not sure about the ironwork below the solebars - bit of a moot point; of course they were grey when GW wagons were grey in the 20th century but it's anybody's guess if that means they were red in the red period.

The wagons are still very much a work in progress.  I'm pleased with the improvements so far and I don't think it would be too difficult to do the solebars, headstocks and ironwork red as well.  The wagons certainly were a sorry lot when I first got them, but ever the cheerful optimist I thought I might be able to do something with them.

I have a lot of early wagons that are good models by Steve Flanders, but that's because the early period is well documented, but at a certain point in history most of the Broad Gauge records just seem to have disappeared.  I would imagine your guess is as good as mine when it comes to which parts of a red wagon were red.  I'll have an experiment and if I like the result they can stay like that.  Since it's my own representation of what now is distant history I guess I have the casting vote.

 

Thanks for the excellent links to pictures of shunting horses by the way.

Edited September 30, 2019 by Annie
more to say

[Annie]

57 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The Midland railway had twice as many horses as locomotives - not all used for shunting by any means:

 

 

NRM DY 9123, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

 

 I should think this 2:1 ratio of flesh-and-blood to iron horses would be typical of any large company handling its own delivery and collection cartage services. (The Caledonian contracted this to Pickfords, I believe.)

I have various static scenery models of GWR horse drawn vehicles that I will be putting about the place once the townscape modelling is a bit further advanced.

[Annie]

 

Everytime I open Paint.NET I seem to learn something new.  I'm very pleased with how I was able to match all the separate red pieces together, - which was made a little more difficult by the body mesh having slightly different diffuse, ambient and specular effects for each of them so I had to adjust those on the mesh as well.

Now I just need to do the same to the other three goods wagons, but that will be easier now that I've done this one.

 

All is not happiness and light though.  Take a look at the left hand leaf spring.  It wasn't until I changed the solebars to red that I noticed it.  I'm fairly used to slipshod work from this supposedly 'professional' digital modeller, but that takes the cake.  I can't be bothered asking him to fix it after he messed up the other work he did for me so if I'd been thinking about never buying anything from him ever again my mind is now very firmly made up.

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Annie
punctuation failure

[Compound2632]

Different perceived shade from surfaces of different materials is spot on - reflecting (if you will pardon the pun) what one often sees in photos of wagons that have been in traffic for a while. Your rogue digital modeller has obviously never thought about how a real wagon actually works. Quite apart from the weird Monopoly-house axleboxes, what does he think the springs actually do? And what anti-gravity magic stops those brake blocks from trailing along the ground? 

[Annie]

Thanks Compound.  That's what I was aiming for. - the look of a wagon that's been in service for a while.

The one plank wagon will now unfortunately be going in the bin since there's nothing I can do with it, but at least the lettering texture masks I made can be used on other models.

Even though the other wagons are rough in their details and their brake gear and axleboxes are very much a case in point, - I'll carry on with retexturing them so at least they look adequate enough at normal viewing distances.

 

The only reason Paul of Paulz Trainz has survived so long is because he made models nobody else had made so it was a case of his models or nothing.  As time has gone on though people have made better models of a good many of the engines and rolling stock in his catalogue so he's being increasingly left with less to offer.

Surprisingly some of his stuff is quite good.  I really like his mid-19th century models, but they all came from a large commision by a fussy client so I guess that might have made Paul pull his socks up..  His 'Sharpies' while very old and simple models are nicely finished off engines and his De Glehn compound is very much a favourite of mine, though I don't use its tender because it's a bit odd.

His NER models are also reasonable, but again they were all from a very large commision by a chap I correspond with who is a total walking encyclopedia on the NER and the Nor'east so Paul had no excuse to get things wrong.

His worst fault is if he's not interested in something he's sloppy and he was plainly not interested in doing any Broad Gauge work for me, but that didn't stop him from taking my money.

[Annie]

Broad Gauge cheer up picture needed.

 

'Iron Duke' class 'Swallow' at Westbourne Park shed.

 

[Annie]

Broad Gauge Inspiration picture.

I spent most of yesterday either asleep or fighting the urge to sleep so I could do with a little inspiration.

 

[Annie]

Just because I can.  An old  TS2009 SDJR  layout (not mine) quickly converted over to TS2012.  Could be promising to do something with later.

 

 

 

 

[Compound2632]

Interesting. The carriages would appear to be based on Midland suburban stock of the early 20th century - per the well-known Ratio kits. 

[Annie]

The coaches are made by Ken Green who is 'Mr Coaches' for the Trainz community.  They are his Midland suburban coaches which he re-textured into SDJR blue because someone asked him to.  I really don't know if they are correct or not as it's the usual story of nothing else being available for the SDJR.

[corneliuslundie]

Not too unreasonable as the MR was the source or inspiration of a lot of S&DJR stock.

Jonathan

[Annie]

Of course what I'd really like is to represent the George England and Fox Walker locomotive era of the S&DJR, but that's not likely to happen.  So it will be Fowler 7Fs and 2Ps instead and I'll have to like it.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

Not too unreasonable as the MR was the source or inspiration of a lot of S&DJR stock.

 

 

Don't get me started... If anything, a LSWR carriage might pass better at a distance, as the three-centred or cove roof profile of the Highbridge bogie carriages was the same. The panelling would be wrong but no more so than the Bain suburbans.

[Annie]

You were so annoyed you said it twice Mr Compound.  Seriously though when I come to do something with generally upgrading and improving this layout I will be taking a much closer look at rolling stock and what might be done to make improvements.  For the test run I grabbed the blue Midland coaches simply because they were there and looked something like S&DJR coaches from a distance.  I noticed that Ken Green (their maker) describes them as 'Midland Suburban (Blue)' and not as beng S&DJR coaches.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Compound2632]

From what I can make out of them they are rather nice representations of the 48 ft long 8 ft wide Bain carriages of diagrams D501 (6 compartment brake third), D487 (8 compartment third), and D481 (7 compartment first), built for Manchester / Stockport services in 1902 and Birmingham area services in 1908. Is there a Flatiron available?

[Annie]

There is a Flatiron available, but it is a truly terrible model from TS2004 days.  I tried my hardest some time ago to make something of it and gave up.

Ken Green describes his carriages as - Midland Railway Bain low roof suburban carriages and gives build dates between 1904 and 1909.  Diagram numbers, D551, D504, D501.  He's done some Midland 6 wheelers in blue as well.  Diagram numbers, D504, D516.

It's a fact of life with the Trainz simulator that us earlier period Uk modellers have to make do with almost right or nearly plausible re-skins/re-textures or we would have nothing to run at all.

[Annie]

 

Overall the quality of the tracklaying on this representation of the Burnham branch is very good with only two small glitchy bits that I've seen so far, - but the gradients!  I know the S&D was well known for steep gradients, but I don't think they are supposed to be this steep!

Not doing any work on anything today because I'm too sleepy so I just ran trains about on the Burnham branch.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

 

Overall the quality of the tracklaying on this representation of the Burnham branch is very good with only two small glitchy bits that I've seen so far, - but the gradients!  I know the S&D was well known for steep gradients, but I don't think they are supposed to be this steep!

Not doing any work on anything today because I'm too sleepy so I just ran trains about on the Burnham branch.

 

All that's missing is rack and pinion. 

[Annie]

From the layout author's notes; - 'The layout also includes realistic climbs to Masbury summit........'

 

It was fortunate the 2P was using a 'little engine that could' engine spec file rather than the more realistic 2P engine spec file I normally use or else it might have stalled half way up.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Annie
can't spell for toffee