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

[Annie]

The salt marsh is an area I tend to work on for short periods of time and then come back to.  It gets a bit intimidating if I work on it for too long.  Most folk would love a space like this to build a model railway in and what do I do with it? - fill it up with water and mud.

Latest picture of the harbour at Windweather.

[Annie]

Right out at the other end of where the new tramway boards join up with the old original layout boards I lifted out from Valleyfields is the place where the GER branchline to Windweather and the Windweather Tramway tracks make a junction back into the GER single track secondary line that runs between 'somewhere' and 'somewhere else' (place names yet to be decided).  The GER single track  secondary line is about 18 scale miles long and ends in portals at each end.  It has three intermediate stations along its length including the one at Bluebell Magna which is only a stone's throw away from the GCR station at Bluebell Woods and of course the Hopewood Tramway's small station on the town's main street at Bluebell Woods.  So on my layout this almost qualifies as a 'heaving metropolis' since it has three stations.

But back to the new junction which I entertained myself with building during Wednesday's layout modelling session.  On the old Valleyfields layout this area always had a gloomy aspect and while it's now cut down to being only a third of its original length the gloomy aspect still persists.  So I decided the new station would be named 'Barrow Hills' which possibly hints all manner of scary local legends and things that may or may not go 'bump' in the night.

The forestry camp where most of the logs come from that go to the sawmill at Elgar Wood is just on the other side of the GER secondary line (hidden between the hedges).  Plainly the forestry workers sleeping in their tents at night aren't frightened by all the local scary stories............ Or perhaps they are .....Dun! Dun! Dun!

The station building is an assembly of all manner of bits and the goods shed is actually a GWR wooden one, but I figured it was typical enough of the breed to do the job.

There is a small settlement at Barrow Hills which is home to railway staff and local farm workers and in general the whole area is fairly isolated with the railway being the only way to make contact with the outside world. 

 

 

Edited February 2, 2019 by Annie
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[Edwardian]

I know what you mean, Annie, it really does have something of an atmosphere.  I am surprised you did not go the whole hog and name it "Barrow Downs"!

[RedGemAlchemist]

Beautiful Annie! Windweather reminds me of a cross between Potter Heigham and Wells-next-the-Sea. And Barrow Hills definitely carries on that Norfolk feel. Very well done! Need to really crack on with my own Norfolk GER line now...

[Annie]

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

I know what you mean, Annie, it really does have something of an atmosphere.  I am surprised you did not go the whole hog and name it "Barrow Downs"!

It's a strange spot on the layout James because even when the lighting is dialed for a clear sunny day Barrow Hills just stays gloomy no matter what I do.  It was tempting to use the name 'Barrow Downs', but I didn't want to utterly curse the place.  Gloomy with a few scary local stories that station staff might relate to the occasional intrepid traveller from the 'smoke' seemed to be about the right level for Barrow Hills.

[Annie]

5 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Beautiful Annie! Windweather reminds me of a cross between Potter Heigham and Wells-next-the-Sea. And Barrow Hills definitely carries on that Norfolk feel. Very well done! Need to really crack on with my own Norfolk GER line now...

It always means a lot Red when people who know Norfolk tell me I'm  getting things right with the landscape and scenery.

[Martin S-C]

I agree that the first pic of Barrow Hills reminds me of parts of the rolling scenery of the North Norfolk Railway. It is a very gloomy place! Maybe its due to the ground textures you've used there.

[Annie]

The ground texture  came with the original layout Valleyfields Martin and it's a very dark rough ground/scrub/bracken kind of ground texture that does seem to have an ambitions to be a black hole and suck all available light into itself.  In a lot of other places on Valleyfields where this ground texture was used I replaced it with something else, but I kept it at this spot on the layout because unlike some of the other places it was used it actually seemed to work out properly and looked plausible.

 

(Makes note to look for pictures of the North Norfolk Railway)

 

Edit:  I'm not all that keen on Faceplant/Farcebook, but the North Norfolk Railway's page has some excellent landscape photos  that I'm going to find very useful.

Edited February 2, 2019 by Annie
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[Annie]

Yesterday's project was to update Hopewood on Sea so that it looks like it's a semi-popular seaside destination that daytrippers might actually want to visit.  Hopewood on Sea started out as being very much part of a light railway with no fencing, minimal signalling and a very basic platform shelter.  As time has gone on and I continued to work on the layout Hopewood on Sea had to be be  continually rebuilt and improved to keep in step with its growing importance as a destination.

Steve Flander's recently released promenade pier seemed to be just the thing Hopewood on Sea needed, but installing it brought with it other concerns about properly fencing the railway property from the beach as well as then having to put in footbridges so passengers could safely cross over the line.  Hopewood on Sea is also now the place where trains on the single line can cross and unlike the earlier days on the tramway a train stationary at the platform does not mean that no other train is going to arrive and run through the station area.  Plainly with Summer daytrippers arriving in numbers the old days of passengers being able to walk across the running lines are long gone

 

 

The nearer of the two footbridges is provided so townsfolk can cross the line to the beach.

 

 

Ye olde stone stairs down to the beach.  These  were assembled from several spline pieces that had to be adjusted and maneuvered into place.  All very much tedious and tricky to do so it's highly likely this is going to be the only such set of stone stairs on the entire coastline.

 

 

[Annie]

W.N.R. 1st/2nd composite saloon coach completed at last.  For some reason it took me ages to get it to look the way I wanted.

 

[Caley Jim]

I like the scotch derrick crane, but it seems to be somewhat devoid of an operating mechanism at the base of the pillar?

 

Jim

[Annie]

Yes that is a problem with that particular model Jim.  There is a much larger derrick crane model that does have the operating gear modelled, but its size means that it can't really be used in a lot of places where a crane is needed.

[Edwardian]

Can't tell you how chuffed I am to see some WN coaches running, and you have done a superb job,  I shall have to see them 'made flesh' on CA., assuming that's OK with you.

 

That pier really does look the part.  Need a Grand Hotel now!

 

Pretty impressive sandcastle, too! 

[Annie]

Yes please do feel free to take my coach designs and use them James.  I made the saloon coaches mainly because the Hopewood & Windweather Tramway would have to be not at any especially great distance away from the West Norfolk Railway (folds in the map accepted and understood); - so it would be very likely that W.N.R. coaches would be seen at Hopewood on Sea especially during the Summer.  And besides us 'what-if' freelance pre-grouping modellers have to stick together and if we can knit our flights of fancy into a plausible semi-history it all adds to the fun doesn't it.

 

Steve Flanders makes some really lovely Victorian era models and when I saw his promenade pier I knew it was just the thing I needed for Hopewood on Sea.  And yes the search is now on for a suitable Grand Hotel.

[Annie]

One problem I was having with the Windweather Tramway was that once its tracks cross the salt marsh over that long and spindly wooden viaduct I posted a picture of recently where do they go from there.  A railway of any kind has to have a purpose and it was starting to look like that after crossing the salt marsh the tramway no longer had one.  Faced  with the prospect of a major landscape and town building exercise in order to give the tramway a purpose I'm afraid I started to suffer from large layout building fatigue and everything started to come to a halt as my enthusiasm began to drain away.  BUT then I remembered my East Anglia based 3ft gauge layout, - the Sumwheir District Railway.  Essentially I determined that if it was merged with my tramway layout it would not only provide a destination for the Windweather Tramway, but its harbour and short coastal section would close off the other side of the bay.  So taking a deep breath that's what I did.

 

This map view should help to show what I did.  Grey areas are where no landscape or scenic work has been done yet and some work is still needed with shaping and blending the coastline where it has been joined.

 

 

I like my Sumwheir District Railway layout, but it seems that I've been forgetting about it of late so joining it onto my other favourite layout is one way to overcome that.  It's a complete little 3ft gauge railway and the only part that needed finishing work was the large township at Bishops Tenpenny.  If I'm now going to run Windweather Tramway tracks to Bishops Tenpenny its unfinished state is actually an advantage since I won't have to pull too much of it apart.

But before I got that far I had to deal with the now familiar problem of the Hopewood & Windweather Tramway's stretch of coastline being at low tide and the Sumwhere District Railway's stretch of coastline being at high tide.  The sea floor on the SDR section was also at a higher level and to change it to low tide I would have to lower the sea floor as well to match the layout it was being  attached too.  Possibly that might seem to be not too much of a problem, but lowering the sea floor would mean that Tenpenny Wharf which is constructed of many individual pieces would need to be carefully readjusted to a level state again.  So I took another deep breath and set to work.......

 

 

As it happened the job wasn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be and after a bit of holding my mouth right I got it all back together again and even managed to improve some parts of the wharf  a little here and there.  At the time I built Tenpenny wharf I'd never attempted anything like that before and I'd always been a bit proud about how it had turned out so it was very nice to give it a tidy up and get it ready being a part of a much larger coastal shipping trade. 

 

 

It does worry me slightly that I might have managed to compress a large part of Norfolk into a distance of 20 or so scale miles with regard to some of the landscapes I've modelled, but  in the end I've decided to not worry too much about that and if what I'm doing makes me happy just to keep on doing it.

 

Just as a by the way a member of the creator group found a DEM map of part of the West Norfolk Railway he'd converted for Trainz and in exact scale it covered 533 layout boards.  Sooooo perhaps you can see why I'm not going to worry too much about utter scale correctness when it comes to modelling my imaginary bit of Norfolk.

For the utterly brave or foolish the DEM map can be found here in CDP Trainz format........  https://www.dropbox.com/s/2kj8x3fd691z14l/West Norfolk Railway DEM.cdp?dl=0

 

[Annie]

With having such a large watery layout that will eventually have as much sea as it does land I'm always interested in ship models for Trainz.  Steve Flanders has recently released a number of static and driveable ship models which I have of course downloaded, but his latest project is seriously amazing.

 

 

The new ships I'm very excited about are Steve's two, three and four masted schooners because they are exactly what I needed for Hopewood & Windweather.

 

 

[Annie]

For those interested in what a TransDEM route map looks like when applied to Trainz here's a sample taken from the West Norfolk route I linked to in my post on this page.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2kj8x3fd691z14l/West Norfolk Railway DEM.cdp?dl=0

 

  The landscape is accurately contoured and everything is to exact scale.  To see the map like this you'll need 20  special files which I have found by careful and intrepid Googling into the heart of Russia.  Actually there should be 21 files, but I couldn't find the last one.  It seems to work Ok without it though.  I'll put the files into my Dropbox so you don't have to go searching for them yourself and if anybody wants them PM me and I'll give you the Dropbox link.

 

Edit:  Actually here's the link so you don't have to ask.  There's nothing Secret Squirrel about these files and they have been run through my anti-virus software so no nasties.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/t6i71zwcimfbqm3/AAB5dTRxCqVq63tA-H335EJua?dl=0

 

 

Edited February 5, 2019 by Annie
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[Edwardian]

16 hours ago, Annie said:

 

It does worry me slightly that I might have managed to compress a large part of Norfolk into a distance of 20 or so scale miles with regard to some of the landscapes I've modelled, but  in the end I've decided to not worry too much about that and if what I'm doing makes me happy just to keep on doing it.

 

 

Excellent and informative post.  A great idea to bring the lines together and some great scenic modelling.

 

All railway modelling, it seems, including the virtual, involves fitting quarts convincingly into pint pots and you have no difficulty in doing so!

[Martin S-C]

12 hours ago, Annie said:

The new ships I'm very excited about are Steve's two, three and four masted schooners because they are exactly what I needed for Hopewood & Windweather.

 

 

 

[Annie]

I always liked that theme tune as well as the ships.  I liked watching the Onedin Line as well, but the ships under sail were what especially caught my attention.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Martin S-C said:

 

 

52 minutes ago, Annie said:

I always liked that theme tune as well as the ships.  I liked watching the Onedin Line as well, but the ships under sail were what especially caught my attention.

 

Takes me back, that!

[Annie]

9 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Excellent and informative post.  A great idea to bring the lines together and some great scenic modelling.

 

All railway modelling, it seems, including the virtual, involves fitting quarts convincingly into pint pots and you have no difficulty in doing so!

Thanks James.  After all that effort I pretty much took the day off today and played trains on an older K&ESR layout from TS2004 days.  It was built by a very clever digital layout builder named Angela Halliday who was very keen on railways in the south of England and knowledgeable about them as well.  Unfortunately she had to give up Trainz and layout building because she started to go blind, but she does keep in touch with the creator group I belong to.

Angela's K&ESR layout is built using TransDEM data and is exactly to scale.  Again proving that even in the digital realm a small minor railway is still a very large thing to make a model of.  Makes me feel quite unashamed about my compressed piece of Norfolk as I'm very much aware that building my own layout with correct scale distances would simply be too big a job for me to undertake.  Trains on my little tramway mostly travel at somewhere between 10-20mph and at that speed 15 scale miles or so of trackwork can seem quite long enough to satisfy me.

[Annie]

A sample of a piece of the map for Angela Halliday's K&SER layout.  Even though the scenic assets Angela was using are the old ones from TS2004 the layout is quite densely modelled and my computer was having problems rendering it all in TS2012.  TS2012 can only use two cores of my quad core CPU and since TS2012 uses the CPU instead of the video card to do most of its processing my computer was starting to wilt slightly. (This is what I worry might happen with my own Norfolk layout as I continue to add details to it)

 

 

Small engines loitering about.

 

 

Y14 to the fore.  It's been awhile since I gave this engine a decent run about so exploring the K&ESR was the perfect opportunity.

 

 

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

Lovely pictures there Annie.  The presence of the WNR composite saloon on the K&ESR surely justifies my acquisition of the Rails/Dapol Bodiam in due course?

[Martin S-C]

When I was creating the Highworth Branch route in MSTS there was no DEM data available unless you paid a shedload of money for it from the Ordnance Survey. It was annoying because the USA train simmers had free DEM data right across the USA at 10x the density of the UK!

I scanned an OS 2cm:1km map and enlarged it then painstakingly traced the contour lines around Swindon (very hard due to the urban clutter) and all up the valley of the Bydemill Brook which is the principal watercourse valley the Highworth Light Railway was constructed along. Even on a route that was only about 7 miles long (the branch itself was 5.5 miles) this took simply AGES. We had a little bit of home written software to plug the resulting height data into the MSTS route editor which then "inflated" the base landscape to your plotted points. Even then a fair bit of adjustment was needed but I was delighted when the (in)famous 1 in 40 Butts Bank up the hill from Hannington to Highworth came out absolutely spot on. A real sense of achievement doing all that.

MSTS had a complete world projection in its library which meant you didn't just build on terrain tiles but selected a place on the globe and plugged in your Lat/Long co-ords to create your route tiles which were 1 km square. Problem was, Kuju had chosen a horrible global projection so anywhere more than a few miles from the poles (aka every railway in the world) had horribly skewed tiles more like diamond shaped polygons than squares. It was a bit of a mess but it was all we had and we persevered with it.

Here is a screenshot of a failed tile generation command I suffered while doing DEMs for a wantage Tramway route. I just happened to have kept this image for some reason (the file date is 27th Feb 2004!!!) but it shows the awful shape of what should be 1km squares, as well as the contour plotting which was actually a breach of the O/S terms of use... You can also see in the right hand panel the World Tile Number in hexadecimal and the Lat and Long. It was quite fun doing modelling in the "real world". The blue dot would probably be the site of GWR Wantage Road station, with Wantage town itself towards the bottom.