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

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

Hence, "for grins". (I realise that we are probably in danger of violently agreeing here: it's all a question of how one defines authenticity in one's modelling. Which is entirely personal.)

Also, it looks wrong, not because of the number of spokes, but because of how it affects the symmetry.

(And Annie appreciated knowing this.)

Yes we're good Simon.  I didn't know about the wheels and now I know something I didn't know before.  The maker of the Y14 was also making a lot of Fowler LMS engines around the same time so I would imagine he used a wheelset from that project rather than making a new wheel model.

The Y14's will be staying on of course since they are the only digital model of a Y14 available from the great empty desert of GER locomotives made for Trainz.  It's a representational model as Rob Dee who did the retexturing work has said, - so on that basis I'm happy to make use of it.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

Yes we're good Simon.  I didn't know about the wheels and now I know something I didn't know before.  The maker of the Y14 was also making a lot of Fowler LMS engines around the same time so I would imagine he used a wheelset from that project rather than making a new wheel model.

The Y14's will be staying on of course since they are the only digital model of a Y14 available from the great empty desert of GER locomotives made for Trainz.  It's a representational model as Rob Dee who did the retexturing work has said, - so on that basis I'm happy to make use of it.

Interesting links and lineage.

Before he went to Derby, Johnson produced a few locos for the GER which look like they might have been dry runs, as he certainly improved on the looks once he got to the Midlands! One of these designs was the 477 class with 5’1” drivers with 16 spokes. Very obviously the precursors to his MR 0-6-0s (and to my mind, being quirky, more attractive), and his first goods engines for the Midland were not simply Kirtley locos with inside frames! 
Worsdell, however, fitted 4’11” wheels to the Y14, and went for 15 spokes.

The latter engineer had come from Crewe, where odd numbers of spokes seems common. The former learned his craft on the E&G, where even numbers of spokes seems to have been the norm.

In practice, I doubt it made much difference!

[Compound2632]

Possibly closest to the S&DJR Scotties:

 

 

Edited December 17, 2019 by Compound2632

[Regularity]

My DX goods initially ran on MR pattern 16 spoke drivers (I know, the shame!) which I had produced on my then lathe, a Unimat SL, from SSMRS brass wheel centres turned to be a press fit into Alan Gibson S scale rims, and a press fit onto ⅛” axles.

Trevor Nunn kindly made a pattern for a 15 spoke driver, which was used to produce new castings turned as above.

A very small change, but the character of the loco was transformed. The wheels ere exactly the same diameter, yet now look larger.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

The latter engineer had come from Crewe, where odd numbers of spokes seems common. The former learned his craft on the E&G, where even numbers of spokes seems to have been the norm.

 

 

Testing this, I find that Stroudley and Drummond, who were on Johnson's staff at Cowlairs, are even-spokers. But curiously, McIntosh's Dunalastair, which you would expect to be firmly in the Drummond tradition, is an odd-spoker, at least in the drivers.

[Regularity]

I have a photo in my collection of a Baldwin 4-6-0 in Georgia, USA, where the middle driver has 13 spokes, and the outer drivers 12 - as have all the drivers on the other side, or so it is maintained.

[Annie]

 

The boards that will become the line to Eastlingwold have now been fitted to the rest of my sprawling little railway empire, - all five and a half scale miles of them.  That might not sound that much, but when it comes to knocking them into shape that's quite enough for me.

These boards have been lifted from the same layout that provided the Grimwold quarry branch and are from a neighbouring section so they fit together perfectly.  The branch to Grimwold bears little resemblance to the original and the same will be happening with these boards.  The original layout builder is very good at constructing landscapes, but terrible at anything to do with railways so by the time I'm finished the railway side of things will have been completely overhauled and turned into a workable railway. 

Annnnnd that should do (for now) for my representation of the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway.  Taking the line to Great Mulling is more than I want to take on at the moment.  Building up Moxbury was a big enough job and Great Mulling is a bigger town than Moxbury and the station is larger too.

[Annie]

With the new section I'm having to deal with the usual mess from this layout creator.  He creates bushes and smaller shrub type plants by burying larger trees into the landscape so just the top branches are showing.  So that means there are dozens and dozens and dozens of large high resolution tree models buried in the landscape using huge amounts of memory resources even if they aren't visible.  My fix is to just delete them.  If I want shrubs and bushes there are plenty of proper models for those I can use.   Just as well my new computer mouse has special reinforced heavy duty switches with all the hundreds of delete clicks I had to do.  I was starting to worry about getting RSI and ended up having to stop and do anti-RSI finger stretches from time to time.  But at least now the frame rate counter is showing a better reading with all those buried trees gone.

 

The other thing he does is cover his layouts with rubbish, - mostly in goods yards and station yards.  There's piles of old sleepers, old rails, scrap metal, rusty oil drums, rusty corrugated iron and weirdest of all locomotive driving wheels not on their axles lying everywhere and leaning against buildings.  Perhaps he thinks changing a wheel on a locomotive is like changing a wheel on a car!

And especially in goods yards there are crates and other goods which, - I would imagine are intended for consignment scattered everywhere, - without any sense of order amongst the rubbish.  With the Grimwold branch I drove myself nuts deleting it all, but this time around I got a little more clever and used the editor's asset replacement tool to exchange all these items for the tiniest clump of grass model I could find.  One or two items I exchanged for models of cats since every layout could do with more cats.

 

And don't get me started on trackwork.  Essentially the mainline trackworks is Ok, but there are some vicious tight curves I'm going to need to realign.  Station yards though are a mess with trackwork layouts that make no sense as well as being poorly aligned with pointwork that's been forced into too tight a radius.

 

BUT I can fix all that.  The well crafted landscape is the reason why I'm using this layout section.  Landscapes I struggle with, the railway side of things I know about and can do.

[Regularity]

54 minutes ago, Annie said:

The other thing he does is cover his layouts with rubbish, - mostly in goods yards and station yards.  There's piles of old sleepers, old rails, scrap metal, rusty oil drums, rusty corrugated iron and weirdest of all locomotive driving wheels not on their axles lying everywhere and leaning against buildings.

Ah.

Maybe he was inspired by the layouts that appeared in the model press in the 60s and 70s?

[Hroth]

That goes some way to explaining the semi-transparent alien blob thats attacking the track between the nearest two telegraph poles on the r/h side.  Either that, or its a wolf dressed as a bush*, sneaking up on the sheep in the l/h field.

 

* Using the Birnam Wood ploy.

[nick_bastable]

3 hours ago, Annie said:

One or two items I exchanged for models of cats since every layout could do with more cats

indeed they do

 

Nick

[Annie]

Posted twice twice in error.  Plainly I had a visit from the Grim Repeater.

 

Edited December 18, 2019 by Annie
fumble brain

[Annie]

3 hours ago, Regularity said:

Ah.

Maybe he was inspired by the layouts that appeared in the model press in the 60s and 70s?

Yes that must be it Simon.  I've fixed one goods yard so far and now it's a nice clean little country goods yard with a few patches of long grass over by the boundary wall.  Pre-grouping era goods yards were kept tidy especially since a lot of clear space had to be kept to allow horse drawn vehicles to be turned.

 

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

That goes some way to explaining the semi-transparent alien blob thats attacking the track between the nearest two telegraph poles on the r/h side.  Either that, or its a wolf dressed as a bush*, sneaking up on the sheep in the l/h field.

 

* Using the Birnam Wood ploy.

Ha ha. Yes exactly.  I have yet to patrol the line to clear the trackside back to the boundary.  On the Grimwold branch I left things a bit overgrown in places since it's primarily a mineral line that also has a limited passenger service, but this is the E&GR's mainline to Great Mulling so it would be kept to a much higher standard.

 

1 hour ago, nick_bastable said:

indeed they do

 

Nick

I also changed one item to a rooster model since this is a country line afterall.  But things do look better with the occasional cat in the goods yards.  There's a ginger cat, a tabby cat and a black cat now on duty as railway cats.

[RedGemAlchemist]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

But things do look better with the occasional cat in the goods yards.  There's a ginger cat, a tabby cat and a black cat now on duty as railway cats.

Got to have a cat in the railway yard. 

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Got to have a cat in the railway yard. 

Or sunning itself on the platform, as Flanders and Swann so elegiacally sang,

 

No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat,
At Chorlton-cwm*-Hardy or Chester-le-Street

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Train

 

* A "w" replacing the net nanny objected "u"...

 

 

Edited December 18, 2019 by Hroth
Trying to get around the effin Net Nanny bowdlerising place names.

[Annie]

This is a video clip of one of my old Hicks 0-6-0 tender engines running light on the Grimwold mineral branchline.  Part of the trackwork is deliberately manky and this section has a speed restriction as an 'economic' way of avoiding doing anything about it.

 

 

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

Or sunning itself on the platform, as Flanders and Swann so elegiacally sang,

 

No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat,
At Chorlton-cwm*-Hardy or Chester-le-Street

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Train

 

* A "w" replacing the net nanny objected "u"...

 

 

Ah yes, - the lament for the railways of Britain (sigh). 

[Northroader]

Really nice trip, Annie, next time I’ll take my seasickness pills before  getting on.

[Annie]

The track in that section has deliberately created twists and dips Mr Northroader so yes they do make the old Hicks rock about a bit.

Glad you enjoyed the cab ride.

[Annie]

 

A touch of romance at Moxbury.  I found this small bandstand model while looking for something else and decided it was just the thing for the small hill overlooking the beach near the lighthouse at Moxbury.

The figures are animated and waltz around and around inside the bandstand.  I don't go in for animated models much, but this one softened my leathery old heart a little.  I thought about putting it at Hopewood on Sea, but there wasn't really a suitable site for it and with the tramway and the GCR-GER joint line being so close it wouldn't have been all that much fun for the two dancers with all the coal smoke and whistle blasts from the engines.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Annie]

Latest snaps from Eastlingwold.

This is the goods yard at Eastlingwold more or less knocked into shape.  It definitely did not look like this before.

I did notice though that quite a few roosters had escaped from somewhere and were hiding up behind the goods shed.

 

The signal box at Eastlingwold (I still need to rename it).  This is one of the standard types of signal box on the E&GR. - and yes I know it's actually another railway's standard type of signal box, but I won't tell them if you won't.  As much as possible I've tried to give each of my imaginary railways their own individual style when it comes to signal boxes and station buildings.  Some signal boxes have been replaced by GER boxes, - especially along the B&FER and at Hopewood on Sea on the H.T.Co., but the original company signal boxes still can be found on the Windweather Tramway and the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling.  I'm not really sure if the H.T.Co.'s  surviving clapboard lever frame sheds can be properly called a signal box though.

 

The now renamed town of Eastlingwold.  It will do for now.  I haven't searched it for dangerous tendencies towards modernism yet, but I did discover some very odd and unlikely architectural anomalies that will need to be sorted out once I've got the railway side of things sorted out.

 

The line itself basically works properly now, but there are two places on the main line where the trackwork is curved in the kind of radius I've only ever used myself on the wharves at Windweather Harbour where it's totally tram engine territory.  There's speed restriction at both places for now, but I'm going to have to do a full track realignment and landscape bash to fix the problem. 

[MikeOxon]

6 hours ago, Annie said:

...

A touch of romance at Moxbury.  I found this small bandstand model while looking for something else and decided it was just the thing for the small hill overlooking the beach near the lighthouse at Moxbury.

The figures are animated and waltz around and around inside the bandstand. ...

It needs a source of music - perhaps a wind-up gramophone with a huge horn on the grass by the band-stand?

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Well Annie apropos our earlier conversation regarding high temperatures it's now nudging 44c where I live in a southern suburb of Melbourne. To add to the heat the northerly wind is bringing down the smoke from the bushfires burning in NSW which are about 715kms away. The sky and the shadows have an orange tinge to them. We expecting a late change which will drop the temperature by about 22 degrees around 10pm.  

 

There is a funny side to this, when I got up this morning just before 7 it was actually a bit on the chilly side at about 13c. 

[Annie]

6 hours ago, MikeOxon said:

It needs a source of music - perhaps a wind-up gramophone with a huge horn on the grass by the band-stand?

I tried to find one Mike, but not a sign of one anywhere.  Perhaps if I plead politely at the creator group I belong to somebody might make me one.

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Well Annie apropos our earlier conversation regarding high temperatures it's now nudging 44c where I live in a southern suburb of Melbourne. To add to the heat the northerly wind is bringing down the smoke from the bushfires burning in NSW which are about 715kms away. The sky and the shadows have an orange tinge to them. We expecting a late change which will drop the temperature by about 22 degrees around 10pm.  

 

There is a funny side to this, when I got up this morning just before 7 it was actually a bit on the chilly side at about 13c. 

Cold mornings here with 30+ degree temperatures in the later half of the afternoon.  A fair bit of rain which I like because it keeps the temperatures down.  The weather here is just plain nuts really with it being a dice roll as to whether it's going to be hot or cold.