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

[Annie]

I decided that the MS&LR passenger train that leaves Moxbury in the evening is an express.  The trackwork from Moxbury heads towards the west so I don't know where the train goes exactly, but it leaves more or less on time each evening when I'm playing trains.

 

[Annie]

Creating good workable gradients has been a real learning curve for me and while I'm now able to make smoothly aligned gradients with no dips and hollows and suddenly implausible steep bits it wasn't always like that.  Where the E&GR line climbs from its connection to the other affiliated (imaginary) lines at the edge of the fen lands up to the rolling countryside of the E&GR mainline at Oakmarket was my first real bash at laying out a gradient and just to make it a bit harder it was on a curve.

In a word the final result was terrible with a dip in the middle and a very sudden steep climb up to the station and yards.  Every time I ran trains on the layout I'd always end up frowning at that awful gradient, but ended up chickening out of trying to fix it.  Well last night I'd had enough and deleted all the trackwork on the gradient and generally cleared everything away so I could lay it out properly and not just do a patch job.  This is the final result and it is just so much better.  Rather than try and sculpt the landscape to form the embankment I used an embankment spline model which made things a lot easier.  The underlying landscape mesh in Trainz is fairly coarse so trying to get it to form into a smoothly curved embankment in that location would have been a bit on the tricky side.

 

 

The E&GR line from the junction with the other affiliated (imaginary) lines up to Oakmarket skirts a part of the landscape known as the 'Bleak Fields' which not surprisingly is right next to Barrow Hills and the Dark and Mysterious Forest.  Bleak Fields is where the landscape makes the transition from the flat fen country up into the more rolling countryside surrounding Oakmarket.  It's a generally dreary location and pretty much deserted with many local tales of unwary travellers meeting and seeing strange things there at night.  Not even sheep want to be there and will fling themselves off the edge of the layout into the Terrible Nothing rather than endure it any longer.

 

Edited February 23, 2020 by Annie
more to say

[Annie]

Waiting for the signal.  With the afternoon drawing on No.5 waits at Hayward with the local passenger train from Great Marsh to Moxbury.

 

[Annie]

It was another lovely day with cooler temperatures today.  Hopefully our Summer is now on the way out and won't be back again for another year.

 

No.8 approaching Bluebell Woods with a south bound semi-fast service.  I studied a map of Norfolk yesterday with the thought of trying to figure out where my layout fits in.  I know where it should go, but there's not enough space unless Norfolk suddenly becomes about 80 miles wider.

 

 

With the layout now running very reliably 99% of the time I'm able to stop and save each time I've finished playing with my trainset.  This means that the goods workings and trip workings I drive myself can be carried through to the next time I get my trainset out which is very GOOD.

 

Solved the shunting puzzle at Little Sudden wharf!  There's not much space at this small wharf so it takes a bit of thought to end up with a goods train that's ready to be taken through to the holding sidings at the other end of the branchline.  This is where being able to save is good because next time I play trains I can carry on and take this train through to Eastlingwold yard and sort and re-shunt it into goods trains for Great Mulling and Moxbury.

 

[Tom Burnham]

Great work there.  Is the stone circle one of those where no one has ever been able to count the number of stones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldrum_Long_Barrow#Folklore,_folk_tradition,_and_modern_Paganism

Edited February 23, 2020 by Tom Burnham

[Annie]

3 hours ago, Tom Burnham said:

Great work there.  Is the stone circle one of those where no one has ever been able to count the number of stones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldrum_Long_Barrow#Folklore,_folk_tradition,_and_modern_Paganism

Oh I do like that Tom.  I shall have to write that into the local folklore.

[Annie]

More snaps:

 

It's that green engine at Moxbury again.

 

 

Shunting at Great Mulling.  I had to revise some of the pointwork and signals at Great Mulling because playing trains extensive testing showed that certain important shunting movement were downright awkward to do and not much fun at all.

 

 

 

[Annie]

E&GR No.22 in charge of a train of milk vans approaches Eastlingwold,  Every time I look at one of these vans, -or any of the vans I made in this series, - I find myself wondering how on earth I managed to make such a nice job of the texture artwork.

 

[Annie]

Y14 No. 555 in charge of the daily goods train from the joint line yard at Elgar Junction to Eastlingwold and Great Mulling on the E&GR,

Some test workings had shown that the entry track to the yard at Eastlingwold was not sited very well and was difficult to access without disrupting other traffic passing through Eastlingwold so I realigned the entry to the goods yard so now it's accessed from the goods relief line, - and then I had to revise the signalling. 

I like semaphore signals and I like to make sure I site them correctly and it's always a thrill to see the signals on my rambling little railway empire working as they should; - BUT the E&GR's three track main line has been somewhat of a challenge for me to get everything working correctly.  Fortunately the initial test run with No.555 went well and the new signals worked perfectly as I hoped they would.

 

[Annie]

New teak coaches.  I've had the artwork hanging around for a while and I had the composite mostly done, but now that I'm feeling a bit better I thought I'd finish them off.  A few small things left to do, but overall I'm happy with them.

As an experiment I thought I'd use the B&FER's full initials from their earlier affluent days, - 'Moxbury, Barrow Hills & Foxhollow Extension Railway'.  Latter on it was argued that it was the line to Barrow Hills and Foxhollow that was the extension and the Moxbury & (name) Railway wasn't involved, but whether that was a hasty renaming exercise to foil outraged creditors or not I'm not certain.

I might do a couple more coaches, - enough to make up a short rake as these coaches are supposed to be not exactly numerous since the (M)B&FER was starting to run out of money and couldn't really afford them.

 

 

[Edwardian]

On 23/02/2020 at 14:01, Tom Burnham said:

Great work there.  Is the stone circle one of those where no one has ever been able to count the number of stones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldrum_Long_Barrow#Folklore,_folk_tradition,_and_modern_Paganism

 

I rather like the Pratchett version; the standing stone that no one has ever been able to count.

[Annie]

Beyond Moxbury to the west there is..........

 

 

All very WIP at the moment.  I added another four miles onto the layout to represent the line on the western side of Moxbury.  This is actually quite important from an operational point of view as I was having problems with running trains in and out of Moxbury since it is quite a busy station in a country railway kind of way.  In particular the problem was with trains that I wanted to terminate at Moxbury then return to where they came a short while later.  Moxbury for all its size is quite hemmed in and has no further room for further sidings to park coaches while an engine goes for refreshment at the MPD so I needed to add another layout board so I could lay sidings where coaches could be laid over until needed again.  And if I was going to add another layout board I thought I might as well add another eight or so.

As is my usual habit I 'borrowed' the new boards from an existing layout.  In this case 'Middle Vales' and the new boards came from the English side of this seriously large layout.  All in all they fitted up well and didn't take much to blend them into the landscape at Moxbury. 

The new section has a few hills that are altogether too bumpy for Norfolk, - though Moxbury is dangerously close to Cambridgeshire and possibly not completely Norfolk-like in all its aspects.  I've been using the landscape tools to smooth out the larger hills, though there is one that looks like a tribe of Neolithic chaps might have put a hill fort on it so that might stay.  It would be nice to put a tower ruin on it, but I've only got one decent ruined tower model which I've used three times so far on the layout in various places so I don't want it to look like Ruined Towers-R-Us were having a four for the price of one sale by using it again.

 

'Sharpie' No.10 out Bunburying. 

Lots still to do.  Proper signals have been installed and facing cross overs have been slain with extreme prejudice.  Nasty concrete modern bridges have been replaced.  Next I'll replace the boundary fences with  four bar post and rail ones.  After that it's replacing the strange memory hungry spog spud splud  speedtrees with the ones I've been using everywhere else on the layout.  

 

 

The evening MS&LR train from Moxbury is very pleased to finally have a destination to go to even if it is just Bunbury.  Up until it's only had a very short run to a portal hidden by an overbridge without a bus on it.

 

 

At the end of this new four mile section  I'm going to add in a new board which will be where I'll build a hidden loop so that trains that leave Moxbury to head into the west can return again after a reasonable time interval.  Portals will still be used, but I have those set so that some trains such as the important semi-fast trains that head into the west return with attached carriages and vans from other lines, so they will stay the same.  It's the ordinary local 'all stations' trains that I want to be able to return in the same state as they left and with something approaching a regular timetabling.

 

 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Annie
Missing words

[MikeOxon]

3 minutes ago, Annie said:

Beyond Moxbury to the west there is..........

 

an overbridge without a bus on it.

 

I'm sure a hay-wain would be an acceptable substitute

 

nice to see the 'layout' extending.

[Annie]

Thanks Mike.  I hesitated over doing this since some parts of the existing layout still need work doing to them, but from an operational point of view it's going to make things a lot easier.  I performed my usual testing regime by falling asleep in the middle of it and four hours later when I woke up everything was still running fine without any problems.

So from doing that I know that I've got a solid base on which to start adding in the new scheduling.

 

A hay-wain, - now there's a good idea.

[Hroth]

There's a very fine staircase of broad gauge locks at Bunbury.

 

About 200 yards behind the photographer (me), the main line from Chester to Crewe crosses the canal.

 

 

The building on the right used to be the stables for horses used for towing narrowboats and barges.

A hay-wain in the Shropshire Union Canal could be a problem...

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Bunbury,+Tarporley/@53.1272046,-2.634285,441m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x487af1e14daf6ccf:0x38c6716eedd9f3a6!8m2!3d53.115486!4d-2.650361

 

The Shropshire Union Canal was part of the Shropshire Union Railway and Canal Company

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shropshire_Union_Railways_and_Canal_Company#Shropshire_Union_railways_today

 

However, they were in the hands of the LNWR....

 

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2020 by Hroth
Google Mapping and railway interest

[Annie]

Rats, - I came up with a placename that actually exists again.  But after looking at the Google Earth image for a while I can see it's a nice village with lovely old buildings.  At the moment behind the village at BunBury there's a HUGE lake which might have to go; - a consequence of using existing landscaped layout boards, - but replacing it with a canal would be nice and it would give me extra space to develop the village more.

Thanks very much for the links and the photo Mr Hroth as they have given me a good deal of inspiration to help me sort out this new section scenically.  Bunbury (mine) is of course a different place to Bunbury (actual), but that doesn't mean I can't borrow bits of it should I want to.

Don't mind the LNWR.  Goods wagons and vans and the occasional saloon coach from the LNWR come through Moxbury, but no LNWR engines unfortunately, - unless I seriously twist reality some more until it squeaks.

 

I really need to work on building towns and villages since I always fail to capture this 'organic' grown over a long time quality when I try to build anything.  

 

 

The Loop at Worlds End.  Yes I built the loop like I said I was going to even though it was an impossibly hot day and all I wanted to do was sleep.

Rather than try to come up with unlikely tunnels into mountain ranges to hide the loop at the end of the new section I decided to hide it in plain sight as a part of the scenery.  It's all a bit basic at the moment, but I can do some further work on it later on.  The two straight tracks are portal tracks which are always difficult to hide convincingly, but by the time some more scenic work is done they shouldn't be blindingly obvious.

I set up the 'all stations' passenger service from Foxhollow on the on the old B&FER to run to the new loop and then back again and it all worked just fine     

I did my usual testing by falling asleep in the middle of it for 6 hours and when I woke up everything was still good so I'm going to look more closely at using loops to run passenger services.  They are a lot more predictable for timing than portals since I can add wait commands to the schedule so a passenger train can hide away on the loop behind the trees until it's time to go whereas a portal can be a a bit random about such things.

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2020 by Annie
fumble brain

[Annie]

During the process of getting 'Lesser Thoughts' setup to run all my older versions of Trainz (TS2012 and earlier) I re-discovered a TS2009 archive back up copy I'd made two years ago.  To my delight it still worked fine once moved across to 'Lesser Thoughts' and installed on this old TS2009 copy was the Uk layout I last worked on exactly two years ago this month.  Later on when I 'upgraded' TS2009 to the final version this layout got all messed up so I was naturally very pleased to find the original version.  And no I won't be 'upgrading' this time around as I learned my lesson last time.

Set in the early grouping era it was very much a NER/LNER layout with a minor railway that was largely operated by the NER.  Being very much on a learning curve back then some aspects of the layout are a bit confused so it would be nice to be able to sort it out a bit now that I have two years worth of experience with digital railway modelling behind me.

 

[Annie]

More TS2009 snaps.

 

 

[Hroth]

Its always nice to stumble upon a serendipitous surprise!

 

(The waiting room appears to be emitting small grey balloons from between the chimney pots....)

[Annie]

That particular smoke generating thingy isn't the best  Mr Horth so I'll be looking for a replacement.  No doubt in the meantime it will keep the local children amused.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Annie

[MikeOxon]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

That particular smoke generating thingy isn't the best  Mr Horth so I'll be looking for a replacement.  No doubt in the meantime it will keep the local children amused.

Not the only thing that isn't the best...  amazing how things have progressed since 2009.  That ballast looks more like carpet

 

Mike

[Annie]

It's certainly interesting to see what I was working on two years ago  Mike.  TS2009 is quite a basic looking simulator when compared to the current simulators TANE and TS2019, but I did have a lot of fun with it and it certainly works just fine.  Running it with a much more modern graphics card has certainly freshened it up a bit compared with how it was two years ago.  Most ground textures are fairly basic and low resolution, but with a little picking and choosing it's possible to find ones that are better than most of those available.

 

I'm going to keep on with giving this old layout a tidy up.  I know how to use the tools better now so I can fix things that I didn't do so well the first time around.  I'm sure that there's still plenty of fun still to be had with it despite it's age and it gives me somewhere for me to run all my NER stuff that doesn't get much of a look in these days.

[Annie]

Another vintage TS2009 snap.  The two J73's are working a coal train and the runner wagons between them are necessary because of a wooden bridge on the line that has a weight restriction.

That iron lift bridge was a beast of a thing to set up, but it was certainly worth it even if just for the visual impact.

 

[MikeOxon]

That lift bridge looks amazing.  Any chance of a closer look?  Where is the prototype location.

 

Mike

[Annie]

I'm none too sure where the prototype bridge is located Mike, but I do know for certain that it is modelled on a real bridge.  When I downloaded it over two years ago it had some strange scripting faults and a couple of the dependent parts for it were really hard to find.  I think the model might have been revised and sorted out now, but back when I was trying to get it sorted it was a mess.  The bowstring girder parts of the bridge aren't really intended to work with the lift section, but I managed to fanangle them together.

I had hoped to set things up so the bridge would open to shipping since the river is potentially navigable by driveable ships, but I never got that far.

 

Shortly after having been completed over two years ago.  I'll take some more snaps next time I start up TS2009.