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

[Annie]

Random snaps taken during timetable testing.

 

 

 

 

On the platform at Foxhollow Marine Station.

 

[NeilHB]

Lovely photos Annie, particularly the ones of the single wheelers - they are delightful. 

[Annie]

Thanks Neil.  My Beyer Peacock single wheelers are my favourite engines and I love seeing them at work.

 

 

Book Corner:

This is a book I've wanted for a while, but held off buying.  It's on sale at the moment so I finally decided today was the day.

[Hroth]

8 hours ago, Annie said:

 

 

Book Corner:

This is a book I've wanted for a while, but held off buying.  It's on sale at the moment so I finally decided today was the day.

 

Sounds a fascinating book!

 

And in that vein, we've got the Early May Bank Holiday coming up, moved from the 4th to the 8th for VE Day commemorations that now won't take place.  Perhaps you could organise some snaps of Bank Holiday excursions to the seaside around then?

 

Seeing as we're not going to get excursions any time soon?

 

 

How it was                                                                      How it IS...

 

 

[Annie]

That's actually not a bad idea Mr Hroth.  Hopewood on Sea is the most complete and developed of the seaside destinations on my Norfolk layout.  Tenpenny Beach is just that, - a path leading from the station to the beach and nothing else.  Nobody in their right mind wants to go to Winkle Bay.......

 

 

And Foxhollow Bay is still half done and not really a holiday destination yet.  So it looks like it might be Hopewood on Sea that will be the choice for devising some kind of virtual Bank Holiday event around.

 

 

 

[Annie]

To my great surprise I had a long wakeful time yesterday and I ran trains on my Norfolk layout for over six hours before I started to feel sleepy.  It was good to be able spend so much time running the layout and I was able to trial some new train services to operate during the morning timetable where there is a long time gap before trains from Great Mulling on the E&GR and Foxhollow on the B&FER arrive at Moxbury.  There's also a longish time gap before trains from the mysterious as yet unnamed GER junction station to the west of (faux) Bunbury arrive at Moxbury as well.  Normally I run parcel trains to Great Mulling and the milk train to the dairy factory on the E&GR line  (when I remember) away from Moxbury during this time, but I couldn't help but notice that the station staff at Moxbury were having to go around and dust the cobwebs off the waiting passengers on the platforms since in some cases it was taking most of the morning before the trains they were waiting for arrived.

 

So just after 10.00am the intrepid S56 No.84 was sent off with a trial timetable that by my calculations would slot neatly between other scheduled services.  As with all my intrepid small tank engines I needed to make sure that No.84 would have enough coal and water to run the timetable.  Water stops aren't so much of a problem since there's three water tanks along the route, but running out of coal would make things a lot more complicated.

 

No.84 approaching Muddle Junction.  Which used to be a junction, but isn't anymore, but still gets called 'Muddle Junction'.

 

 

 

Not wanting to bore you all to death I'll omit a few of the snaps I took yesterday, - of which some weren't very good anyway. 

I've not shown any snaps of Nodding Keep Halt before.  This is an all expense spared small station between Bluebell Magna and Lodge station with its claim to fame being a ancient ruined tower on a patch of high ground that used to have some importance to do with keeping watch for shiploads of unpleasant grumpy warriors wanting to land and cause trouble. 

Nodding Keep is very popular with local historical societies as well as amateur archeologists and the idle curious who may or may hold hopes of finding buried treasure.  The station staff keep a close eye out for anyone attempting to take unauthorised digging implements up to the keep and all such items will be confiscated and will only be returned once the miscreants are back on railway property again.

 

 

 

 

 

I seemed to have an unfailing ability to take not very good snaps yesterday, but here's No.84 making a triumphant return to platform 1 at Moxbury having proved that it is possible to add this new train service to the timeable without causing absolute mayhem.

'Sharpie' No.10 is just arriving from the west and the as yet unnamed GER Junction station somewhere beyond (faux) Bunbury.

 

[Annie]

Testing on a new Wisbech & Upwell layout for TANE (Trainz A New Era) that's nearing completion.   A member of the creator group I belong to made his nearly complete beta version available to group members and I have to say it's very nice indeed.

 

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Annie
added picture

[NeilHB]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

Testing on a new Wisbech & Upwell layout for TANE (Trainz A New Era) that's nearing completion.   A member of the creator group I belong to made his nearly complete beta version available to group members and I have to say it's very nice indeed.

 

 

 

Delightful, simply delightful! 

[Annie]

Thanks Neil.  I only took a couple of snaps while doing the test run, but the next time I visit the layout I'll try to take some more.

 

I was feeling fairly rubbish during the weekend so to get my brain working I played shunting puzzles at the tricky little goods yard at Little Keldon on my Norfolk layout.  The task was to enter the yard with five loaded wagons that had to be shunted into the goods shed, but the two empty wagons already in the goods shed had to be taken out first.  Those two wagons had to then shunted into a train along with the other wagons haphazardly located about the yard, - and of course with the brake van at the right end.

In the picture Hopewood Tramway No.2  has completed the task and is about to leave by reversing out on the mainline once there's a clear spot available in the traffic schedule.

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Annie
fumble brain

[Edwardian]

I must concur with Neil, simply delightful! 

 

Especially delightful, if i had to choose, is the Buckjumper with the 6-wheel GE coaches. 

 

Whereas, although this is Kent by way of Hopewood, I could be persuaded that you have perfectly captured the Bishop's Lynn Tramway at a chillier time of the year ....

 

[Annie]

Thanks James.  The K&ESR in Winter is very much an old favourite of mine and has seen more than a few unlikely engines on its metals, but out of all of them Hopewood's G15's seemed to be the most at home.

 

I'm very much enjoying the Buckjumpers too.  With increased passenger services as well as one or two new branchlines having been completed they are starting to make inroads into the Affiliated (Imaginary) Railway Companies' domain.  Two more have just arrived on the layout and here they are at Bluebell Magna waiting to be assigned to their new tasks.

 

 

I'm impressed with them because they have all the acceleration and ability to maintain good timekeeping as the ex-Hopewood single driver tank engines, but with a greater ability to handle heaver trains.  Which is of course the reason why single driver tank engines had such a brief heyday as they did,  But I think it will be a while yet before the ex-Hopewood engines are displaced from chasing the horizon on the Windweather loop on my layout's (still unfinished) fenlands.

 

[Annie]

With the passenger service now largely working as it should I'm now looking closely at goods workings, - and in particular pick up goods and trip workings, on my Norfolk layout.  Some goods yards such as the one at Bluebell Magna had been built a few months ago now and then largely sat with little use while I concentrated on getting the bugs out of the passenger service.  Having now come back to seeing how goods services could be worked I wasn't terribly surprised to discover that some yards were not that easy to work in and in the case of the one at Bluebell Magna it was actually quite difficult to access the main running lines from the yard.

Other errors turned up with me discovering that taking away Muddle Junction's linking junction with the GER-GCR Joint Line had been a really bad idea since the only linking junction was now the somewhat restricted link at Brenton Woods which served the large yard at Elgar Junction and would be seriously difficult (if not impossible) for Affiliated (Imaginary) Company goods trains approaching from the south to access.

So after a bit of track realignment, installing new pointwork and annoying farmers by laying tracks through the middle of their fields I think I've ended up with something workable.

 

The goods yard at Bluebell Magna.  The Affiliated (Imaginary) Companies have a long tradition of taking yard gates off their hinges and leaning them against walls.  In this case I'd previously installed a working gate, but the active track section attached to it was too long and made it difficult to align the trackwork correctly so the gate is now leaning against the wall instead.

 

 

 

After a bit of fettling the goods yard at Bluebell Magna is very workable and easy to shunt wagons about in.  All the main stations on the GER controlled lines now have a functional goods yard, - except for Brenton Wood, - and the minor stations either have a goods siding and/or a lockup shed on the platform.  Brenton Wood will be a bit of a project to plan and complete, but at least the trackwork on the GER side of the station is now in a workable state to allow for such an addition without having to do a huge realignment exercise.

 

 

ex-Hopewood Tramway No.2.  When the BoT put its foot down about engines that weren't conforming to tramway regulations working on the Hopewood Tramway the tramway's bad naughty conventional steam engines were distributed around the other Affiliated (Imaginary) Companies.  The three single driver tank engines went to run services on the Windweather Loop; 2-4-0T No.4 went to be the station pilot at at Moxbury...... and 0-6-0T No.2 is now going went to Bluebell Magna to work the goods yard there and to carry out local trip workings.

In actual fact the idea of building No.2 has been on my mind for awhile.  I'd tested out the idea before on my M&GNJR layout which had proved the idea was viable, but the two test engines had issues with being non-smoking engines, a sound file that just sounded wrong and the engine spec didn't really suit the engines at all.  Comes from joining all kinds of bits together that aren't meant fit together I suppose.

After further experiments I found a good workable sound file and a much better written engine spec, but No.2 still didn't want to smoke (Can't make me, - so there!).  Smoke production in digital steam engines is controlled by trigger points on their driving axles and the file that controls smoke from an engine's chimney is named 'mode'.  No.4 and the single driver tank engines use mode 'time', but the new 0-6-0 wheelset uses mode 'speed'.  It took me a little while to discover this, but the outcome is that No.2  is now smoking (cough hack....)

 

 

No.2 goes trip working.  Being heavier than a Terrier and with good low speed torque No.2 should prove to be a really useful engine for working the heavy trip workings from Bluebell Magna.  There's only going to be one example of this class of engine since the Hopewood Tramway only had one and if a working is more than No.2  can handle there's enough of the B&FER's 'Sharpies' around to take the train.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Annie
fumble brain

[robmcg]

I love that Bluebell Magna goods yard with appropriate gate placement, the first pic. The idle 0-6-0 with wisp of steam, and perspective generally is sheer loveliness.

[Annie]

Thanks Rob.  Getting the trackwork sorted out properly in what is quite a restricted yard was a bit of a challenge, but it's all good now.

The leaning gate can also be seen in two other locations on my layout.  A solution for those places where there should be a gate, but an animated opening gate can't be fitted in.

 

Experiments with tram engines!  The little G13¾ tram engines on my Norfolk layout fell out of favour for use on passenger trains because they were too short to operate the low interactive platforms on the tramway properly and wouldn't stop in the right place with the coaches nicely centered on the platform.  Experiments with getting push-pull trains to work properly on the E&GR's Sudden Branch had shown that having the trailer coach designated as a locomotive was the solution to improving station stops so I wondered if I might do the same with the G13¾ tram engines in order to make them behave properly at stations.

So what I did was take the little luggage van No.9 and re-designate it as being a locomotive.  An unexpected promotion for a small luggage van, but I'm sure it will cope just fine.  With the luggage van in effect increasing a G13¾'s active footprint they should now be a lot more reliable about making station stops and not miss the platform entirely anymore.

 

 

I found my GER Wisbech coaches, but there was a problem with them.  There are two versions both by Cameron Scott.  One of them, - an older model, - is a proper Wisbech coach, but while it's properly detailed and in the right livery it doesn't have visible interactive passenger loading and the inside of the coach is as black as pitch.  The other coach version was made much later and has visible interactive loading, but it was made as a TtTE coach without lining and lettering, - and without any brake gear!  Fortunately it doesn't have a face which is at least a plus. 

The later TtTE coach is plainly a development of the earlier one, but uses a different body mesh and the textures are not the same either.  Some people do use the TtTE coach on Wisbech & Upwell layouts, but even though I could line and letter it correctly the lack of brakes would be a problem since I don't think I have any brake gear meshes that would fit.  So it was back to the earlier version to see what I could do with it.

Investigation showed that one of the settings on the body mesh that influence texture shine, colour and intensity was set to a total denial of light black hole setting for the interior which was why it was so dark.  So I made an adjustment to correct this. (I won't go into all the details or else your eyes will glaze over and you'll start to lose the will to live  since this is total digital modelling geek territory)  After banishing the darkness I discovered that the coach did have a basic interior in that the seats had been modelled, - so I messed around with the coach texture a bit to make their colours more visible, but that was all I could do since the older basic mesh wasn't set up for a properly colourised interior like the later version.

 

 

 

 

Downs Farm.  The very first station stop No.127 made showed that the modded luggage van had made a big difference.  Suddenly the G13¾ tram engines were back into trusted status for running the passenger service on the tramway.  The only hitch was that on No.127 running around its train at Elgar Wood the luggage van wanted to come too.  BUT further experimentation showed that even if the luggage van was coupled at the rear of the train it still had the same beneficial effect at station stops.

 

 

Elgar Wood.

 

 

So what happens now?  I'd resisted using the Wisbech coaches since they were very specific to a particular GER tramway.  BUT on the other hand in my imaginary and much rearranged little Norfolk world the GER has a controlling interest in another tramway, - the Hopewood Tramway, - so it would be very likely that coaches of the same design would have been built for the Hopewood Tramway as well.  So that means I can stop being a daft little bit and just get on with using the coaches like I should have done to start with.

I am going to intrepidly add the attachment points to allow full visible interactive passenger loading to happen.  I've not done anything like that before so this might be a bit...... interesting.

 

 

And what about the mysterious and imaginary 2-4-2T No.040 with its backstory of being an absorbed engine from an unknown somewhere?   No.040 has done a very good job of running the train service on the tramway up until now , but those old 4 wheel coaches weren't the best for use with very low platforms so the Wisbech coaches will be a much better replacement.  Fortunately I'm presently putting the finishing touches on the Tenpenny Branch which runs for miles and miles serving the coastal farming communities on the newer southern section of the layout.  The Tenpenny Branch belongs to the Windweather Tramway, but operates as very much an independent section in its own right.  So that's where No.040 and all the old 4 wheel coaches will be going since they have platforms of an approved pre-grouping height on that section so the days of passengers engaging in strenuous exercise to enter and exit these coaches should be a thing of the past. 

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by Annie
fumble brain

[Annie]

[Annie]

Horribly sleepy so just a quick snap for now.  No.040 at now work on the Tenpenny Branch.  That's the sea you can see in the distance.

 

[Annie]

Still very sleepy.  It's annoying when I wake up because they've gone and changed the days and time around while I was asleep which is confusing.  Most of the time I do know where I am though which is something.

A snap I took of Windweather Tramways's Manning Wardle tram engine No.3 at Foxhollow wharf.  Tenpenny Wharf where No.3 usually lives is a deep water harbour so they mostly handle coal and timber traffic away from the wharf.  Foxhollow Wharf has always been troubled by a harbour which silts up so most traffic comes in via barges.  Their usual traffic is mysterious things in crates and sacks and mysterious (most probably alcoholic) liquids in barrels.  So for this reason there's a certain amount of transfer traffic between the two wharves via the Tenpenny Branch of the Windweather Tramway.

 

The yardmaster at Foxhollow wharf knows very well that small engines are capable of causing problems out of all proportion to their size so he keeps a close eye on No.3 and her crew when at the wharf.  He accepts that No.3's crew know what they are about and that they know better than to go banging into things that they shouldn't and causing accidents, but not being B&FER men they might not have the proper depth of training that a B&FER engineman enjoys.  Also there's the matter of signals and that the Windweather men might not have seen some of the ones at Foxhollow very often and might be a bit perplexed by them.

So far though all has been well enough though he did make it very clear to the Windweather men that: 1. Causing delays and upsets to the passenger service and especially The Boat Train would bring trouble down on their heads. And 2. Sneakily swapping their ancient tramway brake van for a nice new GER one would cause them to find him in a black mood on their next trip to the wharf yard.

 

 

[Annie]

And just for a bit of fun.

 

https://imgur.com/t/trains/LmMvLGS

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

And just for a bit of fun.

 

https://imgur.com/t/trains/LmMvLGS

 

Superb.  Camberwick Green is alive and well and living in Latvia!

[Annie]

http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BoT_Inspectors001.pdf

 

http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BoT_Requirements1902.pdf

[sem34090]

On 24/04/2020 at 18:57, Edwardian said:

 

Superb.  Camberwick Green is alive and well and living in Latvia!

So's The Titfield Thunderbolt only the 4800 has been replaced by a Soviet copy of Leader...

[Annie]

 

Still some problems with returning the G13¾ tram engines to working the passenger service.  The portal that generates the train refuses to function if the secret locomotive luggage van is a part of the train.  If I remove the secret locomotive luggage van and replace it with an unmodified one the portal works, but I'm back to the G13¾'s not stopping at station platforms properly .  The other thing I noticed is that Trainz says the three coaches and the luggage van weigh 157 tons.  No wonder the G13¾ tram engines seemed to be struggling at times.

Plainly the weight spec for the coaches and van have been incorrectly entered into their config files, - which fortunately is easily fixed.

 

A very kind member on the Trainz forum has explained to me how to write and save schedules into a library so I've been experimenting with using schedules as an alternative to using portals since using a schedule library is a much more precise way of operating a timetable.

So I'm going to give the portal the toss and setup a small holding yard instead where the G13¾'s can sit quietly and doze until it's their turn to do a passenger run.  Much more civilised than being ejected into the world via a portal

[Annie]

Various snaps.

 

An unusual visitor.  I wanted to give the SECR 'H' class a run as I haven't given any of my SECR engines a run for a good long while.  I am planning on having the occasional SECR passenger service run to Foxhollow from the great 'out there' somewhere beyond the southern borders of the layout though.

 

 

MS&LR (faux) class 11A.  Whenever I hear an engine absolutely going for it along the joint line it will be one of these.  

 

 

Moxbury at just after six in the evening.  That clock really does work by the way.  The GCR passenger service to Moxbury has a proper schedule now, but Ideally it needs its own loop track in the semi-hidden fiddle yard beyond Bunbury at World's End.  At the moment its sharing the loop that's also used by one of the E&GR semi-fast passenger trains which isn't ideal since I have to make sure the GCR train leaves before the E&GR train arrives.

 

 

 

[Annie]

Tea is important!

 

[Annie]

Tea is very important.  The household pixies must keep sneaking drinks from my teapot when I'm not looking because the dashed thing always seems to be empty.