RMweb Gold Regularity Posted May 7, 2018 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 7, 2018 And joining me today in “Nerd’s Corner” is James from Castle Aching... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edwardian Posted May 7, 2018 Share Posted May 7, 2018 And joining me today in “Nerd’s Corner” is James from Castle Aching... Well, thought you might want some company! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
runs as required Posted May 7, 2018 Share Posted May 7, 2018 I'm glad I'm not here but mowing my grass down the bottom. Oops! I'veI just hit a hidden tree stump.... .. .an excuse to tiptoe in and take a breather .. in early railwayana dh 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 7, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 7, 2018 I shall now go and amend the tonnage and tare weight markings. All very good information James. Because I can't make body meshes I'm stuck with having to find ones that are suitable (or mostly suitable) and then try my best to represent details in the texture artwork. But despite that limitation I think I can make things reasonably close to how they are supposed to look. Wagon numbers are always going to be difficult though as with the skills that I have I either have to put up with every wagon having an identical number or leave the number off. With the GER wagons I was considering making six wagons with different numbers which would help things a bit with creating variation, but beyond six wagons it starts to get unwieldy very quickly. The GCR wagons are going to remain numberless though because it's the coal hauling company on the layout and with coal trains being at least around 40 wagons long I am not going to start in on individually numbering wagons! Basically my imaginary GCR-GER joint line divides up the work by the GCR handling the greater part of the goods traffic and the GER handles most of the passenger traffic. One look at the large MPD at Melville demonstrates that very effectively with the GCR engines all being goods or general purpose locomotives in black or lined black and the GER engines nearly all being in blue or else passenger types in post WW1 grey. And I've just discovered that LSWR coaches were sometimes seen on GCR joint lines so that's all the excuse I need to have some attached to passenger trains. Being a complete dimwit when it comes to the finer points of railway history and knowledge of just what lines and junction went to where I have made no attempt to try and locate Valleyfields on a map. One side of the layout follows a coastline and again I wouldn't like to say where that it though it is sad that the bells of the sunken city of Ys can be heard on still calm nights. (For the unlettered among you that is a mythical reference by the way). I've just found a photo of a GER Diagram 46 coal wagon of 1910, - which is plainly a crib of a GWR design, - so I'll be doing some of those using a GWR digital model as a basis. Should be a fairly simple reskin job and useful enough provided I ignore things like axleboxes and buffers not being correct. My pilgrimage to the Sleep Clinic went much better than expected yesterday and to my surprise after days of grey skies and rain it was a perfect beautiful Autumn day with everything in the countryside looking like a picture postcard with the trees dressed up in their Autumn foliage. That made the car journey a bit more endurable and my driver was an ex-social worker who had worked in the mental health sector as well so we had a lot to chat about. And I got my first ever ride in a wheelchair since by the time I arrived at the hospital I was a bit on the second hand side. All good fun. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 7, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 7, 2018 (edited) Time for some proper trains. There's a TS2004 layout named Turks Castle 1892 set in the West Country and its a Broad Gauge layout. It will need some repair work to things that don't work in TS2009, but the landscape modelling is really nicely done which more than makes up for it. I started off with 'Bulkeley', but it had issues which I'll need to talk to Paul from Paulz Trainz about, so I changed over to the revolutionary sounding 'Red Star'. 'Red Star' was certainly a very game wee saddle tank and I think the train was perhaps a bit too heavy for it, but oh the sounds it was making were glorious. It's just the usual sound file that many Trainz engines use, but under the control of an engine spec file that had been closely tailored to match a smaller mid-19th century single driver locomotive the resulting sounds were a delight. A few snaps of the stunning landscape on this layout. By this time the train was getting up into more hilly country and 'Red Star' wasn't all that happy about the gradients, but I must admit it was doing a reasonably fine job and wasn't slipping and losing traction. Embarrassingly though I ran 'Red Star' out of coal and the station I had to finally stop at didn't have an interactive coaling stage so that was that. All good fun though. This is a very interesting layout with 23 route miles over very nicely modelled countryside and it's a route that's definitely not a set the regulator and forget type of thing at all. You have to properly drive your locomotive and I like that. In future though I'll have to use the tender engines for taking a train from one end of the layout to the other and the smaller saddle tanks like 'Red Star' will have to be kept for shunting and trip working and perhaps banking trains on the hills. I had started to build my own Broad Gauge layout, but I think I won't continue with it and I'll use Turks Castle instead. As I said the landscape is stunning, but as is usual with me I think the small towns and villages along the line could do with some work and further detailing. I have quite a lot of Broad Gauge digital models so it will be nice to have somewhere for them to play. Most are early period and mid period models, but I do have some late period Broad Gauge models as well. Generally I run the late and mid period ones together and don't get too precious over withdrawal dates. I have a couple of Pearson B&E single driver tank engines as an example and I always run those with the later period stuff simply because I like them and it's my trainset anyway. Edited May 7, 2018 by Annie 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 8, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 8, 2018 The only thing I've done to this layout so far is replace all the layout's original clipped suburban type hedges with my own mad green woolly caterpillar hedges which I think is a big improvement. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 8, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 8, 2018 More GCR coaches have just been released to the DLS, - my joy knows no bounds. (And yes I know it's plain I don't get out much). 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 8, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 8, 2018 Much tedious work was done this modelling session on removing all the dead and non-working TS2004 magic platforms from the many stations on the Turks Castle layout and putting in new magic passenger enabled platforms. I also removed the complex version magic loading and unloading tracks from all the goods sheds and put in the basic simple ones that a sleepy old lady with a silly clockwork brain can actually operate and understand. The complex ones want waybills and all sorts of silly nonsense before they'll function, but the simple ones just load and unload wagons provided you've shunted in the correct wagon type for the load and ask no questions about it. After running out of coal the other day engine sheds along the line all now have coal stages that provide coal and water towers and/or water cranes that dispense water. Basic really; - or at least to me and the way I play trains it is. With the DCC type controls in the simulator it doesn't make any difference if your locomotive has run out of coal and water, - but I like to do it properly and make sure my engines are fed and watered. The line of railway on the layout is 23 miles long and represents how it might have been in the West Country section between Taunton and Minehead in 1892. In the layout maker's notes he says that it's not a fastidiously correct model, but a representation in the spirit of the Broad Gauge era. The landscape certainly looks like the West Country and there aren't any really jarring anachronism in the general layout modelling so I'm more than happy with it. In an earlier post I said I might have to do some detailing work on the villages and small towns, but after looking at them today I've decided that they're fine and I'm going to leave them alone. Nice little cameos abound and I don't want to ruin any of that. Taunton is a lot more sketched out, but then doing big towns properly is an awful lot of work. Unless I get a real bee in my bonnet about it one day I'm going to leave it as it is since most of it is just background to the large station and yards at Taunton. I don't think layout's maker was that interested in the place actually as none of the goods shed have interactive loading tracks like all the other stations on the line. I think it was just the big station that trains left from to head towards Minehead and all the real traffic working action happened on the branchline itself. The mainline junction ends just before the baseboard edge so I put some portal tracks on it and I did the same at the other end of the baseboards for the mainline tracks out of Taunton. I don't know if I'll be wanting to operate the station with mainline services, but at least now it's possible should I want to. If nothing else at least now I can't accidentally run a train off the edge of the layout which has to be a plus. Snaps taken at Taunton while I was sorting out my Broad Gauge rolling stock. (These are snaps taken in the editor by the way, so things might be visible that normally aren't when the simulator itself is running) 'Lord of the Isles' The GWR's experiments with iron rolling stock have always fascinated me. Here's an iron guard's van, an iron luggage van and an iron 3rd class coach. The iron 3rd has an unfortunate prison like appearance that can't have made it very popular. The later 3rd class coach coupled next to it at least seems a little more humane. Coaches. This is by no means all that I have. I have a few more bogie coaches and such delights as a 6 wheel sleeping carriage and family saloons as well. And then there's the B&E coaches and the rest of the older coaches. As you can see I've been badly needing a Broad Gauge layout to run all this lot on for a long time. And yes I do have quite a lot of goods wagons as well. I don't get too precious about questions of what ran with what and whether coach 'X' would have been around at the same time as coach 'Y' as the point of my trainset is to have fun with it. If I really wanted to I could be totally period correct and pick a time period and only run exactly what was around then. Too late a period and I start getting seriously limited on my motive power options, too early and I can't run all the nice clerestories and I'd be very limited with my goods rolling stock. So my layout kind of lives in a fifty year slice of time and I'm quite happy with that. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 9, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 9, 2018 (edited) Of course on my West Country Broad Gauge line the Broad Gauge never ended. Folk turning up saying they they were going to convert it to standard gauge during the weekend were tarred and feathered and thrown in the duckpond by an angry populace. A year or two later someone in a very high place in government declared the Broad Gauge a national engineering treasure and that was that. In later years the 7 ft gauge British Railways diesel locomotives by English Electric were considered to be among the finest in the world. The High Court found Dr Beeching and his cronies guilty of the crime of conspiracy to upset people and they were sentenced to 40 years hard labour shovelling out the ashpits at Carnforth. The British Railways Standard Design locomotives having been wisely allowed to complete their useful working lives there was plenty of ash for them to shovel. The BR blue period never happened and locomotives stayed green.. A certain man who designed silly looking uniforms for BR staff was committed to an asylum and the new uniforms were based on the best elements of the Big Four uniforms (though some said that they were a little too GWR influenced). The later period of privatisation in the 21st century never happened and the all the people responsible for suggesting such a thing joined the now very elderly rogue uniform designer in the asylum. Aliens came and kidnapped the entire Tory government in the night and the British people were happy and everybody got cake and icecream. I like my alternative history. Now who do I say, 'Make it so' to? Edited May 9, 2018 by Annie 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sem34090 Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 (edited) Go on youtube and ask the guy who runs 'alternate history hub'... Edited May 9, 2018 by sem34090 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold BlueLightning Posted May 9, 2018 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 9, 2018 Go on youtube and ask the guy who runs 'alternate history hub'... One of my favourite YouTube channels!! and I now kind of want to see him make it!! Gary 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hroth Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 ... The GWR's experiments with iron rolling stock have always fascinated me. Here's an iron guard's van, an iron luggage van and an iron 3rd class coach. The iron 3rd has an unfortunate prison like appearance that can't have made it very popular. The later 3rd class coach coupled next to it at least seems a little more humane. Perhaps the Ironmongery was due to a concern that Chartists might attack the trains? I'm surprised that there aren't any flaps on the guards van for the Gatling guns.... (More alternative history...) 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sem34090 Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 (edited) Some laggy TS action, with 812's and an overview of most of the route, with terriers. I hope the music doesn't annoy anyone - I just happen to be a fan of such music. I may even play some of it occasionally, but that's for another time and place! Edited May 9, 2018 by sem34090 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold BlueLightning Posted May 9, 2018 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 9, 2018 I hope the music doesn't annoy anyone - I just happen to be a fan of such music. I may even play some of it occasionally, but that's for another time and place! I have only watched the branch overview. All In The April Evening?? So no the music doesn't annoy! Gary Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sem34090 Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 Well done! You win a, erm... Video showing the noise a terrier with something seriously wrong with its blastpipe makes at high speed: Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hroth Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 Some laggy TS action, with 812's and an overview of most of the route, with terriers. I hope the music doesn't annoy anyone - I just happen to be a fan of such music. I may even play some of it occasionally, but that's for another time and place! Jolly rousing stuff, sirrah!!!! But that Terrier at the start of the third video almost committed a SPAD, and the guard should be hauled over the coals for giving the right away before the starter had cleared! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sem34090 Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 (edited) Unfortunately that is the way some signals in TS work - they don't clear until the train starts moving. Hence the profuse whistling from the loco... That signalman should've been more on the ball. The driver had the road, had the tablet up as far as Langden. Langden had, of course, accepted the train in order to release the token. Perhaps it was a cold say and ice caused the arm to stick in the slot of the post somewhat. I recall hearing about a few incidents like that which led to the phasing out of such signals. Incidentally, I challenge someone to identify the piece of music in that clip... it is British, but is inspired by and was written in honour of another country... And I'm surprised that you didn't comment on the glitch that Hailsham demonstrated on the turntable (which is too late for the period modelled, being a model of the one at Didcot and emblazoned 'Southern Railway'!)... Edited May 9, 2018 by sem34090 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hroth Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 Unfortunately that is the way some signals in TS work - they don't clear until the train starts moving. Hence the profuse whistling from the loco... That signalman should've been more on the ball. The driver had the road, had the tablet up as far as Langden. Langden had, of course, accepted the train in order to release the token. Perhaps it was a cold say and ice caused the arm to stick in the slot of the post somewhat. I recall hearing about a few incidents like that which led to the phasing out of such signals. Incidentally, I challenge someone to identify the piece of music in that clip... it is British, but is inspired by and was written in honour of another country... And I'm surprised that you didn't comment on the glitch that Hailsham demonstrated on the turntable (which is too late for the period modelled, being a model of the one at Didcot and emblazoned 'Southern Railway'!)... Ice causing the signal to "freeze in the slot" was a feature of the Abbots Ripton disaster on the GNR in January 1876, causing The Special Scotch Express (ie The Flying Scotsman) to run into a coal train in a heavy blizzard, the wreckage subsequently being hit by another express coming the other way. After Abbots Ripton, the GNR changed from slotted signals to somersalt signals that pivoted free of the post and so wouldn't become frozen in place so easily. Upper and lower quadrant signals had similar characteristics. I didn't look all the way through the videos, but I'll have a listen. Here's a Tuba tune for you... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold BlueLightning Posted May 9, 2018 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 9, 2018 (edited) Do I get a prize for Eagle Squadron?? Or does my time as an RAF Drummer disqualify me?? Gary Edited May 9, 2018 by BlueLightning 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 9, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 9, 2018 Thanks so much for the delightful videos Sem. Very nice to see your pre-group branchline at last. Yes some signals in Trainz are like that too. The locomotive has to be moving to trigger them. A bit annoying, but I've learned to work around it. And I did enjoy the music by the way. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sem34090 Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 I was about to type "I recall a major one on the GNR" but doubted myself... Yes Gary... you get a load of Triang clerestories to chop up for me! For some reason that worked better than the others for the terrier video. I had intended to use Amazing Grace for the 812 models, but the loco was too loud! I couldn't find a nice brass band arrangement of 'Scotland the Brave' that didn't feature wailing cat impersonating instruments bagpipes, and I wouldn't subject you to an instrument that was reportedly designed, or tweaked by the Scots, to terrorise and torture! Colonel Bogey was all I had really. I did another overview with 'Abide with Me' as the backing but the actual recording was much less successful. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sem34090 Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 You've seen the branch many times Annie, but never in action! I thought that would be easier than trying to stream it to you live! Incidentally, if anyone would like a personal tour of the route, please PM me! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 9, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 9, 2018 Yes I meant to say that it was nice to see it all working Sem, but I didn't quite express it right. Lovely landscape modelling by the way. GCR coaches in the carriage yards on Valleyfields. These are the two latest GCR coaches by Robd. And this believe it or not is a litho coach. Robd said I could make use of his textures so I had a go at applying them to a very old clerestory coach from TS2004. The coach mesh isn't exactly user friendly as it has distortions below the waistline that twist textures out of alignment so fitting the GCR texture to it was a bit of a swine of a task, but I got there in the end. I think I'm getting better at this faux interior thing on litho coaches, but only by dogged persistence. With the GCR suddenly being provided for with nice rolling stock after years of nothing I've been busy with sorting out the coaches and wagons I need for Valleyfields. I'm persisting with re-skinning the old clerestory coaches because there's no other non-corridor clerestory coach meshes available. Robd has made some nice varnished mahogany re-skins on some Midland clerestory coach meshes, but they are a bit of a cheat since the GCR didn't have any corridor clerestory coaches. He does know this, but they're certainly better than no coaches at all and that's why he made them. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sem34090 Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 I am ashamed to say that I cannot lay claim to the landscape modelling as this belongs to the base route from which this pre-grouping version was created. The idea is that, given the base route was preservation - era, this shows the same route as it was just over 100 years earlier. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Annie Posted May 10, 2018 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 10, 2018 Having fun on the Broad Gauge. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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