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

[Annie]

That would be really good James.  I know such things can be a bit of a challenge to do when it comes to imaginary 'what-if' railways.  I thought about trying to put my little empire on a map of Norfolk and my brain went 'TILT' and fell over.

 

In other news I took the image of the Dapol Midland-like open wagon that was posted in the Castle Aching thread as a bit of a challenge and worked up some artwork using it as a template to produce a pre-1917 M&GNJR open wagon originally built by the Midland Railway.  Not easy as red wagons are awful to make artwork for and I ended up practically redrawing the whole thing until there was not a hint of any relationship to the Dapol wagon left to see.

[Edwardian]

My main problem is not where on the map to put the WNR, but the fact that there needs to be more Norfolk!

 

These are the mythical 'folds in the map', slithers of land running broadly north-south and north-west to south-east.  

 

Thus, a corridor of extra land runs north-south intersecting the M&GN line to the west of Massingham station.

 

The approximate location of the slithers of Expanded Norfolk are indicated by the green (WNR) and red (Norfolk Minerals Railway) lines, having borrowed your map for the purpose.

[Annie]

Thanks James, that will be very useful.  I provided the map in my post thinking that it might be of use to you in giving an indication of where the WNR might lie in relation to other lines.  I would imagine a bridge of some kind will be needed to carry the WNR over the M&GNJR line near Massingham which shouldn't be a problem, but the most important thing was knowing more or less where the junction was as well as to which direction it faced.

Since my layout is lacking a huge slice of Norfolk between the GER line to Hunstanton and the M&GNJR line to Melton Constable I shall have to place the survey and construction of the junction into the hands of Much, Fudging & Co, but I'm sure it will all work out fine in the end.

[Edwardian]

10 minutes ago, Annie said:

Thanks James, that will be very useful.  I provided the map in my post thinking that it might be of use to you in giving an indication of where the WNR might lie in relation to other lines.  I would imagine a bridge of some kind will be needed to carry the WNR over the M&GNJR line near Massingham which shouldn't be a problem, but the most important thing was knowing more or less where the junction was as well as to which direction it faced.

Since my layout is lacking a huge slice of Norfolk between the GER line to Hunstanton and the M&GNJR line to Melton Constable I shall have to place the survey and construction of the junction into the hands of Much, Fudging & Co, but I'm sure it will all work out fine in the end.

 

The key here is that both the junction with the GER's Lynn and Hunstanton line and that with the MGN's Lynn and Fakenham line take through traffic to Castle Aching at the southern end of the WN line, before it reverses for the north coast. 

 

Is the MGN line west of Massingham in a cutting or on an embankment? I have not surveyed the line, I'm afraid!

[Annie]

It would seem that the M&GNJR line between Hillington and Massington is on the flat and without either cuttings or embankments James; - or at least according to the 1905 OS map it seems so.  There is a short cutting outside of Hillington station and then no further earthworks from there onwards.  The line modelled on my layout between the two stations seems to match the map, but I'd need to do a proper on the ground survey since parts of the landscape may have been fudged to visually hide the GER line to Hunstanton.

[Annie]

Massingham looking towards Hillington, - which is right at the edge of the horizon.  The layout's original builder left out the cutting at Hillington station so as you can see James it's very much a flat landscape all the way.  (Picture taken in the editor/surveyor part of the simulator so ignore the white circles and yellow arrows.)

 

[Annie]

H.T.Co. No.4 now has a new boiler.  Or perhaps I should say it's boiler specs have been much re-written in its engine spec file.  When I put together the single driver tank engine No.5 something  I immediately noticed was how economical on coal it was.  No.5 is not up to No.4's train haulage abilities which is only to be expected, but even so the difference in coal consumption was something I could not ignore.  No.4 is a hard working engine and its voracious hunger for coal has been an on-going problem.  No.4's fireman must have arms like Popeye by now with all the coal shovelling he's had to do over the past months.

So what I did was to enter in all the boiler spec data from No.5 into No.4's engine spec file.  Either I was going to end up crippling No.4 or else I might just end up with a less hungry engine that still can work hard.  No.5's boiler is pressed to a lower pressure, but despite that just so much better at producing the necessary heat to produce steam so I was reasonably confident this boiler upgrade was going to work.

And it did   Now No.4 can do a passenger service run and not arrive scratching the last of the coal dust out of the bottom of its coal bunker; - and No.4 still performs well  just like it always has.

 

I took this snap while out testing along the Lynn to Hunstanton line since I'd like to get it to an operational state so it can be used.

 

[Annie]

A somewhat audacious project I've been working on with the layout is running the GER lines from my Hopewood & Windweather layout through to join up with the  stub line to Wells on the M&GNJR and GER layout.  The GER line divides away from the GCR-GER line and the GCR line continues on to a pair of portals, - which was one way to get rid of it about the only sensible way to not have the GCR heading off into regions where it never went even in the most wild 'what-if' scenario.

To get the GER line to Wells stub I used the well worn trick of running the new trackwork down the edge of the layout behind convenient hills to give it good visual separation from the M&GNJR line.  Joining directly into the M&GNJR lines  at Melton Constable was never going to fly even if it would have been extremely convenient as it would have involved tearing the map of Norfolk to pieces and sticky taping it back together in ways that would never quite ever be Norfolk again.

 

Basically this is what I'm doing.  The Barrowhills & Foxhollow Railway is yet another odd little line purchased by the GER and was never a lot of use to them since it mostly served some very remote rural areas with not much population.  When the Hopewood and Windweather Tramways were joined into the B&FR along with the long rambling single track Moxbury Railway (whose initials always caused confusion until the GER took it over) things became a little better, but not by much.

 

 

The station at Foxhollow.

 

After Foxhollow station I had a problem because I had to get the line to the Wells stub track on the layout and there was a substantial line of hills and then Hunstation in the way.  I couldn't go around as because of the odd narrow folded up landscape on the layout I would have blundered straight into M&GNJR territory.  Sooooo what I did was cut a cutting down into part of the hills and run an insanely long tunnel under Hunstanton to get to the Wells stub track.  The portal to Wells was not disturbed by this huge feat of railway civil engineering and is still functional amazingly enough.

Apparently I could have achieved the same result by using portals and transferring a train from one track to the other instead of putting in a tunnel, but it all seemed a bit tricky to do to me.  Besides this way a train has to cover a very real distance just as it really would.  Of course the tunnel doesn't actually exist, - it's just a way to get a train to Heacham by running in the correct direction on the layout and not going (visibly) anywhere near Hunstanton while doing it.  Sudden forests of trees hide all the necessary landscape fudges.

Of course I blame these three young persons I found wandering around the layout.  The original layout builder had placed them right out in a remote field on the layout and I only found them when I was laying the line to Foxhollow.  I have no idea what they were doing out there and they wouldn't tell me.

[Martin S-C]

When you refer to the "Wells stub line" do you mean the harbour branch? I have visited Wells often on me hols and have liked the terminal station there and its double-reversal access to the harbour line. Something that is on my bucket-list of things to model (one day).

 

 

 

[Annie]

In this case Martin the Wells stub track is a relatively short piece of track leading from the junction at Heacham and it represents the whole of the line to Wells.  I do like that map and the photos of Wells you posted though and I agree it would be a great basis for a model.

 

After all my audacious railway civil engineering it now disappears under a forest via cutting and a not very likely tunnel.  The forest covers the Wells portal track and the hidden junction with the line burrowing through from Foxhollow.  The trees are actually just floating above the excavations and are densely packed enough that the lack of any ground to put their roots into can't be seen unless I get really close and peer down into the trees from above (It does look a bit odd from underneath though, but that can't be helped).  Since the trees all share the same texture and mesh library the memory loading from the forest is actually quite minimal.

 

I can accept the unlikely tunnel since this this part of the layout folds the entirely of the part of Norfolk between the GER Lynn-Hunstanton line and the M&GNJR line to Melton Constable into a space that's less than a scale half a mile wide so a certain amount of unlikely violence has already been done to the landscape.  I am thinking of retexturing that tunnel mouth cover piece into being more representative of Norfolk geology though and then I think it wouldn't stand out so much.

 

[Annie]

The really odd thing with the M&GNJR-GER layout as downloaded was that while the M&GNJR line was essentially pre-grouping apart from some minor modernist infestations which the Holy Inquisition swiftly 'corrected' the GER side was horrifyingly BR blue era.  After a lot of effort the work of the heretical modernists has been cast into the void, but a few infestations still remain to be cleansed and purified.  Not many though and now at least if is possible to travel to Hunstanton without the sight of the horrifying blight of modernism offending the eye.

 

Edited March 17, 2019 by Annie
Update to picture

[Annie]

My steampunk 'MODERNISM' poster will end up being reduced in size and placed on my layout somewhere just in the same way as one or two of my stations have GER Mars posters.  I most probably won't place it on a station wall though, but perhaps somewhere like one of the Police stations on the layout.

 

And on a completely different subject I had some fun shunting the sand riddle sidings at Bluebell Sands with old No.3 which is something I hadn't done for a while.  Precise shunting skills are needed so I always enjoy doing this.  No.3 is taking a train of sand wagons through to the loop by the Bluebell Woods MPD and the two G15 tram engines, Nos. 127 and 128, will take over from there.

 

 

 

[Annie]

Quite a bit of time had been spent over the past few days trying to improve my representation of the 'golden gorse' livery colour on my faux M&GNJR engines.  In the end I had to 'undercoat' the engines body mesh by adjusting the specular, diffuse and ambient settings to use shades of brown and green in order to get the colour I wanted.  Much adjusting and fiddling about in the mesh editor was necessary to get the 'undercoat' toned correctly, but I got there in the end.  The colour seems to match up (more or less) with good known colour samples that can be considered reliable so I'm happy with what I've done.

 

I borrowed the TS2019 version of the K&ESR in Winter for these pictures since the latest version of the simulator has much better lighting and shadowing effects.

 

 

 

 

TS2012's lighting engine is much more simple and it doesn't really do shadows.

 

[Annie]

With the GER lines on my layout now all connected together it was time to introduce a new engine to my layout.  An older model the Claud was only available in LNER and BR liveries originally until it recently got a bit of a general refresh and a proper paint job.

[Annie]

GER 'Claud' at Brenton Wood crossing over from the GCR-GER joint line to the GER Moxbury line.  Some of the duplication of rail lines on my layout would have Beeching rubbing his hands together with glee, but most of that is down to the narrowness of the old Valleyfields boards that carry this section of my now huge sprawling layout.  Scenery hides the most obvious 'too close' bits, but it's at the big station on the line at Brenton Wood that the two lines can be decently seen together.

 

 

I thought about drawing out a basic map of the GER lines and GER affiliated lines on my layout as there really are a lot of them now.

Edited March 21, 2019 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Annie]

Beyer-Peacock single at Hunstanton.

 

 

I have a big gap in my collection of engines between 1860 and the late 1880s as so many interesting locomotives are entirely missing in Trainz.  I didn't think the West Norfolk Railway would have minded temporarily owning a Beyer-Peacock single driver though.  One of my favourite engines in my collection, - Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway No.1, - and it was nice to dust it off and give it an outing.

 

 

 

No.1 waits at the bay platform at Heacham while a 'Claud' passes by with a train from Hunstanton.

 

 

Possibly having too much fun playing with time warps.  This is a lovely engine to drive.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Annie]

Other snaps.  A GCR Sacre E8 on a local train.

 

 

Rob Dee recently worked his re-skinning magic and now the GCR 9F's from Darlington Works are available in MS&LR livery.  Of course I had to have one.

 

 

 

And I finally discovered how to deliberately hitch a ride in a railway carriage.  I'd somehow been doing it by accident up until now.  It's a very good way to see how the scenic work I'm doing is working out.

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

Having just stumbled upon some photos of what the stations on the M&GNJR section of my layout are supposed to look like I want to go hide under the bed and not come out.  It's just been fixing one thing after another with this layout and I'm sorry I downloaded the rotten thing in the first place.

[Annie]

This isn't Hunstanton, this is Trenchmouth on Sea.  Or at least it's going to continued to be called that until I can get stuck in and fix it all.

I have done some basic work on the station and the town, but mostly due to the original builder thinking it was entirely unnecessary to accurately level the station site before laying track and putting in the platforms & etc.  Needless to say the town and its surrounding landscape look nothing like Hunstanton.  So really I'm starting to wonder if I should simply rename all the towns and stations on the Hunstanton to Lynn line and thereby incorporate them into my make believe hidden-in-a-massive-fold-in-the-map rambling GER empire that has no pretensions at all to being anywhere except vaguely on the Norfolk coast.

 

 

Since the backstory of most of my little GER empire is that it is a knitting together of a number of independent tramways and small local railways purchased by the GER in possibly a rash moment they may have regretted later I have taken the view that some of these small lines had their own engines that they had obtained from a variety of sources and that these engines are still at work mostly because they still had enough useful life in them that the GER thought it worthwhile to keep them.  Another factor in my decision to do this is that there are hardly any pre-WW1 GER engines available for Trainz, - the sum total being three in all.  A 'Claud' 4-4-0, a Y14 and a 'Buckjumper'.

Which leads me to introducing Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway No.3.  (There is a line to Great Mulling on my layout by the way, but Great Mulling itself is represented by a portal and trains are regularly scheduled to go there.)

 

 

Using the Edinburgh & Glasgow Rly Beyer-Peacock single as a base I gave it a different weatherboard with brass edging, updated its buffers and fitted screw couplings (vacuum brake pipes still to come).  As you can see I also painted it blue and generally did a bit of work on base colour and shine effects in the mesh editor.  It also now has a very well written engine spec file from a small Broad Gauge single driver locomotive which seems to suit it very well.  (The teak coaches are some of my latest efforts soon to be uploaded to the DLS)

 

 

The usual route for No.3 to take on its timetabled passenger service is to depart from Hunstanton Trenchmouth on Sea; run into the bay platform at Heacham Headford, decouple and be turned on the turntable; run around its train and proceed to Foxhollow over the former Barrowhills & Foxhollow Extension Railway, and then to Barrowhills.  Whereupon No.3 runs around its train again and proceeds to Windweather.  After another running around its train episode and taking on water at Windweather No.3 returns to Barrowhills and from there proceeds to Great Mulling.  It's actually quite a fun passenger service to do and with its new engine spec file No.3 is a lovely engine to drive.

 

[Annie]

I've been doing quite a bit of experimenting with the simulator's AI (robot engine drivers) to see if I could have a number of trains automatically running on the double track GCR-GER joint mainline.  Easy I thought, - it's a double track mainline, no complex junctions, nothing to cause any problems.  Only the AI in Trainz is really dumb and it does stupid things like trying to avoid signals by switching over at crossovers and running 'wrong road' to avoid them entirely. - which is a complete disaster in the making, - or  taking short cuts where they aren't supposed to go.

This is a GCR 1B taking a 'short cut' along the Hopewood Tramway which just looks plain silly.  This could not ever be considered to be a 'short cut'.  It's a longer distance, the Hopewood Tramway also has severe speed restrictions in many places as well as tight curves so why would the simulator's AI 'think' that leaving a well engineered mainline intended for fast running to 'short cut' along the Hopewood Tramway was a good thing.

I've had to place soooooo many 'don't go this way' markers on the trackwork it's not funny, but it is nice to see trains running past on the mainline while I'm doing other things so I've stuck with the task of trying to make the robot drivers do what they're supposed to.

[Northroader]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hU1BKeuuDeA

Edited March 25, 2019 by Northroader

[Annie]

Yes that's about the level of the simulator's AI robots alright.  

 

I'm very much considering turning this 0-6-0 well tank into a faux WNR engine for use on my layout.  I'm not very sure what James might think of that, but it's a case of working with what I have.  This is very sweetly running digital model and it's one of the favourite 1860s engines I have in my collection.

 

 

 

Travelling 1870s style.

 

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by Annie
added a picture

[Annie]

Chatting to the driver.  Life is fairly unhurried on the old Barrow Hills & Foxhollow Extension Railway section.

 

 

I originally put together a single driver tank engine just to see how it would look since it was a topic being discussed on the forums at the time, - though when I came to test it out on the track with a train I was really surprised at how well it ran and also how economical it was on coal with its slightly modified Terrier engine spec.  Well there's three of them now, Nos. 5, 7 and 8 (pictured).  The former B&FER is looking to become their stamping ground, though they also do some passenger turns on the Windweather section.

Driving them on the 'realistic' controls is a slight challenge since they are a bit under boilered and won't steam for toffee if you make their fire too thick.  They also have a sweet spot with the water level in their boiler.  I was a little concerned whether they could manage the run from Foxhollow to Heacham since the gradient out of the tunnel-that-isn't-really-there is fairly severe, but they seem to do it ok so long as you keep an eye on the fire and the boiler water level.  Most of the time I cheat and run them on the DCC controls which isn't really that much of a challenge, though their coal level at the end of a run will soon tell me if I was thrashing them or gave them too much of a load for them to haul.  They can get along quite briskly though and are certainly good on the passenger runs so long as their loads are reasonable.

[Martin S-C]

15 hours ago, Annie said:

Chatting to the driver.

The rude fellow is turning his back on her! Swine!

[Annie]

There is a fireman figure posed to be leaning on the edge on the cabside as if chatting to someone on the platform Martin, but it's not a very good model figure so I don't use it.  Just for a little variation I could rotate the present fireman figure roughly 90 degrees towards the platform side.  It is a bit of a problem with footplate crew figures with there being so very few good ones that the same ones have to be used again and again so it looks like all they are all related to one another and are from the same very (very) large family.