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

[Martin S-C]

That's really nice and the station is a monster. I have two comments if you'll indulge me. The tall cranes in the first image should probably run on rails and are more the thing you'd see on a major port quayside. Perhaps best to delete them and replace with something more humble?

And weeds on the pavements. Tsk, tsk, get the council men out to trim those away.

 

I'll refrain from mentioning the white platform edges as you know about those now

[Annie]

Yes I think I'll replace those cranes with derricks Martin.  They were an original part of the layout and in really daft places to I moved them over to what I converted into a timber siding after deleting a whole lot of even more daft stuff. 

Unfortunately there is only one pre-grouping suitable platform available for Trainz that doesn't have white platform edges.  I do plan to drag the platform textures into Paint.NET and sort them out as they annoy me too.

And yes the grass/weeds on the pavement does need attending to.  I have cut out and moved a whole lot of grass already on this layout that was in the wrong places and I must've missed those bits.

 

Useful comments are always welcome Martin.

 

I did want Moxbury's station to look important since it's supposed to be a gateway to larger towns and major lines further afield and nothing says important like a big glass overoof when it comes to stations.   The other good thing about Moxbury is that it's given me a whole lot more GER owned siding space on the layout as well as a proper GER MPD of significant size.  Hunstanton's MPD is quite miserably small and it has limited siding space and while Brenton Wood is a large and important station as well its goods yard and MPD is owned by the GCR.

[Annie]

The only problem with having lots of fun building up Moxbury is that I seem to need to sleep more after each modelling session.  Altogether a bit annoying, but that's just how it is I guess.

 

Some snaps.

 

The dock cranes at the timber tranship area are now gone and I'm a lot happier with this area now.

 

View of the station yard from the east side of the station.

 

You should know my tastes in engines by now.  Why use a tender engine when there's a tank engine available that can do the job.  I'm pushing things with having engines in M.S.& L.R. livery and coaches in the French grey and dark oak livery on my layout, but I just like having them in those liveries.

 

West side of the station.

 

A discussion about some crates outside the office at the tranship sheds.

 

No.7 heads off with the morning train to Great Mulling.  Great Mulling is the next on my list of stations to add to my layout.  That will be another biggish job since Great Mulling is about as big as Moxbury, but not so important so at least the station will be of a more modest size.

 

I used an earlier version of these sheds at Melton Constable on my M&GNJR layout and since then I've been trying to make a better looking version.  I've had at least six goes at trying to get the brickwork to look better and at one point I almost gave up and used a GWR 4 road engine shed instead.

 

Brickwork detail.

 

General view of the engine shed.  I thought I'd taken some more snaps of the Moxbury MPD, but it seems I didn't.  @!%$# microsleeping!

 

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

44 minutes ago, Annie said:

The only problem with having lots of fun building up Moxbury is that I seem to need to sleep more after each modelling session.  Altogether a bit annoying, but that's just how it is I guess.

 

Some snaps.

 

The dock cranes at the timber tranship area are now gone and I'm a lot happier with this area now.

 

View of the station yard from the east side of the station.

 

You should know my tastes in engines by now.  Why use a tender engine when there's a tank engine available that can do the job.  I'm pushing things with having engines in M.S.& L.R. livery and coaches in the French grey and dark oak livery on my layout, but I just like having them in those liveries.

 

West side of the station.

 

A discussion about some crates outside the office at the tranship sheds.

 

No.7 heads off with the morning train to Great Mulling.  Great Mulling is the next on my list of stations to add to my layout.  That will be another biggish job since Great Mulling is about as big as Moxbury, but not so important so at least the station will be of a more modest size.

 

I used an earlier version of these sheds at Melton Constable on my M&GNJR layout and since then I've been trying to make a better looking version.  I've had at least six goes at trying to get the brickwork to look better and at one point I almost gave up and used a GWR 4 road engine shed instead.

 

Brickwork detail.

 

General view of the engine shed.  I thought I'd taken some more snaps of the Moxbury MPD, but it seems I didn't.  @!%$# microsleeping!

 

 

Looks suspiciously like Knapford... 

[Annie]

The base layout which I've worked on and changed around mightily Red was an old version of Vicarstown.  The turntable and roundhouse was mostly missing and there were other bits missing as well.  Since I don't like roundhouses it would have gone anyway, but with it (mostly) not being there at all just made things easier.

There's now no TtTE content at all used at Moxbury since I replaced them all with pre-grouping models that were just plain better.

[Martin S-C]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

A discussion about some crates outside the office at the tranship sheds.

 

 

Alright George, which box is the cup under now?

[RedGemAlchemist]

3 hours ago, Annie said:

The base layout which I've worked on and changed around mightily Red was an old version of Vicarstown.  The turntable and roundhouse was mostly missing and there were other bits missing as well.  Since I don't like roundhouses it would have gone anyway, but with it (mostly) not being there at all just made things easier.

There's now no TtTE content at all used at Moxbury since I replaced them all with pre-grouping models that were just plain better.

Ah, that explains it. 

[Regularity]

The switch machines look awfully modern, but more importantly, those orange tubes didn’t appear on the railways until the early 1980s.

That’s almost certainly due to settings in the simulator: not something that interests me, so I have no idea if this is easy to change, but generally I find that the track lets TrainSims down. Where are the wing rails and the check rails? Why are running lines spaced so far apart?

 

Sorry, but I have developed an eye for trackwork details (after all, without the trackwork, a railway train is a road train), but it appears that the developers of train simulators haven’t. It’s a shame, as so much else is simply magnificent.

Edited May 1, 2019 by Regularity
Typo

[Annie]

I have other point mechs for traditional point rodding I can change over for those modern switch machines Simon.  When I put in a point those switch machines are attached as the default fitting.   Since the point rodding fittings are left and right handed and the switch machines aren't I can't just mod the scripting to use the point rodding fittings to start with and I have to do it all manually afterwards

I have wing rail and check rail models as well that I can attach to the points which greatly improves their appearance, but that is best left to when I'm absolutely sure that I'm not going to make any more changes to the trackwork since disturbing anything tends to make the wing rails and check rails jump out of place. 

Moxbury is still a bit WIP with some of the detailing and I will get to these things eventually.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by the running line spacing Simon since as far as I know I have my double track spacing fairly close to being correct.

 

 

[Regularity]

Hi Annie,

 

Thanks for that: it explains some of the differences - the default settings are slightly lacking in detail. That may also explain why the “six foot” sometimes appears wider, although that may be an optical illusion.

 

This is, in its own way, a bit like when I am using Templot. Most of my favoured railway companies used interlaced sleepers on turnouts, and despite having a few useful templates as starting points, I always have to do some “timber shoving”. These fine details can easily absorb more time and effort than the rest of the plan, so I don’t do them unless I am happy with where I have got to.

[Annie]

Doing the final detailing on the pointwork can be a bit tedious Simon since sometimes the individual parts don't want to sit down in quite the right place, but it's certainly rewarding once it's done since everything does look so much better.

Moxbury is based around a not especially well made layout I downloaded with the saving grace that it had a nicely modelled town and landscape.  The railways side of things has need a lot of work, - especially with things like track alignments, - but we are getting there.

[Annie]

I've had this GCR luggage van running around on my layouts in several different versions for a while now.  It was the first real piece of texture reskinning I did for Trainz and as time has gone on I've refined the appearance of the luggage van until today I decided I could call it finished.

I'm uploading it to Auran/N3V's download station so it should be available after about 24 hours.

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2019 by Annie
added more pictures

[Annie]

I've been thinking about my sprawling little railway empire.  Essentially it's a GER and affiliated lines layout with GCR trains (inexplicably) chugging through on the double track mainline from time to time.  Mostly though my railway layout is all about the affiliated lines.  These are lines that the GER has a large percentage shareholding in and which will eventually be fully absorbed into that company (Hopewood Tramway, Windweather Tramway, Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway, Barrow Hills & Foxhollow Extension Railway).  However my time period (whenever that might be) is on the very edge of that happening so all these individual small railways still retain their individual nature, locomotives, rolling stock and liveries; - though GER rolling stock is steadily appearing on these lines in greater numbers and sometimes even GER engines are turning up and staying on for a while.

 

What I've really been wanting ever since I started off the Hopewood Tramway is to have a complete railway system (just like Martin is doing with his layout) where trains can go to a definite destination for a purpose and come back again.  Things inched a little closer with Moxbury now being 99% completed since Moxbury was always in my mind as being the 'Big Station' where trains could go as a destination be unloaded, be shunted about and loaded and come back again.  Yes lines do go beyond Moxbury, - and are represented by yet another mysterious portal, - but since they most probably go to strange foreign places like Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire they don't enter into the picture.

 

So now I'm looking in the direction of the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway.  An old local railway with the engines and rolling stock to prove it that had grand ambitions at one time, but gradually settled down to providing a good and steady service to its own patch of Norfolk instead.  From the scattered notes in my head I knew they had a quarry of some sort, I knew they were very rural with lots of sheep and I knew they worked goods trains to and from the harbour at Windweather due to past friendly negotiations and agreements with the Windweather Tramway.

 

All I had to do is build it (sigh).  Moxbury was perhaps a turning point for me since I deliberately stole a lovely town with a less than well built railway and changed it into being Moxbury.  I can't build towns for toffee, but I do know how to build up a station and goods yard that works properly and I know how to lay properly aligned trackwork and points so this was a very good decision on my part.  Having narcolepsy means I have to carefully manage my time that I'm awake so 'stealing' sections from downloaded layouts that have more or less the right kind of landscape along with well built English towns is going to be the path I'm going to take from now on.

 

Which leads up to me stealing the Ffarquhar branch.  Yes the holy and wonderful Ffarquhar branch much beloved by worshipers of a certain blue engine.  The simple fact is these TtTE Trainz folk seem to have an incredible knack for building landscapes as well as towns and villages, but they are terrible at building anything approaching a workable station yard or aligning trackwork correctly.  So what I'm doing is rebuilding the railway side of things to suit what I want for the E&GR and leaving the towns alone apart from purging them of the taint of modernity.

The whole new layout section is fitted side on against the Barrow Hills layout boards and since the mating surfaces were both about the same height and were both of a very rural landscape it wasn't too hard to blend them together.  Yet another new landscape board had to be made from scratch though (groan) to carry the existing B&ER line through to what is now the B&ER; - so that's my penance taken care of for this week.

 

Some snaps.

Oakmarket (formerly Elsbridge) is a good sized town and as is traditional with many railways the station is a good long walk from the town.

 

The tracklaying in the existing goods yard was a crime against god, church and man so I had to do a lot of rebuilding work here.  It was also just about completely unworkable as a goods yard and had buildings and scenic details that were just plain daft.  So far with this new layout section I've deleted about 6 locomotives worth of driving wheels (not fitted on their axle) that were strewn about as scenic items; - and what is now Moxbury was worse.  Plainly these TtTE folk seem to think that fitting a new driving wheel to a locomotive is like changing a wheel on their Mum's old Morris.

 

I decided to leave the main line to Great Mulling for now and the former Ffarquhar branch will become the branchline to Grimwold which is where the quarry is sited.  At last my ancient 0-6-0 goods engines will have a proper job of work to do. 

Strangely the branchline passed close to Oakmarket so I decided put in a basic station which I've named Oakmarket Town.

 

The next station on the branchline, - and as far as I've got for now, - is Monkton Bywater.  There is a sizeable river behind the town and it extends for much of the length of this new layout section.

My aim with the E&GR is to make it able to be worked as its own stand alone layout in the same way as this is possible with the Hopewood & Windweather Tramways.

 

 

And I've been steadily adding frogs and check rails to the points on the new layout sections so that will be this coming week's penance taken care of as well.

Edit:  And joy unbounded, - I've managed to find some proper pre-prouping platforms without the white platform edge.

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2019 by Annie
More to say.

[Ravenser]

6 hours ago, Annie said:

I've been thinking about my sprawling little railway empire.  Essentially it's a GER and affiliated lines layout with GCR trains (inexplicably) chugging through on the double track mainline from time to time.  Mostly though my railway layout is all about the affiliated lines.  These are lines that the GER has a large percentage shareholding in and which will eventually be fully absorbed into that company (Hopewood Tramway, Windweather Tramway, Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway, Barrow Hills & Foxhollow Extension Railway).  However my time period (whenever that might be) is on the very edge of that happening so all these individual small railways still retain their individual nature, locomotives, rolling stock and liveries; - though GER rolling stock is steadily appearing on these lines in greater numbers and sometimes even GER engines are turning up and staying on for a while.

 

What I've really been wanting ever since I started off the Hopewood Tramway is to have a complete railway system (just like Martin is doing with his layout) where trains can go to a definite destination for a purpose and come back again.  Things inched a little closer with Moxbury now being 99% completed since Moxbury was always in my mind as being the 'Big Station' where trains could go as a destination be unloaded, be shunted about and loaded and come back again.  Yes lines do go beyond Moxbury, - and are represented by yet another mysterious portal, - but since they most probably go to strange foreign places like Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire they don't enter into the picture.

 

So now I'm looking in the direction of the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway.  An old local railway with the engines and rolling stock to prove it that had grand ambitions at one time, but gradually settled down to providing a good and steady service to its own patch of Norfolk instead.  From the scattered notes in my head I knew they had a quarry of some sort, I knew they were very rural with lots of sheep and I knew they worked goods trains to and from the harbour at Windweather due to past friendly negotiations and agreements with the Windweather Tramway.

 

All I had to do is build it (sigh).  Moxbury was perhaps a turning point for me since I deliberately stole a lovely town with a less than well built railway and changed it into being Moxbury.  I can't build towns for toffee, but I do know how to build up a station and goods yard that works properly and I know how to lay properly aligned trackwork and points so this was a very good decision on my part.  Having narcolepsy means I have to carefully manage my time that I'm awake so 'stealing' sections from downloaded layouts that have more or less the right kind of landscape along with well built English towns is going to be the path I'm going to take from now on.

 

Which leads up to me stealing the Ffarquhar branch.  Yes the holy and wonderful Ffarquhar branch much beloved by worshipers of a certain blue engine.  The simple fact is these TtTE Trainz folk seem to have an incredible knack for building landscapes as well as towns and villages, but they are terrible at building anything approaching a workable station yard or aligning trackwork correctly.  So what I'm doing is rebuilding the railway side of things to suit what I want for the E&GR and leaving the towns alone apart from purging them of the taint of modernity.

The whole new layout section is fitted side on against the Barrow Hills layout boards and since the mating surfaces were both about the same height and were both of a very rural landscape it wasn't too hard to blend them together.  Yet another new landscape board had to be made from scratch though (groan) to carry the existing B&ER line through to what is now the B&ER; - so that's my penance taken care of for this week.

 

Some snaps.

Oakmarket (formerly Elsbridge) is a good sized town and as is traditional with many railways the station is a good long walk from the town.

 

The tracklaying in the existing goods yard was a crime against god, church and man so I had to do a lot of rebuilding work here.  It was also just about completely unworkable as a goods yard and had buildings and scenic details that were just plain daft.  So far with this new layout section I've deleted about 6 locomotives worth of driving wheels (not fitted on their axle) that were strewn about as scenic items; - and what is now Moxbury was worse.  Plainly these TtTE folk seem to think that fitting a new driving wheel to a locomotive is like changing a wheel on their Mum's old Morris.

 

I decided to leave the main line to Great Mulling for now and the former Ffarquhar branch will become the branchline to Grimwold which is where the quarry is sited.  At last my ancient 0-6-0 goods engines will have a proper job of work to do. 

Strangely the branchline passed close to Oakmarket so I decided put in a basic station which I've named Oakmarket Town.

 

The next station on the branchline, - and as far as I've got for now, - is Monkton Bywater.  There is a sizeable river behind the town and it extends for much of the length of this new layout section.

My aim with the E&GR is to make it able to be worked as its own stand alone layout in the same way as this is possible with the Hopewood & Windweather Tramways.

 

 

And I've been steadily adding frogs and check rails to the points on the new layout sections so that will be this coming week's penance taken care of as well.

Edit:  And joy unbounded, - I've managed to find some proper pre-prouping platforms without the white platform edge.

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry to be very awkward but the arrangements at Oakmarket you've inherited in terms of buildings just don't feel right.

 

That station building at the top of a cutting just doesn't feel right at all. Off the top of my head I can think of Barnetby (GC , N.Lincs,) where the original station building stands beside the line, left stranded when the GC quadrupled in 1912 - but it's not a hundred yards off at the top of a cutting

 

Or there's Witham in Essex (GE) where the station building is to one side at street level and the platforms are reached by footbridge- but there's a very steep bank with retaining wall  and a town street running along the top of it with houses on the further side, and the foot bridge is a much more substantial affair serving both island platforms  (not an uncommon arrangement on the GE - quite a few similar arrangements on the mainline between Liverpool St and Shenfield)

 

Standard practice where the station building is at high level is to put it on a road bridge across the station, and it's generally rather smaller - standard practice on the GC London Extension , and the buildings at road level for medium sized stations like Loughborough Central and Rugby Central are relatively modest

(NSWGR practice was vaguely similar though the resulting "fibro cricket pavilion perched on a footbridge" look is not what you want here )

 

And the lattice footbridge is hopelessly inadequate for the job . You'd have a big covered footbridge running directly out from the buildings to stop passengers getting wet. Not only that but how does anyone reach the far platform??

 

I have no digital modelling/CAD skills and so no idea whether it is possible to alter any of this

 

The canopies with the closed- in back ring bells (NER, Furness?) - they cost you a platform for no apparent reason but they are charming

 

I see what you mean about TtTR doing nice towns with incredible railway arrangements

[Edwardian]

7 hours ago, Annie said:

strange foreign places like Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire they don't enter into the picture.

 

Probably best avoided, to be fair

 

7 hours ago, Annie said:

 

purging them of the taint of modernity.

 

You are the Office Block Persecution Affinity

You are the Sky-Scraper Condemnation Affiliates

 

7 hours ago, Annie said:

 

My aim with the E&GR is to make it able to be worked as its own stand alone layout in the same way as this is possible with the Hopewood & Windweather Tramways.

 

Really great work, Annie

 

7 hours ago, Annie said:

 

And joy unbounded, - I've managed to find some proper pre-prouping platforms without the white platform edge.

 

 

Yay!

[Annie]

Fair enough criticism Ravenser.  The original station area before I started work on it was a mess.  The original station building was at the top of the cutting and the station building in the pictures is the much better one I replaced it with.  In fact nothing in the pictures of Oakmarket station is from the original station that was there before.

To get the station building down off the top of the cutting would involve quite a bit of reshaping of the landscape and while it could be done it would take a lot of work to do.  I will have a think about it though.

 

Yes the footbridge isn't right, it's a bit too lightweight for the job and it should be covered, but the problem is that adaptable footbridges for the Trainz simulator are thin on the ground.  The footbridge I used is a multipart kit and it's about the only one like that available.  I think there might be more parts available for the kit that I haven't got which might help to improve things.  If  additional suitable parts are available I should be able to take the footbridge across to the other platform and add additional supports for the main span.

What was there before was an awful looking bodge of two conventional footbridges mashed together with one stairway buried in the side of the cutting so my version is somewhat of an improvement.

 

The canopies are actually LBSC and they are rather nice and are certainly better than what was there before.   The goods yard headshunt is at the back of platform 3 so there wasn't any loss of a platform with me using a canopy with a closed in back.  Previously there was a platform 4, but I didn't really need it and taking it out of use meant that I had more space to fix the mess of a goods yard.  

The track alignment and pointwork for the original station yard layout was just plain awful and it took a lot of work to make a functional goods yard out of it.

 

The other two stations pictured are completely my own work and aren't from the original layout.  The layout section I used had great looking towns and that was why I used it.  The railway side of things isn't very good at all and I have quite a bit of rebuilding work ahead of me yet.

 

 

 

[Annie]

14 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

You are the Office Block Persecution Affinity

You are the Sky-Scraper Condemnation Affiliates

 

Ha ha delightful James.  With Moxbury the town had been highly detailed so there was the taint of modernity everywhere.  The most persistent offender was plastic rubbish wheelie bins, - they were everywhere.  In backyards, down alleyways, at the curbside.   The next was plastic rubbish sacks and likewise they were everywhere.  And...... Morris Minors, - yes really.  I have nothing against Morris Minors, - I owned one for many years, -  but they do not belong on a pre-grouping era layout.

There weren't that many unsuitable buildings overall.  A modern post WW2 school was the worst offender along with a handful of industrial buildings, but otherwise everything was reasonably alright.

[Edwardian]

4 minutes ago, Annie said:

Ha ha delightful James.  With Moxbury the town had been highly detailed so there was the taint of modernity everywhere.  The most persistent offender was plastic rubbish wheelie bins, - they were everywhere.  In backyards, down alleyways, at the curbside.   The next was plastic rubbish sacks and likewise they were everywhere.  And...... Morris Minors, - yes really.  I have nothing against Morris Minors, - I owned one for many years, -  but they do not belong on a pre-grouping era layout.

There weren't that many unsuitable buildings overall.  A modern post WW2 school was the worst offender along with a handful of industrial buildings, but otherwise everything was reasonably alright.

 

Had the Kinks written their song now, I'm sure they would have included:

 

We are the Wheelie-bin Banishment Imperative

 

Personally I would be content with the station arrangements as you have made them.  I do think Witham is a great arrangement for this sort of location, but I understand that you are limited to what is available and adaptable. 

 

Frankly, though, I think a virtual layout is a better medium than a jig-saw!

 

 

I only really know Witham as the scene of the crash of the Cromer Express in September 1905.  This has obvious relevance to my modelling efforts, giving an insight, as, sadly but helpfully, crashes generally do, to train formations and rolling stock.

 

 

 

[Annie]

Quote

We are the Wheelie-bin Banishment Imperative

Strangely I haven't found any wheelie bins on this new layout section, - just dozens of Morris Minors (and Minis).

 

Oh I do like that jigsaw James.  Putting the footbridge kit together is a bit like a jigsaw requiring much persistence and patience to get everything to fit perfectly.

Having slept for a few hours I've decided to leave Oakmarket station as it is, though I seem to have some luck with tracking down a few more pieces of the footbridge kit which should help to make it look less spindly.

There are some stations on bridges models for Trainz, but unfortunately their creator is a BR Blue error heretic and they have modern signage and other details that can't be removed.  A pity really since I do like that image of Witham: - however I shall file it away for later and it might come into its own at a future time.

[Martin S-C]

In some ways virtual train-setting is much easier than actual real model making. You can do so much so very quickly, especially in the vegetation, landscaping and buildings areas, but on the other hand it can also be very frustrating. Software crashes and software limitations were the bane of my life while working in MSTS and I had to save and take back ups every few minutes towards the end due to the number of objects on the map tiles hitting the game engine's limit.

The other issue is that unless you are modestly skilled at CAD and 3D design work and also have an artistic bent, then you are at the mercy of what the train sim community produces and therefore you can only work with what you have.

Annie, you are blessed with being able to do a good number of artistic changes and other re-texturing but I imagine you are still reliant on what 3D models are available from others and I assume pre-grouping is a minority interest among train-simmers.

[Annie]

Yes we are a bit of a small group Martin, but despite that the level of pre-group material available has been steadily increasing over time.  Things like railway buildings that were built in the 19th century being turned out as digital models in a state of BR diesel error vandalism do annoy me though.  If somebody is going go to the trouble of making a pre-grouping era building why don't they just do it properly.  And making the BR error fittings and fixtures a built-in part of the mesh just plain makes the building useless to anyone else who isn't a heretic diesel kisser. (Grrr, growl, hisss, snarl......)

 

Fortunately we do have some excellent digital modellers amongst us who really do make some stunning models and while they are generally helpful and will make the odd thing if asked very nicely they are also busy people who have jobs and family responsibilities so I don't like to push my luck too often.

Mostly I can get by with retexturing something provided I can find a mesh that's suitable, but then I'm often at the mercy of whatever way the creator of the original model decided to map their textures.                                                                

 

[Martin S-C]

11 hours ago, Annie said:

...anyone else who isn't a heretic diesel kisser. (Grrr, growl, hisss, snarl......)

 

I am not quite a heretical diesel kisser but I must confess to liking the 1950s BR scene as a modelling option. The grimy unkempt state of the steamers and the chaotic chiaroscuro of early diesel experimental classes like the 07s, 14s, 15s, 16s and 17s make for a varied collection of motive power. I especially like diesels with spoked wheels of which there are a number of classes and the early green livery suited them well. Of course shunters with cabs at the back, exhausts at the front and connecting rods are really just modern steam locos aren't they?

Once things turn blue though, and the last steamers vanish I lose all interest!

 

You'll have seen a black early crest 08 shunter being used on my baseboard build to check clearances as its the tallest item of rolling stock I own and I ought to own up now to having a fair collection of stuff around the end of the 50s, a number of infernal combustion creations among them.

[Caley Jim]

12 hours ago, Annie said:

......... (Grrr, growl, hisss, snarl......)                                                   

Yep!  That's the sound a diseasal makes!    

 

Jim

[Edwardian]

29 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

Yep!  That's the sound a diseasal makes!    

 

Jim

 

Never seen the attraction ....

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

For me, depends on the diesel. The Class 02-08 shunters, the Metrovick Type 2 and their quirky ilk I feel have a lot of charm.