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

[Edwardian]

On 18/10/2019 at 03:26, Annie said:

 

There's a Cornish pump house about 15 miles away from where I live at Waihi and when it was working it used to pump water out of the gold mines there.  When I was a much younger and fitter woman I scrambled down a rocky path with some friends to have a look at the ruined Cornish pump house at Kawau Island.  

 

 

Edit: Found a picture of the Kawau Island pump house.  They used to mine copper on the island.

 

 

Annie: The Poldark Years

 

who knew?

[Annie]

14 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Annie: The Poldark Years

 

who knew?

When I was younger I used to hike about all over the place and I saw all kinds of interesting things to do with mining and old technology.  As I mentioned before I was never one to carry a camera so I never took any pictures of it.  Now as it happens I do own a nice digital, but I never go anywhere.

Still all that hiking about is having its benefits now I'm older because I'm a lot fitter and in better health than most folk my age........... I just happen to fall asleep a lot.

[Annie]

A test play with the new Broad Gauge wagon.  Nothing is properly coloured yet because I was mostly wanting to see how the texturing worked and how to fit things together.  I should have something done properly though in a day or two.

 

[Annie]

Test Broad Gauge wagon.  I've got the basic colour on, but I've still got some more fiddling with detailing still to do yet before I call it finished.

 

[Annie]

And after me obsessing over stuff more than likely nobody but me could see anyway I ended up with this.

 

 

The interior isn't properly finished off yet.

 

[Northroader]

I looking at it as well, looks good, the one thing I would question is the small cast wagon number plate? I don’t think  the early GWR wagons had them, but not 100% certain.

[Annie]

32 minutes ago, Northroader said:

I looking at it as well, looks good, the one thing I would question is the small cast wagon number plate? I don’t think  the early GWR wagons had them, but not 100% certain.

It's actually a makers plate Northroader and it more than likely ended up on the wagon from force of habit.  Very easy to remove it so not really any kind of problem.  After looking at a few old and blurry photos I think you are correct though as I can't see anything that looks like a plate of any kind on the solebars.

 

This is the finished article so long as you ignore the plate and pretend it's gone.

 

 

[Annie]

 

All fixed now.  This was a bit of a tricky wagon to reskin.  The original standard gauge wagon that had its meshes rebashed into becoming a mid era Broad Gauge wagon used pieces from two texture maps and some of the texture pieces were stretched into position and some were compressed into position.  With modding the mesh some texture pieces ended up being used in slightly odd ways with different pieces being joined together.  This means that some types of detailing aren't possible to do unless I want to start adding texture masks into the mix.  But overall since the intention was to create a generic Broad Gauge open wagon that will fill a gap in what's available until something better can be devised I think both myself and the guys from the creator group who helped me with this project can count this a success.

[Northroader]

Now that looks good, except... them buffer shanks. Modern Oleo buffers had beautifully polished bright shafts, sliding through rubber seals, but them old wagons had very roughly forged bar shafts, very dark in appearance, maybe painted black, maybe a bit rusty, would you say?

Are you an All Blacks fan? congratulations, me, I was crying with the opposition!

Edited October 20, 2019 by Northroader

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

Now that looks good, except... them buffer shanks. Modern Oleo buffers had beautifully polished bright shafts, sliding through rubber seals, but them old wagons had very roughly forged bar shafts, very dark in appearance, maybe painted black, maybe a bit rusty, would you say?

Are you an All Blacks fan? congratulations, me, I was crying with the opposition!

In my usual vague way of not knowing what's going on in the outside world I haven't been following the World Cup Northroader, but yes I agree a defeat like that one would have been seriously galling indeed.

 

The buffers are on the list for being sorted out since the ones it's got are way too modern.  John and Chris (from the creator group) and I have been discussing what comes next and there's going to be some body height variations, a 17ft long chassis (present one 16ft) and buffer variations as well.

[Annie]

A return to Grimwold on the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway.

Even though Paulz Trainz is in my bad books there was one last locomotive I wanted from his mid-19th century catalogue and that was the Longridge long boiler 0-6-0 of 1848.  I've done some mild work on the textures, changed the crew figures and updated it with self contained buffers.  The wooden boiler cladding has been updated as well so as to represent an engine in its later years.  It's a bit more of a substantial engine than the Hicks and Hawthorne 0-6-0's I already had so it won't be doing any trips over the Windweather Tramway's wooden bridges.

My imaginary railways have been a bit forgotten lately while I've been working on Truro to Falmouth 1880 so it was nice to have a look in on them again.

 

 

[Annie]

I've been away from the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling for far too long.  I'd forgotten just what a nice part of this great rambling little empire of mine it is.  The Longridge is a great beast of an engine compared to the Hicks and Hawthornes and I think there will be plenty of work for it to do.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

South Devon Railway 4-4-0ST's.

 

South Devon Railway Aurora built 1852 by Longridge.

 

South Devon Railway Zebra built 1866 by Avonside.

[Annie]

The history of Longridge locomotives is quite short since the company was sold in 1850 and the company went into a rapid decline after that.  The locomotives they made were reasonably good by all accounts and were sold to railways in both Britain and Europe.

 

The Shrewsbury & Chester had one, - their No.5, - which was an 2-4-0 to the same essential design as the 0-6-0s.

Built 1846, scrapped by the GWR 1868.  Was involved in an accident in 1854 at Rednal when it derailed while double heading.

 

 

An interesting picture of a Longridge long boiler formerly belonging to the Shrewsbury & Birmingham in rebuilt condition as a saddle tank.  Rebuilt at Wolverhampton in  June 1868, received a larger saddle tank and domed boiler in August 1875 and was finally withdrawn in August 1889.  It would certainly make a nice subject for a model.

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrmm984.htm

 

 

I've done some further work on the Eastlingwold and Great Mulling's new/old Longridge 0-6-0 with adding digital brakes to the tender and reducing the Olympic swimming pool it had in its tender tank down to the correct amount of water.  Playing trains  Serious testing shall continue.

[Annie]

Imaginarium Shed at Moxbury.  (Image slightly adjusted since the layout's default morning sunlight and slight fog settings make this area a bit difficult to take snaps in.)  This the main GER MPD for the area.

 

Engines on shed (Not counting the GER engines):

Hopewood Tramway's No.4  2-4-0T, No.5  2-2-2T, No.7  2-2-2T (No.8  2-2-2T presently at Great Marsh sub shed).  After the BoT put their foot down about Tramway Regulations the Hopewood Tramway's officially frowned upon tank engines migrated elsewhere.  They can now be found working almost anywhere on the affiliated railways, - except of course the Hopewood Tramway.

Barrow Hills & Foxhollow Extension Railway's 'Sharpie' 0-6-2T No. 10.  (0-6-2T No. 12 presently at Bluebell Magna sub shed)

Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway's  2-4-0 No.14  (Recently transferred; E&GR engines are normally shedded at either Grimwold or Eastlingwold) 

 

 

The history of the Moxbury & Brenton Wood Railway and the Barrow Hills & Foxhollow Extension Railway is sewn with unrealised great ambitions, strange alliances, dodgy financial dealings and near bankruptcy.  In the end the GER made them an offer they couldn't refuse and the impressive station at Moxbury which had nearly bankrupted the M&BR became GER property.  Not long after the GER studied the other minor independent railways and tramways in the area and purchased significant shareholdings in the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling Railway, the Hopewood Tramway and the Windweather Tramway.  Perhaps in a year or two they might be fully absorbed into the GER, but at this point in time who can say.

And that in a nutshell is background history of my GER and affiliated (imaginary) companies layout.  Some of you may have read all these wild imaginings  this background information before, but since I keep forgetting parts of it you might have too. 

 

The whole point of this exercise in properly assigning the engines on the layout to MPD's came about during my tests with the new Longridge 0-6-0.  In order to drive an engine in Trainz it has to have a digital driver assigned to it even if I'm going to drive it myself.  When I came to assign a driver to the Longridge I couldn't find a spare driver; - and the list of drivers is not exactly a short one either.

That's when I decided to search over the whole layout to see just how many engines there were on it.  At various times I'd tested engines and it seems that with significant proportion of them they'd never left the layout after being tested.  So they got deleted and a few engines that were 'officially' assigned to the layout were miles away from where they should be so they got put back where they were supposed to be.

 

The biggest problem area was the GCR MPD at Elgar Junction.  Now you might be wondering why there's a GCR MPD (and transshipment yard) in Norfolk.  I wonder a lot about that myself.  Originally the layout was a GCR line, but as my interests shifted the GER took root little by little until the GCR stations at Brenton Wood and Bluebell Woods as well as the transshipment yard at Elgar Junction became a narrow band of GCR territory that was entirely surrounded by the GER (and GER affiliated companies).  I should just bite the bullet and remove the GCR from the layout, but the problem is that I own more than a couple of dozen GCR engines and a lot of GCR coaches and goods rolling stock; - and barely any GER engines, - though the situation with GER coaches is now better; - and I made a lot of GER goods wagons myself because there were none available.

If it wasn't for my imaginary affiliated companies' engines running any kind of train service would be impossible.

There were way too many GCR engines at Elgar Junction and strangely two L&YR engines as well.  So I've knocked things back to there just being a 9F 0-6-2T, a 'Pom-pom' 0-6-0 and a Scare E8 2-4-0T shedded at the MPD.  There is another 'Pom-pom' with a parcels train in a holding siding at Bluebell Wood and it gets sent through to the world beyond Moxbury as a part of the (semi) working timetable.

 

 

And last of all Barrow Hills.  Barrow Hills station is in the middle of nowhere and apart from a handful of farm workers and their families, the station staff  and some forestry workers there is nobody around for miles.  However it is an important little station because its small goods yard is used for exchanging engines with the goods engines from the E&GR handing over to either the Windweather Tramway's ancient Hawthorne 0-6-0's for goods trains that will be traversing the fen country to either Windweather or via the Hopewood Tramway (after another engine change over) to parts beyond; - or to the B&FER's 0-6-0T 'Sharpies' for goods trains heading to Moxbury.

Passenger trains from Moxbury also terminate at Barrow Hills and passengers change for trains heading into the fen country to Windweather.

 

One of the Hopewood Tramway's G15 (more like G13¾ because the model is a bit short) tram engines is now officially shedded at Barrow Hills.  A couple of out of place lurkers got moved to where they should be from here.

One of the Windweather Tramway's three ancient Hawthorne 0-6-0s is waiting for a goods train to arrive from the E&GR.  The Hawthornes lightweight axle loading allows them to work safely over the Windweather Tramway's wooden bridges which is why they have survived so long. .

 

 

And that's all for now.

[Annie]

Art interlude.  'Crossing the Marshes' by Stanhope Forbes.

 

[Edwardian]

49 minutes ago, Annie said:

Art interlude.  'Crossing the Marshes' by Stanhope Forbes.

 

 

I'm sure I've seen that hanging at the NRM, in the upstairs gallery in front to Search Engine.

[Annie]

He did a number of paintings circa the early grouping period James.  Most seem to be of GWR scenes.

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

Most seem to be of GWR scenes.

 

As a member of the Newlyn School, I suppose that's understandable but nevertheless a mite disloyal, as his brother was busy electrifying the Brighton. Their father was General Manager of the Midland Great Western. I wasn't all that surprised to learn that Stanhope was a nephew of James Staats Forbes, Chairman of the Chatham and Watkin's nemesis. J.S. Forbes was a great art collector with a keen eye - he owned several Whistlers. On his death, his executors chose to sell off the art collection very slowly, to avoid depressing the market.

[Annie]

Work continues with Broad Gauge open wagons.  WIP 2 plank wagon with my new artwork, but not yet coloured red or lettered.  The new meshes are definitely going to improve the wagon situation, but John who is making the meshes isn't quite as fastidious about some things as I am.  This 17ft wagon has a chassis that is very slightly too short for the wagon body, but when I pointed it out John had all kinds of reasons as to why he didn't want to fix it so I had to bite my tongue and say nothing.  Since John is doing all this as a favour to me I guess it's a case of not looking a gift horse in the mouth.  The 16ft wagon is fine though and now has a second body with a different height to the sides for me to play with.

 

[Annie]

An interesting thesis document I found; - I.K. Brunel and William Gravatt, 1826-1841: their professional and personal relationship.

https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/ik-brunel-and-william-gravatt-18261841-their-professional-and-personal-relationship(7b88ef95-7ee5-4d61-962c-d0bd379c9c68).html

[Annie]

 

Red wagons.  A  WIP 16ft 2 plank coupled to my test 16ft 4 plank.  I gave up on trying to do a red two plank wagon on the 17ft chassis.  In a post above this one I posted a picture of a test grey 2 plank wagon on the 17ft chassis and it didn't look too bad, but as soon as I tried out some red textures I got into problems since every fault in this chassis became blindingly obvious.  The texture mapping on the chassis had changed too from the 16ft one which made doing anything with it really difficult.  So I'm just going to do re-textures using the 16ft chassis and forget about the 17ft one.

 

The test 4 plank wagon I made earlier might remain a singleton since it was cobbled together using texture parts from another earlier project of mine.  I like it well enough and it can stay on the layout, but I'd like to try and improve on it.

 

[Annie]

 

Plainly there's no hope for me and I've become well infected by a strong liking for the 19th century GWR.  I've just purchased a copy of this book to add to my steadily growing reference library.

[Annie]

Xeon porn, - I am sooooooooo tempted.  If I put this into Deeper Thought - my present dual Xeon processor computer, - it could just about alter time and space with its incredible computing power.

 

 

EDIT:  My daughter who has been initiated into the arcane mysteries of galvanic calculating devices has checked out the specifications and she says it's not any better than any computer I already own (despite having penthouse views over Manhattan ).  

So I won't be buying it and my wallet can now come out of hiding.

However the search shall continue..........

Edited October 27, 2019 by Annie
Hopes dashed

[Annie]

And after that small distraction with pictures of naked computer bits I shall return to our regular program (whatever that is.).

 

I can only work on the horror that is the rebuilding of the old town at Truro for so long before I have to run away screaming and do something else.  Soooooo I found a simple layout on the DLS that was based on a American practice and of course I couldn't understand anything about why the trackwork and industries & etc were set up the way they were because everything the Americans do is odd and strange, BUT I could see the potential for making something worthwhile out of it.

Quite a bit of the layout is very flat or semi-flattish and there was a not very convincing river running across it.  The river wasn't navigable either due to the two rail bridges crossing over it.  So I saw the potential for river wharves and a network of sidings serving various warehouses along the river.  Much of the surrounding area was setup as farmland of the massive mega farm kind the Americans go in for, but I shall convert all that into into smaller fields and farmsteads and make it properly English.

Logging of the American kind seemed to be set up as the major industry, but it beats me where they were getting the trees from since the handful of trees on the layout looked too stunted and down on their luck for any logger to consider them for a moment.  However all that shall be swept away and I shall be aiming for an purely agricultural landscape instead.

So far with what I've done a pre-Churchward GWR thing seems to be happening, but I could easily change that over to an unspecified absorbed minor railway with it being not entirely clear who had absorbed it.  For now I'm calling it the Huddleston branch and if I'm happy with how it turns out it might even get joined into my GER & affiliated (imaginary) companies Norfolk layout.

 

Just two very WIP pictures for the moment.  The line crossing the river via the wooden swing bridge is the Huddleston Branch and the warehouses and their associated sidings and feeder lines will be spreading out along the banks of the river.  There is a second bridge that I installed, but I'm not happy with it since it's a steel lift bridge that seems a little too magnificent for the line.  Anyway we shall see.