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

[Annie]

Many thanks again Mr Northroader.

 

It's all a bit difficult to miss isn't it?

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Quantocks%2C_aerial.jpg/800px-Quantocks%2C_aerial.jpg

[Northroader]

Very hard to pick out, I’d say the WSR is running from top edge left of centre, to right edge about halfway down. You’re up above the coast (St. Audries Bay) looking south, with East Quantoxhead in left foreground, and West Quantoxhead over to the right side.

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Northroader

[DonB]

Without looking, I think that modern (post WW2) maps would show spot heights and contours and enable a profile to be drawn of the surround of the branch line. The heights will not have changed significantly over the last century.  

Having suggested a whole lot of work, and having no knowledge on how to superimpose / transfer the OS map onto your virtual world, I will quietly duck out here!

[Northroader]

Then on top of the hills, you have Dead Woman’s Ditch:

[MikeOxon]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

......While I'm asleep though my dreams are mostly all about building railways or visiting interesting old railways so that once I'm properly awake again I'm finding that I am able to get on with working on the Minehead branch with a reasonably clear idea of what needs to be done.

 

It sounds as though you make very good use of your sleeping time    Occasionally I have dreams that I'm quite sorry to wake up from but usually they're just loads of hassle.

 

8 hours ago, Annie said:

Crowcombe Heathfield WIP.  Progress to date. 

 

I especially like the 2nd shot, which shows the whole train at the station.  It really does evoke a long-lost scene and makes me want to model one of those extraordinary 4-4-0ST, to get a better 'feel' for their strange proportions.

[Annie]

Ye olde 19th century map (William McKenzie, London, Edinburgh & Glasgow)

 

I need a good map so I don't get lost.  I'm sure my geography teacher went to live as a hermit in a cave after attempting to teach me anything about the subject.

 

 

14 minutes ago, DonB said:

Without looking, I think that modern (post WW2) maps would show spot heights and contours and enable a profile to be drawn of the surround of the branch line. The heights will not have changed significantly over the last century.  

Having suggested a whole lot of work, and having no knowledge on how to superimpose / transfer the OS map onto your virtual world, I will quietly duck out here!

Don while there are digital modellers who use DEM satellite data to construct totally realistic landscapes I don't think I need to do that.  If I can mark out a basic series of landscape heights from a map I can then shape the landscape to suit the height marks.  All I need is to have the background hills in approximately the right places and at something close to the right height.  It is a bit of work to do that, but not horribly difficult or anything.

 

41 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Very hard to pick out, I’d say the WSR is running from top edge left of centre, to right edge about halfway down. You’re up above the coast (St. Audries Bay) looking south, with East Quantoxhead in left foreground, and West Quantoxhead over to the right side.

Thank you that does give me some kind of a guide as to what I was looking at.  Otherwise it might as well be a giant green bun dropped by one of the titans as he was passing through.

 

12 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

I especially like the 2nd shot, which shows the whole train at the station.  It really does evoke a long-lost scene and makes me want to model one of those extraordinary 4-4-0ST, to get a better 'feel' for their strange proportions.

My ex-B&ER 4-4-0ST is one of the ones built by Vulcan Foundry Mike.  They were ugly ducklings that could take on any job and were pretty darn reliable as well.  I like them and so did their crews by all accounts. The article by the Rev. Canon Brian Arman in Railway Archive No.46 has everything that you'd ever want to know about them.

I have an old photo somewhere of a passenger train crossing a viaduct in Cornwall and it had the same delightful mixture of coaches so it was that I had in mind when I set things up for taking my snaps.

 

27 minutes ago, Northroader said:

Then on top of the hills, you have Dead Woman’s Ditch:

Yes I saw that marked on one of the maps and I had a sudden, 'Gosh' reaction.  Plainly there was some kind of awful tragedy there in the historic past.

[Compound2632]

12 hours ago, Annie said:

Today's Broad Gauge cheer up picture.  Another one of the Rev. Malan's amazing photos.  This time it's the Rover class 'Lightning' built in 1878.

 

 

There's something about those frames that's making me hungry for lunch...

[Regularity]

I wonder what Mr. Churchward might have produce for the broad gauge?

[MikeOxon]

25 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

There's something about those frames that's making me hungry for lunch...

Some good slabs of cheddar might make a suitably resilient filling

[Regularity]

12 hours ago, Jake The Rat said:

But isn't it almost heresy to use a term like 'modern approach' in this thread ?

Depends. 
By virtually everyone else’s frames of reference, Chruchward’s designs were definitely modern for their day - and given the longevity of the basics, with Stars becoming Castles, etc, almost a step into the future.

[Annie]

Just going back to the maps for a moment these are the elevations around Crowcombe Heathfield.  On the layout the height for Crowcombe Heathfield Station is close enough to being correct for me not to worry about it.  Just as a by the way the view out from the station as in my last screenshot isn't facing towards the Quantock Hills, but towards the higher ground in front of New Marsh and Binford Wood.  The Quantock Hills themselves are in the other direction and might be far enough away to be represented on a backscene rather than by any intrepid landscape reshaping.   (Brain mush warning in: - 20, 19, 18, 17..........)  And that's quite enough for tonight.

 

[MikeOxon]

54 minutes ago, Regularity said:

I wonder what Mr. Churchward might have produce for the broad gauge?

since Churchward is reported to have been a good friend of A.W.Gibbs of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), which influenced the design (and appearance) of the No.100 prototype, he might have come up with something like the  PRR K4, which fits within Broad Gauge dimensions.

[Annie]

For some reason at Crowcombe Heathfield the layout's width is a lot more narrow than elsewhere on the layout so the higher ground modeling that's been done in other places was absent for the lack of real estate to put it on.  Using the measuring tools in Trainz surveyor I discovered that it was just a tad over 2000 ft to the layout edge from the front face of the station platform so that meant that any landscape elevation at that point should be no more than about 140 metres at the very most.  So in the nature of an experiment I raised the landscape along the layout edge to 140 meters above sea level and then smoothed it down towards the road running parallel to the railway.  I think that took me all of about fifteen minutes to do, perhaps a little more with the final fluffing about smoothing out a few unlikely looking bumps and the final result pleased me a lot.  A bit more tree planting and a few more hedges to define field boundaries and it will do very nicely.

 

The Quantock Hills if they were actually present would be behind the camera and therein lies a problem.  The edge of the layout is about the same distance away in that direction and the Quantock hills are further away than that.  I could perhaps raise the landscape up about ten meters at the layout edge to give a suggestion of higher ground, but that's all.  I could add a couple more standard sized three quarter of a kilometer square layout boards onto the layout edge so that the higher ground towards the Quantocks could be modelled, but that's an awful lot of virtual dirt that would have to thrust upwards and then smoothed out to the right shape.

 

 

[Edwardian]

So in love with this one, Annie.   

 

Not really for us to suggest you do vast amounts of virtual earth shoveling.  To Quantock or not to Quantock depends on how you feel about it, but what you have is just delightful. 

 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Edwardian
Premature elucidation

[Annie]

4 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

So in love with this one, Annie. 

Thanks James.  It's good to have the Minehead branch getting back under my skin again.

 

Still my favourite Broad Gauge picture.   Bristol & Exeter 4-4-0 Saddle Tank No 48 at Portishead station.  No 48 lasted until 1879, and would have been renumbered as GWR 2029 in 1876.  (And yes I know I've posted this picture at least twice before.)

 

[Edwardian]

Always worth an outing, that one.

 

The locomotive is magnificent. but what a wonderful collection of coaches; typically Great Western in that no two are of the same style!

[Annie]

And thanks to Steve Flanders interest in making digital Broad Gauge models I think I have an example of each of those coaches.

When putting together a passenger train I do my best to remember that unwritten rule, 'never two of the same style in the same train'.

 

I really have to agree about the B&ER 4-4-0ST's, - to some folk they were ugly ducklings, but to my mind they are completely wonderful and 'magnificent' is definitely the word.  When I commissioned my B&ER saddle tanks from Cameron Scott we had some discussion about whether or not to have the distinctive (and decidedly unroomy) B&ER cab, but since I wanted my engines to be in their final form under GWR ownership the cab had to go.  At some stage I may ask Cameron to make me one in late B&ER condition with a cab which would neither be difficult or expensive, but it's not a priority at the moment.

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

To Quantock or not to Quantock depends on how you feel about it, but what you have is just delightful. 

 

To Quantock or not to Quantock? - that is the question.

—Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The hills and humocks of outrageous Quantock,

Or to take a spade to a massive pile of dirt,  And, by mighty shovelling, create them?

 

I am still thinking about it James.  Further back along the layout towards Stogumber there's some very nice landscaping representative of the lower slopes of Quantock, but at Crowcombe Heathfield where the layout narrows it's like the Vogons came and stole it all.  I'll raise the landscape about 10 meters or so at the layout edge and smooth it out and see what I think about it.

[Annie]

I think this is going to do just fine.  The landscape behind the station was at the same level as the station yard, - 122 meters above sea level, - and I raised it at the far edge of the layout board to 134 meters and then smoothed the landscape out so it all looked  reasonably nice.  I have some further work to do with fixing some of the roads and while the whole area in the present day still has a lot of tree cover, back in the 1880's there were a number of large managed mixed wood lots around the station.  I have done some of the needed tree planting, but there's still a lot to do.  There's also a farm, Rich's Holcroft Farm, that's missing so I'd like to do a representation of that as well.

 

[Hroth]

This is the photo of an ex-South Devon 4-4-0 tank that I like the best....

 

The derailed down Flying Dutchman at Camborne in March 1891.

 

As for the landscaping, the rising ground you've installed makes the visualisation come alive, the station doesn't appear to be on a flat baseboard any more!

 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Hroth
spelin + extra gen

[Annie]

Tut, Tut, - taking a photo of the poor thing in such embarrassing circumstances.

 

The South Devon provided the Broad Gauge engines for the Cornwall Railway and the West Cornwall Railway and that continued after everyone was part of the same big firm.  The South Devon 4-4-0ST's had a different appearance and style to them as compared to the B&ER ones even though they were all very much based on Gooch's designs.

 

3 hours ago, Hroth said:

As for the landscaping, the rising ground you've installed makes the visualisation come alive, the station doesn't appear to be on a flat baseboard any more!

Yes it no longer looks like we're suddenly in Norfolk instead of Somerset like we're supposed to be.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

Yes it no longer looks like we're suddenly in Norfolk instead of Somerset like we're supposed to be.

 

Dorothy and Toto will be so pleased...

 

[Annie]

Late afternoon trying to wake up Broad Gauge picture.  Ex-SDR 4-4-0ST 'Pluto' in final condition.  Always bitter sweet seeing these late era pictures with the gauge conversion and scrapping of these 4-4-0ST's now so very close.

 

[Annie]

As a part of the final sorting out of the landscape at Crowcombe Heathfield I followed what was shown on the 1882 and 1887 OS maps and changed the fields by the station into one large field of rough grass.  There was also a farmstead on the far side of the road next to the large field that hadn't been represented on the original layout, - or perhaps it had, but in the wrong place in the corner of what was now the rough grass field.

The OS map showed the farmstead with a basic amount of detail, but with enough shown to give me some clues as to what it might have looked like,  The OS maps also showed that the roadsides were lined with trees, but with some distance compression having been necessary with laying everything out in the space available I made use of the small trees provided in TS2019 that I have dubbed 'Boof Trees'.  They aren't all that convincing up close, but are useful at a distance and in the background.  Bigger trees would have looked out of place and ruined any sense of distance.

The other thing that the OS maps showed was a number of footpaths crossing the landscape so I've put some of these in place.  People tended to walk everywhere back then and established ways of going had long predated roads and railways so I really had to include footpaths as a part of the layout.  I'll be watching out for these at other locations as well and putting them in place.

 

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Annie]

Broad Gauge cheer up picture.  Ex-SDR 'Raven'.  I shall quote the Broad Gauge Society notes on this little engine.

 

"Raven"was originally built for the South Devon Railway by Avonside of Bristol in 1874. Soon after the GWR takeover she was sold to the Torbay & Brixham Company. In 1883, the GWR took over the T&B, and Raven gained the number 2175. She survived the end of the Broad Gauge, being converted to standard gauge in 1892, gaining a new number - 1329. She was eventually sold to the Wantage Tramway. She survived until around 1920. A big history for such a tiny engine! 

 

A small complaint about this otherwise interesting picture is that I wish the photographer had included a lot more of that goods van in the background in their photo.

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by Annie
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