Annie

Merry Christmas Schooner, - and wishing you the very best for the coming New Year.

I'm not sure what I'm letting myself in for. I've set up a session for circa late 1930s/pre-WW2 GWR. I actually own quite a few GWR engines that fit into that category, - a shirt button 57xx and 45xx, late GWR lettered 57xx's and a Collett 2251. I've got more 45xx's with GREAT WESTERN on the tanks which I suppose can sneak in. All are Penzance engines, - but if you don't tell anybody I won't. I've got three GWR Aberdares as well from different eras with a collection of different tenders, - so at least one of them should fit the bill. Most of these model engines had their birthday back in TS2009 and my 45xx's go back to TS2006, - though I've given them a good fettling and tidy up. I regard them all as good practical no fuss models that look like what they are supposed to and they work well. Unfortunately most of the GWR goods/mineral wagons from the same era are fairly dire. They were banged out cheap and cheerful by their makers in a Bachmann/Hornby, -'If you don't look too closely, - it will do,' - kind of fashion. And they were more or less Ok in the older versions of the simulator, but in the new 64 bit simulators from TANE onwards all their faults are glaringly obvious. Paul Hobbs made some excellent PO wagons that still look reasonable. And work from the Trainz Classic 3 team was very good as well. Ed Heaps made his Scottish wagons and developed a highly adaptable wagon underframe kit. But hardly anybody had bothered to make anything better for the GWR until Steve Flanders set up his own wagon works and started making GWR wagons. The two GWR 3 planks are very old good quality models from the TC3 team. I was very lucky to find these. The 2 plank wagon and the Loriat 'B' are Steve Flanders work. Steve's 7 plank wagons. Some of Steve's PO wagons. Most of these are Wiltshire area wagons. With a mixture of Welsh anthracite wagons, Burton on the Water traders and the Wiltshire wagons to dig through and sort you'll have to forgive me for making any mistakes. I could show you a lot more, but I don't want your eyes to start glazing over.

The poor old TS2004 fireman got a crick in his back and had to go home. Fortunately there was a keen young lass at Lynelle station who was all set and ready to take over. 'La France' has got a different tender to the one it originally came with because it wasn't put together all that well and I didn't like it much. Think I might have done a similar snap to this before. 'La France' and 'Oxford Cathedral' meet at Tristyn station. A job I will be doing very soon is sorting out all the GWR engines on 'Tristyn in Winter' and setting up the post grouping engines and rolling stock with their own session because it's all a bit of a muddle at the moment.

A very merry Christmas to you and yours James and many blessings for the New Year.

More 'La France' driving fun. 'La France' now has working tender brakes which seem to have made a slight difference to how quickly she wishes to come to a halt. Brake specs on the steam controls driving menu are for a Westinghouse brake system because N3V have never figured out how to represent the vacuum brake. It was recommended to me by a talented engine spec creating gentleman that I try out his engine spec for a SAR Pacific locomotive on 'La France'. Like most of the engine specs made by this gentleman it requires an expert hand to get it to work well, - and really that's exactly what I'd expect a De Glehn compound to be like to drive. Not long after I took this snap 'La France' was running fast with her safety valves screaming in a most un-GWR like fashion and I was desperately sighting signals and doing my best to remember the layout of the road ahead. Between the footplate moving about under my virtual feet and the bark of the exhaust up the chimney it was beginning to feel a very real experience indeed. 'Lâche, lâche, laisse-moi courir !' At Lynelle station again with a much less sulky 'La France'.

'La France' at Lynelle station. The Atlantic is in a sulk because there's something wrong with its brakes and I can't quite figure it out. 'Etes-vous certaine d'être mécanicienne madame ? Ou faites-vous simplement semblant….'

Definitely a fascinating photo. It's one that I like too. Yes please. I was hoping that if more information came to light I might be able get Steve Flanders to have a look at it as a subject for a digital model.

I do hope you're not calling the Broad Gauge 'boring' . Seriously though that goods yard crane is a magnificent thing and i'm wondering if any other photos of it survive.

There were some other snaps I took while 'La France' was charging about on Tristyn & District that almost made it to Christmas card status. What the...!

With the disturbing increase of fascism in politics the dystopian fiction I was reading at the end of last century is rapidly coming true. As for 'The Wall' the chances of a powerful group of rich conservative mad men somewhere in the world causing it to happen are shockingly high. Due to having narcolepsy I spend a lot of time asleep and dreaming. I can always tell when I'm dreaming because what happens there is believable and makes sense. When i wake up it's back with the craziness again.

That would have been an unusual model to see on a layout back then. I suppose that I can make an accurate guess that it was a scratchbuilt model. The same maker who made the Midland Baldwin for Trainz has also made the GNR version.

True enough, though I can't help but like it for some reason. It does look very elegant in Midland red. Things went much better with a banker on the job. Fortunately the 1F half cab is a steady little thing and once I set it off in motion I only need to check its coal and water from time to time. The Baldwin was still a bit slippy and needed a careful hand on the cutoff lever to make sure it was staying in the sweet spot. Two brake vans because you never know when you might need a spare one. Clear signals at Blea Moor. The fully interactive cab is one intended for an Australian Beyer-Peacock. It's not a bad fit for the Baldwin and the controls all work well. The gauges are accurate too. The boiler pressure is set a bit high to suit a later Baldwin Mogul, but I'm not going to mess with it. Once on the other side of the immensely long tunnel things went a lot easier and i could ease back on the cutoff on both engines and pretty much just enjoy the scenery until Garsdale's distant signal came in view.

I knew the climb up to Blea Moor sidings to be a fair sort of challenge, but i was curious to see how the Baldwin 2501 would handle it. From running the Baldwin about on Tristyn in Winter I knew that it was a good steamer, only it's plain that a free steaming boiler was nowhere near enough to get it up to Blea Moor. I have got other Midland engines I can call on to assist the Baldwin, but with my preference for driving with the steam control set I would be driving two engines at the same time and I might be a little rusty at doing that. I last tried doing that on the Minehead branch driving two of my mid-19th century engines and it certainly was...... interesting....

How to embarrass myself at Ribblehead on the climb up to Blea Moor. This is the S&C in TANE by the way, - it looks a bit raggy around the edges, but I can't do anything about that. The Baldwin 2501 was steaming just fine, but she seemed to be a bit too light on her feet and it was hard to stop her slipping despite freely using the sanders. 562 tons of limestone was the load on the drawbar. Something tells me that it might have been a bit too much. No.2211 has been setup with a proper Baldwin engine spec and sound files, - and I'm fairly sure I've got her weights and measures correct. She's a great engine to drive, but she wasn't happy at all about being expected to climb up to Blea Moor.

I'm with James when it comes to the so-called 'era' definitions.

To have the skills to actually animate those lifting tongs so they could unload the trolleys would be wonderful. I'm going to have to do something boring with an unloading track that makes the stone blocks disappear into thin air instead.

That certainly looks fine to me. It's not too long and it covers all the main points of information that a newcomer would need to know.

Further work done on the stone loading platform. I have yet to figure out how to unload the stone block from the trolley. The horse does move along very nicely around the track hauling the loaded trolley so that part of it works just fine.

There was some debate about what they were and everything was guessed at including Arabic writing, but as it happens they are rail profiles.

Broad Gauge Cheer Up Picture: 'Lord of the Isles' at the 1893 Chicago Exhibition. Photo courtesy of the Broad Gauge Society.

WIP snap of the stone loading platform at Lynelle in 'Tristyn in Winter'. I still need to level the tramway track so that the bed of the stone trolley is at the same height as the platform.

Taken as a whole this thread shows your layout's progression as your ideas and methods evolved and I think that's well worth keeping it all together.

Thanks Nick 🙂 It's our Summer here and already it's starting to turn into a hot and sticky mess that i don't like much at all. I've noticed that I have a tendency to do things with my Winter snow layouts more often than usual during Summer so you'll be seeing more of Tristyn in the coming weeks. Steve sent me the first versions of the horse tramway bits and pieces this morning so I'll be seeing what I can do with those fairly soon. The stone loading platform and tramway takes its inspiration from the one at Corsham and there are various pictures about on the internet if you want to go Googling to find out more.

Testing an interactive stone loading platform for Steve Flanders. I'm presently giving 'Tristyn in Winter' a bit of a tidy up with reworking some of its track alignments and overhauling the signalling. With 'Tristyn in Winter' having been originally created as a GWR layout it was fairly simple to pick a station with a pair of empty sidings that see little use and set up the platform there. When all the bits and pieces for the loading platform are complete there will be a horse tramway to bring the finished pieces of stone to the platform to be loaded on to Steve's very nicely made PO wagons. I'm still working in Linux as I more than likely won't have a Windows 11 machine properly sorted out until February next year. In the meantime there's still plenty of old fashioned fun to be had running trains on 'Tristyn in Winter'.