Annie

Thank you 😀 Yes it's a fairly classic formation to be found on a late 19th century GWR branchline. My clerestory is a 6w ex-Broad Gauge tri-composite, but otherwise a near perfect match. Your venerable old rescued layout is looking nicely cheered up with its new station building.

A computer recycler-refinisher that I've dealt with before had a good deal on ex-lease wide screen monitors so I purchased one of the HP monitors which seemed to be the best choice for what I wanted. And what a difference it makes with the visible landscape in Trainz. My previous monitor was an ex-lease NEC which is a good brand and had a nice clear image, but had a fairly small aspect ratio compared with more modern monitors. It looks like Pablo Escobar is no longer on the Crampton's footplate, - only a council bin man wearing a yellow hi-vis jacket has turned up instead. Another test snap taken at Minehead. I'm really pleased with my 'new' ex-lease HP monitor, - at only NZ $126 it was a real bargain.

I want to know the answer to that as well James.

I dug into the archives and found all my mid 19th century Crampton files. Trouble is I was still learning about modding engines back then I failed to archive the mods I made to them as well. Still it won't be all that difficult to sort them out again now that I've got my Windows 11 computer sorted out with all my favourite modding software installed. Only problems is at the moment I'm having to put up with Trainz TRS19 putting council bin men wearing hi-vis gear and/or Italian pizza delivery guys turning up on the footplate and claiming to be engine drivers. My favourite grubby weathered SER Crampton locomotive is a case in point. In TANE the Trainz software wanted to put drivers on the footplate as well, - but that was fine since the driver figures it put there did actually look like proper engine drivers. Not anymore though, - now in TRS12 and TRS22 any old hopeless looking scruff is likely to turn up. Once I can get in and mod the scripts a bit all will be fine, - though it does make me wonder if this is what modern day Train drivers really look like.

A promising test snap. I found a Linux screenshot application called appropriately 'Screenshot' and it seems to do what it says on the tin. With the way it works it's plain it's intended for taking still pictures and not ones of things in motion like I tend to do with a lot of my locomotive snapshots. BUT the main thing is that it takes a proper snap without removing objects from the picture so it will do for now. This version of my Minehead layout tended to be a home for several of my mid-19th century engines so don't be surprised if some of engines you might see on the layout don't look much like GWR ones.

I'm having a frustrating time with TRS19/TS2019. I fixed and tidied up various things around Minehead and everything was looking better, - only when I came to take some screenshots I discovered that the screenshot application was ignoring parts of the image so that they simply weren't there as if they'd been rendered invisible. I'm using a Linux application named 'Spectacle' and it's been fine with taking snaps in TANE so I was really surprised when I saw what was happening. The environmental lighting was completely redone in TRS19 which makes me wonder if that's what's causing the problem. I took this early morning snap at Minehead and while it doesn't look too bad at first glance the track has entirely disappeared under the E.B.Wilson well tank and the steel rail has disappeared from off the baulks behind the '850' class. It's just possible to see that I've blended in the turntable reasonably well by getting rid of the huge square slab of concrete that was attached to it, but when I tried to take a close up snap of it parts of the ground surface disappeared. Annoying is not the word for it. Some time ago I was given a small collection of Broad Gauge signals by Steve Flanders that are made to a higher standard of detail than the ones commonly available on the DLS and Steve's website. The bay platform at Minehead retained its disc and crossbar signal after this type of signal had been replaced elsewhere on the branch by slotted post semaphore signals. Normally I'd be very pleased to have such a nice model of the correct type of signal at last, but when I tried to take a snap of it things kept disappearing. 🙁 This was about the best I could do unfortunately. 🙁

Wonderful, - thank you for posting this YouTube video. Gosh that takes me back. I used to buy HD 3 rail carriages cheaply as poor girl's Exleys and change the wheels because nobody wanted them back then. So much nicer than clunky thick sided plastic Triang coaches. Edit: I had an N2 as well that somebody had gone to a great deal of trouble to fit condenser piping made from brass rod. I converted it to 2 rail using a set of Romford wheels, - it was a good runner too. Searching out Part II is worth doing by the way.

I was poking about at Minehead after patching the old SP1 version of TS2019 to SP5. I never ran any of the later versions of TS2019 as i jumped straight to TRS22 so this is somewhat of an experiment. A sparrowcam snap taken of a general view over the station at Minehead looking towards Dunster. I've included a copy of the 1899 OS map with a red X on it to show approximately where I took the snap from. I suppose I haven't made too horrible a job of it all things considered. Albert and George are about to set off driving their trusty E.B.Wilson well tank to see what the condition of the track is like after the layout having been archived away for all this time. One of the bowler hat brigade is coming along for the ride to keep an eye on things, - so they'd best be minding their manners.

Buying a house is actually quite simple, - it's all the horror, madness and blood sweat and tears that comes along with it that's the challenging part.

Something pretty to put on your mantelpiece sir? This little 'P' Class is by Connor Law who also made my GER E22 tank engines for me. It's a freebee that he's offering while he's working on some other P Class livery variations. I don't really know what I'm going to do with it yet, but no doubt I'll think of something. A Fletcher-Jennings based on the preserved 'Captain Baxter', - a payware engine also by Connor Law. I chose the 'as was' in 1980 preserved condition model. The dark satanic mills at Gwladys Ddu could do with a wee shunter, - or they will once I've laid their sidings in place, - so I might as well give this nice little engine something do.

More No.9 in the snow. Quite a fun little engine to go trip shunting with.

Playing in the snow.

All set for testing. My condenser fitted Wolverhampton class 633 'Metro' seemed appropriate somehow. Apart from that I wanted an engine where I could see what the clearances in the tunnels looked like without any locomotive bodywork getting in the way. It would have been nice to have tried out a MET Beyer-Peacock 'A' class on this run, but they are for Trainz TRS19 and upwards and won't work in TANE. As it happens the clearances were Ok in the rectangular section tunnels which are the ones that I want to use. Being a test layout the makers had tried out every kind of track/tunnel section they had and some of the junctions down there were a wee bit on the complex side. The tunnels also indulged in some fairly impressive gradients, but the Class 633 wasn't too much bothered by them. A nice touch with the '633' is that the chimney smoke turns off when driving from the footplate, - though it starts up again should I go off for a wander. (Smoking behind the engine shed again are you, - detention for you!) There were some sections with circular tunnels and these were lower, but a little wider than the rectangular ones. When I entered the first one i was worried that I was going to knock the cap off '633's chimney, but there was enough clearance. Most of the stations on the test route were fairly plain and ordinary and might show some promise for reskinning into something suitable for use in an imaginary London underground arrangement, but there were two that were a little more ornate.

I suppose it would have been easy to predict that I was going to try something like this. What I wanted to test was whether or not my pre-grouping MET coaches and MET Bo-Bo loco were going to fit down the squared off cut and cover like tunnels of the Zamoskvoretskaya line test model. One of the elegantly animated points in the car shed yards turned out to be faulty which caused some problems. I'm not sure how to fix it, - so for the present time it has to be avoided. The boxy Soviet metro coaches turned out to be slightly larger in their cross section measurements than the MET coaches so that means that my idea might work; - but any intending passengers wouldn't want to go sticking their head out a window while travelling through the tunnels as the clearances are fairly tight.

That's a very good point and it does pay to be careful. My computer is running Linux and I have a malware plugin attached to my browser software that goes nuts at the slightest sniff of anything malicious. The Russian Trainz website I found is one of the better ones and seems to be trustworthy, but even so i don't plan on making a habit of surfing the Russian interwebs. Thanks for that Nick. Those pictures posted on the review sites are absolutely spectacular and i've already added the metro station book to my 'must buy' list despite telling myself that I have to try to resist buying more books this year. The work the Russian Trainz team have done to build their digital models is a pretty darn good effort, but to see photos of the real thing just about completely blew me away.

I can certainly understand the appeal Nick. I had been distantly aware of the Moscow Metro, but had not taken much notice of it until I found this Russian project to replicate what seems to be the entire Moscow Metro system. The electric trains are driveable and the controls in the driver's cab have all been properly replicated. There is a very nice set of screenshots with instructions explaining what all the controls do, - only, - you've guessed it, - it's in written in Russian. I messed around a bit working by trial and error to figure it out and at one point ended up suddenly hurtling at breakneck speed through the tunnels before I finally discovered where the brakes were. Needless to say I much prefer steam engines, but I imagine I'll get used to driving these things soon enough so I can play tourist if nothing else. My aim is to eventually have somewhere to run Ed Heaps's beautiful Beyer-Peacock class 'A' Metropolitan locomotives so it would be very nice if I can find enough adaptable parts in this Russian project to achieve that.

That it is Mike. 😁 I have an interest in underground layouts for Trainz as I would like to find assets I could use to model parts of the Metropolitan and District lines. There are some bits and bobs around for the London Underground, - the only problem is that they are all post WW2 and far too modern to be useful. It was the old story, - I was looking for something else and I stumbled onto a trial version of a layout for the Moscow Metro Zamoskvoretskaya line. It was all wonderfully grubby and not at all hi-tech like in the tunnels so I thought it might show some promise for some useful material at least. it was originally built for TS12 and had been updated to TANE so I decided to try and find out if any further work had been done beyond the trial version. Unfortunately the trail went cold, - there was a Russian website, - but it was plain it had been moribund for quite some time. However all was not lost as I found another website for Russian Trainz that had what looked like models from the original trial, but much further enhanced and detailed. The Kalininskaya line had been modelled which seemed to be related in part to the Zamoskvoretskaya line and certainly was interesting, but it was finding the Koltsevaya Line with its incredible stations that was the real surprise.

Fell down a rabbit hole..... 😎

I unearthed the old session data for an early version of Trainz TS2019 I was using back in 2021. Using Lutris in combination with Wine 9.0.0 made everything so easy so it's definitely my favourite Linux software at present. Some of you would have seen similar screenshots to these before as they are snaps I took this morning on my1890s (Almost) Minehead Branch layout. Only this is my version of Minehead before I changed the track to SG Baulk track, - and before I crashed out in despair trying to relay the whole branch in mixed gauge Baulk track in Trainz TRS22. Apparently some keen Broad Gauge enthusiasts working in Dovetail Games Train Simulator (not Trainz) have solved the issue of creating mixed gauge track. Unfortunately whatever it was they did isn't possible to do in Trainz which leaves me with miles and miles of painstakingly laid mixed gauge track that looks pretty, but isn't a lot of use when it comes to running anything on it. Minehead Blue Anchor

(WARNING - unrestrained geek speak - WARNING) A return to the Potteries Loop Line project which is available as DLC in TRS22. I visited the Loop Line last year when I first started to run Linux, - only after TRS22 being somewhat less than best I flagged it away. It was suggested to me on the Trainz forum that I try Lutris, - which is an open source platform for running computer games in Linux. Wine, - which is a type of emulator software that allows Windows programs to run in Linux had been recently upgraded with new functions so I was hopeful that there would be an improvement. The combination of using both Lutris and Wine 9.0.0 is amazing with steadier running and much improved graphics. The sidings on this part of the Loop Line are absolutely crammed full of 7 plank wagons so it made for a somewhat severe test for my old Xeon computer's resources.

Could the door be rehung so it opens in the other direction?

B

When they are setup properly locos for Trainz are quite individual and are definitely not the same. I'm no expert Mike, but having spent time calculating the valve events for a single cylindered Aveling & Porter locomotive I can tell you that setting out valve events correctly can make a huge difference to how well an engine runs. Calculations for boiler size and efficiency as well as firebox heating, steam chest size, blower efficiency and water injection are all part of it too. I know one loco builder for Trainz had ashpans that needed to be emptied when they were full, but that would be about as close as things might have got when it came to clinker. Those of us who follow the Uk steam era are fortunate in having 2995Valliant who is a real expert at this kind of thing and says that doing the calculations for engine specs is 'fun' and that he likes doing it.

True enough it's a bit posed and idyllic, but it does make for a nice picture. Well first of all because I often drive from the footplate i want my engines to be able to steam well. I also want them able to maintain steam while left stationary for a while on the blower. Brakes are something that I'm fussy about. I don't mind an engine with weak brakes because it's possible to work around that, but I won't tolerate an engine that pulls an unrealistic instant crash stop at the lightest touch of the brakes. Next thing on my list is that my engines have to be controllable at low speeds without wanting to shoot off like a rocket the moment the regulator is cracked open. And finally I won't stand for 'little engines that could' that can haul 1000 tons up the side of a mountain. I want my engines to have a realistic performance and I'd rather have them a little less powerful than they should be than being able to pull anything that's coupled up to them. The 45xx's being older models for Trainz needed a little fettling with their engine specs as well as their weights and measures to get them to run the way i wanted, but now they are a real pleasure to drive and are some of my favourite engines.

This trackplan sketch for Seaford circa 1900 looks interesting. Condensed down as it is compared with the OS map and without the later huge goods yard attached it's a picture perfect BLT.