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

[Annie]

18 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Before the BoT specified platform ramps!

Yes exactly that James.  Here's part 2 from Steve.

 

 

[Annie]

I'm still very sleepy, though this morning I was dreaming for ages about playing with the most wonderful clockwork engines with tracks running everywhere in a huge old house.  Don't mind so much when I have dreams like that one.

 

[Annie]

I felt a lot better this morning so I completed the schedule testing for 'Carpeton'.  The clockwork 'Metro' tank engines are really nice runners which made it an easy task to devise a passenger schedule for No.615 in company with 3 coaches and a passenger luggage van.

It's a completely automatic schedule which I haven't been able to figure out how to do until now. 

The schedule begins with No.615 making clockwork winding sounds before the guard's whistle sounds and it's off on its way to Carding by Wall and then Woolton before completing the circuit back to Carpeton again.  At Carpeton No.615 runs around its train before making more clockwork winding sounds before it's off again at the sound of the guard's whistle and putting on a bit of speed to cross the viaduct at Woolton.  A brief stop at Carding by Wall and it's back to Carpeton and then off again to approach Woolton from the other direction.  Another quick stop at Carding by Wall and the passenger service terminates at Carpeton.  Before resting its mainspring No.615 runs around its train again so it's all ready for the next passenger run.

I have a feeling that I should have put another clockwork winding pause in there somewhere, but otherwise the whole schedule ran perfectly, just like....... clockwork.  😁

 

 

 

[Hroth]

Other suitable station names could be Axminster or Wilton!

 

 

[Annie]

43 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Other suitable station names could be Axminster or Wilton!

 

 

Since I haven't finished yet with clockwork trains on the carpet I shall take careful note of your suggestions 🙂

[Annie]

 

A question for the wise.  I'm fairly certain this isn't the Railway Children group from the 1970 movie, but beyond that I don't know which one it is.  My brain is doing cold damp porridge impressions and is no use at all to me at the moment.

 

EDIT: Answered my own question, - it's the 2000 movie with Jenny Agutter as the Mum.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Annie
Um.........

[Regularity]

ITV did a series, but this is from the 2000 film using Jenny as the mother.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Railway_Children_(2000_film)

Edited June 29, 2022 by Regularity

[Annie]

This is 'Bedwood'.  I did a lot of work on this Trainz model railway layout, - got confused for some reason and changed it to 2 rail, - and then went off and tried to turn it into something that didn't really work out.  After that I forgot all about it and I'm not sure how that happened.

Fortunately I kept the 3 rail version and didn't delete it; - and now that I'm looking at again with fresh eyes I'm really glad that I kept it.  More than likely what I'll do from here is put in a return loop and fiddle yard after the small station at Bedding which should make for a very nice BLT with additional interest being provided by the milk factory and the wharf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 30, 2022 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Annie]

The animated shunting horse in action.  Sorry about it being such a short video clip I was having some technical issues (And no I didn't drop my camera in the canal).

 

 

[NeilHB]

Brilliant work Annie! 

[Annie]

14 minutes ago, NeilHB said:

Brilliant work Annie! 

Thanks Neil.  The shunting horse was created and animated by a member of the creator group I belong to who is unfortunately no longer with us having died far too young.  It's an unbelievably complex piece of work and nobody has tried to do anything of similar kind since it was made available to the Trainz community.

 

It is possible to shunt a goods yard with the horse, - only a fair bit of invisible track needs to be laid in the yard so that the horse can walk past wagons and maneuver itself into position.  A shunting horse can only pull wagons not back up and push them so some thought is needed when it comes to properly designing a goods yard for the purpose.  I did try doing it on one of my Broad Gauge layouts with some success, but I couldn't manage to do the whole yard.

[Annie]

I didn't show you any snaps of the wharf at Bedwood.

 

 

 

These are lots of fun.  Yet another old Trainz model from TS2004.  The crane isn't animated unfortunately.  There was a discussion on the creator group webpage recently about animating rail cranes and apparently it's not all that easy.

 

[Annie]

As an experiment I decided to take Bedwood out of the room and convert it to a fully landscaped railway.  I could see that all the stuff for the room was a fairly large memory resource hit so I'll be interested to see if things are improved by doing it this way.  It's still 3 rail, but I'll make my mind up about that later.

I couldn't leave the wharf at the edge of the world with all its water in danger of draining away so I've added two more standard sized Trainz layout boards and these will be largely dedicated to creating a seascape and a proper coastal transition.  Small railways near the sea seem to be my thing and I'm looking forward to getting on with making it all happen.

The latest versions of Trainz with all their bells and whistles and complication along with things that I'm told are better, but aren't really have been getting me down lately so I'm going back to working in TS2012 again where things just work like it says on the tin and there's never going to be any 'updates' that bust stuff.

 

No walls just sky.  It will start looking better once I start working on the scenery and planting trees and hedges & etc.

[Annie]

Can't sleep so I got the sea done.  Next I will be putting in a breakwater and then it's on to landscape bashing to properly shape the coastline.

The orange tracks on the water are for boats.  They are visible in the editing window, but not on the driving side of the simulator.  I don't know if I'll be doing anything with driveable boats yet, but it doesn't hurt to lay down some some trackwork for them.

 

[Hroth]

As you're laying sea tracks, perhaps you could lay some for one of these?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_and_Rottingdean_Seashore_Electric_Railway

 

It would encourage trippers to take excursion trains to Bedwood!

 

I was just thinking...

If not the seashore railway, you could position a lighthouse out in the bay with a "track" out and around it for a boat trip...

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Hroth

[Annie]

4 hours ago, Hroth said:

As you're laying sea tracks, perhaps you could lay some for one of these?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_and_Rottingdean_Seashore_Electric_Railway

 

It would encourage trippers to take excursion trains to Bedwood!

My friend Steve Flanders made a digital model of the Brighton 'Daddy Long Legs'.  It's actually a really difficult thing to include in a railway model and when he made it available on his website I tried to figure out what I could do with it without much luck at all.

 

Bedwood is a small town terminus at the end of a twiglet of a minor railway so all that will be running on those sea tracks (if anything at all) will be something about the size of a fishing trawler.  Visitors to Bedwood will just have to put up with the very nice beach (still under construction) if they're looking for something to entertain themselves.

 

 

[Annie]

Jolly trips around the bay and all that.  This steam launch is running on a set of invisible tracks on the surface of the water.  Once I've got more of the seaside area sorted out I'll set it up with its own track and operating schedule  to and from a pier.

 

 

[Annie]

I had a good session with working on 'Bedwood'.  I made up my mind to change the 3 rail track for something with more scale pretensions, - and after digging about in my virtual trainset box I settled on a suitably lightweight flat bottomed rail section which will be just the thing for a small independent and very freelance railway.

I was upset when my alternative history Norfolk layout started giving problems, - most of which seemed to be due to strange incompatibilities with the older parts of the layout when I moved it over to TRS22.  Perhaps it was just well and truly time to put it aside and do something new.  With 'Bedwood' it would be quite possible to keep on with moving along the coast and seeing where it all goes.  One problem with my Norfolk layout was that the landscape went off for miles and miles in every direction which made for a huge computer memory resource hit, - so that's one thing that I won't be doing again.

 

 

I reskinned the station building with new textures of my own devising some months ago and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

 

A couple of snaps of Station Road.  I have plans to extend the township, but not too much.  There's the new terrace houses over by the milk factory which I want to add to, but I'm not going to forget the older part of the town and that will be getting some love too.

 

 

Originally I installed a platform signal box at Bedwood, but even though it was fairly small I decided it was too big and it's been replaced by a lever frame shed.  

 

[Annie]

I went hunting about and I found my 2020 TS2012 copy of my alternative history Norfolk layout.  Never have i been so glad as to see Moxbury and to hear the sound of those #@!%& seagulls.

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

Digging down in the archives I've found a modified version of my 2020 Norfolk layout that I'd taken into TANE (Trainz A New Era) SP4 and modified to remove the portals and replace them with return loops and storage sidings.  At the time N3V had done an 'upgrade' which broke the portal scripts and rendered them useless which was the reason why I'd done this modified version of my much loved Norfolk layout.  Unfortunately once the portal scripts were fixed I ran off after the glittering sparklies and carried on with transferring my Norfolk layout into TS2019 which was in its turn 'upgraded' to TRS22.

 

The nice thing about TANE is that it was pretty much designed around being able to use models from TS2012 (locos, rolling stock, buildings, trees & etc) without anything getting broken or having its scripts busted.  Its environmental lighting was an improvement over TS2012, but without the strange intense 'sun gone supernova' weirdness that bugged TS2019 and still affects TRS22 to a lesser extent.  It's 64 bit as well which means that my old Xeon computer can use all of it's 8 cores instead of only 4 cores with TS2012.  TANE also makes more use of my graphics card which was always a problem with TS2012 which tries to do everything in the CPU (the core processing unit) and doesn't use the graphics card much at all.

 

Trees have been a major bugbear with moving anything over to TS2019 since what's available for both TS2019 and TRS22 is fairly underwhelming.  Yet another 'upgrade' on the SpeedTrees (TM) used in TS2012 broke so many trees that skilled tree creators for Trainz had made using this technology that almost all of them gave up and went and did something else instead.

I used a type of tree in TS2012 that's been dubbed the 'billboard tree'.  The ones I used were made by a member of the creator group I belong to and not only are they very good, but there's about 50 different types and each type of tree has 5 or more variations.  These were all revised for TANE, but when TS2019 came along the new 'supernova' environment lighting completely slaughtered them.

 

Speaking of things being trashed you've most probably seen me post about repairing my older locomotives to work properly in TRS22.  Well some of the engines for my Norfolk layout didn't make it because I couldn't fix their texturing to render anything like well enough in TRS22 so I had to retire them.  As you might have guessed it they are perfectly fine in TANE.

The strange thing is that my other layouts like 'Ashington' and my Cornish layouts are more or less fine in TRS22 except for the somewhat instant sunburn environmental lighting (which is at least better than it was).  'Dintdale' which I helped to test and troubleshoot for a friend is reasonably trouble free in TRS22.  It's just my Norfolk layout that doesn't want a bar of it.

 

Soooooo what I think I'll do is park my Norfolk layout permanently in TANE; - which now that it's no longer the current Trainz version will never never never never be 'upgraded', - and set about getting it all working again.  I need to write new schedules to suit the storage loops which will take some time, but I like doing that kind of thing.

My one regret is that I can't use Ed Heaps's wonderful GER locomotives in TANE as they are made for TS2019, but at least I'll have my favourite silly old layout back again which has always been my own little world to disappear into when I'm feeling glum.

 

Random snap of Great Mulling station in TANE.

Edited July 3, 2022 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Annie]

Continuing to sort rolling stock and install it into TANE.  You would not believe how many 3 plank dropside wagons the Eastlingwold & Great Mulling has on the layout.  Makes sense really since it has the most track mileage as well as being the largest partner in the Affiliated (Imaginary) Railway Companies.  Rob Dee's wonderful GER 6w coaches work just fine in TANE so they will be replacing some of the older 'make-do' coaches I was using in TS2012.  

Once I have things a bit more sorted out I'll take some more snaps.

 

Moxbury.

 

MR D299 open wagons now installed in Moxbury's goods yard, - so I can tick those two off the list.

 

Great Mulling.

 

'Jubilee' has been attacked with a GER blue paintbrush while its shed mates are still wearing the Affiliated (Imaginary) Companies lighter shade of blue.

Edited July 3, 2022 by Annie
can't spell for toffee

[Annie]

Here's a curiosity for the experts among you; - a dumb buffered covered van.  I've had this photo in my archives for some time now, but I've not been able to find out any more about it.

 

[Annie]

The Eastlingwold's 3 plank dropside wagons needed an overhaul since they seemed to have some kind of script problem with their magic loading.  I've re-jigged them using the 15ft wagon meshes that the creator group made about a month ago and with that came the benefit of a much wider range of wagon loads being possible.  I'm also going to be doing a sprung buffered version of the E&GR 3 plank to go with the dumb buffered version. 

The Windweather Tramway 16ft 3 plank dropside wagon with its 'economical' sprung buffer conversion and slightly more narrow wagon body will stay the same as before.  It's actually a bit odd because the 16ft E&GR 3 plank was identical to the Windweather one except for the lettering on the body sides and only the E&GR wagon developed a fault with its magic loading scripts.

Embracing the delights of freelance modelling the new E&GR 3 planks have retained the company's 'illiterate' double 'E' symbol and just to finish them off nicely they have nice new wagon sheets as well.  Since the E&GR use their 3 plank wagons for just about everything the loads I've set them up with are fairly wide ranging including timber, barrels in many sizes, a large machinery crate, smaller miscellaneous crates, coal and ballast.  No doubt there are other loads I could include as well if I put my mind to it.

 

 

 

 

[NeilHB]

Lovely stuff Annie, makes me think I must build a few more 3-plank opens for the ETCo! 

[Hroth]

On 03/07/2022 at 04:40, Annie said:

Soooooo what I think I'll do is park my Norfolk layout permanently in TANE; - which now that it's no longer the current Trainz version will never never never never be 'upgraded', - and set about getting it all working again.

 

The only problem with software that  will "never never never never be 'upgraded'" is that in a few years time its probable that the OS you're using will either be dumped too, or that later updates of the OS will result in library changes that have an adverse impact on the software running on it*.

 

Its just something to bear in mind, but it'll be good while it lasts!

And you may strike lucky and have no problems.

Which is good!  :-)

 

 

* In other words, kills it dead...