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

[Annie]

New GER brake van in use on the Hopewood Tramway.

 

[sem34090]

I found a naughty picture of a GER G15 without its skirts on.

 

Goodness me Annie! This is a family friendly forum!

[Annie]

Darlington Works GCR pack is the deal of the century.  I thought I would be getting one each of the new locomotives plus the new wagons......... BUT what you get is: - Class 8A  eight engines; Class 8G ten engines; Class 8K nine engines; Class 8J nine engines.

 

I am absolutely gobsmacked.  Valleyfields is only a secondary route, - so what on earth am I going to do with all these engines!    

[Lancaster622]

I know what you mean Annie! Are you as glad as me that you got it?

 

Tonight I started fixing up the branch line and ended up running a freight down it with the 1B class 2-6-4T

 

 

 

 

The only gripe I have is when loaded the load sticks out of the bottom of the van! 

 

However it is nice to know that freight trains now have a purpose on the layout rather than just being demo ones such as one would see at a steam gala

[Annie]

Oh yes I'm very pleased with my purchase and the extra engines can just sleep in my digital trainset box until I find a larger empire layout on which to run them.  I mostly use 1B's on Valleyfields since for local traffic it's a tank engine line and tender engines are used on the through trains that come thundering through from London to wherever and back from there again  (I was an utter failure at geography as a schoolgirl).  1B's were good for heavier trip workings and were handy enough on passenger trains as well.

[Annie]

 

The only gripe I have is when loaded the load sticks out of the bottom of the van! 

 

 

 

Yes I noticed that.  Knock the load back to two crates and all is fine.  I'll most probably edit the config files on my vans so they don't keep on breaking their floorboards and dumping the load on the track.  It's odd though because when I set up my own vans for loads the loads are invisible so I could put 200 crates in a van if I wanted to without anything bursting through.  Mind you the van would be entirely immoveable because of the load weight, but at least nothing would bust out of anywhere. 

The only reason for having a visible load would be if the van had opening doors.  Paul Hobbs has made some really nice LMS vans that work like that, but these GCR ones that Cameron Scott has made don't seem to have any sign of having opening doors.  Hmmmmm......perhaps some testing down at the old Auran interactive factory is needed, - that has the magic scripts necessary for opening doors so I'll look into that.

 

A wee bit of a bittersweet moment placing all the new GCR engines on Valleyfields and removing all the placeholder reskinned LNER and BR ones.  When there was nothing in the way of proper GCR locomotives available I reskinned some ex-GCR BR and LNER engines into GCR livery and Robd from the Auran forums reskinned some others which he passed onto me.  They were full of errors of course, the worst being the dread flowerpot chimney, - but they were better than nothing.  Perhaps the saddest moment was finally removing my very old 9K Atlantic tanks from the layout.  These came from Paulz Trainz in LNER push-pull condition and had lots of errors and texture problems which I did my best to correct; - and I reskinned them as best I could into a semblance of GCR livery..  They ended up being nice runners after a lot of work, but with their tall flowerpot chimneys being the only ones left in the MPD at Elgar Junction They really did have to go.

Fortunately my reskinned faux GCR 11B 4-4-0 was in possession of the right kind of chimney so it's staying.  I did it in MS&LR livery so it's a total anachronism for the time period of the layout, but I like it, - and anyway it matches the French Grey and Dark Oak liveried coaches I've got.  My railway, my rules.

 

Edited December 5, 2018 by Annie

[Regularity]

That looks very close to a GNoSR S class!

Edit: add link to image.

https://railway-photography.smugmug.com/LNER-Scotland/1890-1894-GNoSR-James-Johnson/D41-GNSR-Johnson-Class-S-Pickersgill-Class-T-4-4-0/i-kMRr5rg

Edited December 5, 2018 by Regularity

[Annie]

That's because it is one.  The original GNoSR 'S' Class digital model, - which is very good by the way, - has been re-skinned by various folk into becoming Furness, L&Y and a number of other 19th century 4-4-0's that shared the same general appearance.  Yes it's not exactly correct to dress it up in MS&LR livery, though I didn't use the GNoSR tender, but a Highland one instead (I think) because it shared a lot of the characteristics of some Sacre tenders and was the right size, - BUT it's better than nuffing since there aren't any GCR 4-4-0's from this time period available for Trainz.

[Northroader]

Pssttt!! What about a stovepipe? They look OK, and the Pollitts had them?

[Annie]

The load falling through the bottom of the new GCR vans is proving to be a bit of a nuisance.  Because they only have one internal attachment point trying to load more than one crate ends up with them stacking on each other inside the van and they drop through the floor.  My own vans don't have an attachment point inside so the load is invisible.  I've done my vans for a load of 3 standard crates which seems to be a good compromise between the expected loads for a light railway and just plain stuffing them in.  A load of three crates with the GCR vans still has them dropping through the floor so I think I'll re-write their magic scripts to be the same as my own vans so the load will be invisible.  The simulator treats visible and invisible loads exactly the same so it shouldn't be a problem.

[Annie]

Pssttt!! What about a stovepipe? They look OK, and the Pollitts had them?

I'd really like to have a Pollitt Class 11A 4-4-0 with a stovepipe chimney Northroader, but nobody makes one for Trainz.  I can't do 3D modelling so I'm a bit stuck with just having to re-skin what is available.

[Northroader]

Or even buy off shapeways without printing it in 3D sort of thing? Ah well, one day technology will catch up, I’m sure.

[Annie]

A new member of the creator group I belong to has been learning how to create a functional digital locomotive for Trainz and his test piece is a LSWR B4 dock tank.  A couple of the skilled members who have made a number of locomotives have been guiding and advising him and I've been watching the 3D model gradually develop over the past couple of weeks.  Absolutely fascinating, but the discussion and advice given might as well have been written in Chinese as I understood not a word of it. 

[Martin S-C]

3D modelling is a bit of an art. I found it was something I had no affinity for, even though I tried. Gleaning enough information from how a mesh is constructed so I could change textures was about my limit and after about 10 years away from the hobby I have entirely forgotten even that. I see model locomotive scratchbuilding as a similar thing - you either can do it or you can't.

[Annie]

I think you're right about that Martin.  While I can do reasonable texture work my brain just goes 'TILT' and blue screens when it comes to trying to learn 3D modelling.  My tech savvy daughter tried to teach me, but it wasn't any good and I just simply couldn't do it.  Narcolepsy causes cognitive deficits in the brain so that certainly didn't help with my attempts at learning 3D modelling either.

 

In other news a forum member on the Auran forms gave me a link to a digital model of a Kittel steam railcar, - a Kittel Dampftriebwagen built 1905-1915 and there were 35 of them built altogether.  They lasted in service until 1954-55 so they must've been reasonably useful.   https://translate.google.co.nz/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.diehugs.de/Lokomotiven/Regelspurlokomotiven/Auswahl/Kittel_Dampftriebwagen/kittel_dampftriebwagen.html&prev=search

 

 

This is quite an old model for Trainz and some of it's detailing is a bit simplified and coarse around the edges, but it runs quite well and the valve gear is beautifully animated.  Not really suitable for the Hopewood Tramway, but when no-one's looking I might give it a run sometimes.

 

[Annie]

Inspired by Martin's thread I made up these rectangular tank wagons.  The base model mesh is quite old and simple, but with a little smoke and mirrors with how I did the texture work they've turned out Ok.

 

[Martin S-C]

Has the colour gone weird on the nearer wagon? The hatches should be central but I assume that's something you are unable to correct.

[Annie]

The nearest wagon is weathered Martin.  It looks a bit odd because it's in shadow, - I never was any good at taking snaps.  The model mesh has the filler hatch offset for some reason, - I don't know why.  Because it's a one piece mesh I can't move it unfortunately, but this was the only rectangular tank wagon mesh I could find so I guess it's better than nothing.  The chap who made it has made a lot of models, but this was one of his early ones and it has errors with the way the textures fit the mesh so I had to do some fudging to get it to look Ok.

 

 

This is another rectangular tank, but this time it's based on a prototype wagon.  I basically tidied up the original wagon's textures and added some of my own texture pieces to it.

 

[Martin S-C]

Aha, I see it now. You've done a very good job with the textures, working within the constraints of an old model.

I see that the wheels of these models are made up of faces so they don't look round. I remember we had all kinds of problems with wheels in the early MSTS days and they looked horribly clunky. One of my friends who was a prolific 3D modeller hit upon the clever idea of using a circular texture with an alpha channel for the face of the wheel and another for its rear, but bigger to suggest a flange - two square textures, total 4 polys with the result of a perfectly round wheel rim.

[Annie]

That sounds like a very clever way to make a wheel Martin.  Most wheels for Trainz use the multiple flat faces method and some older models can have wheels like an old threepenny coin, but in general these days they aren't too bad.

 

 

Yes all a bit of smoke and mirrors with the textures to get them looking Ok.  In use the tank wagons look reasonable enough, but really a new model mesh is well overdue.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Annie

[Martin S-C]

The joke at the time was that all his models actually had square wheels, but they were invisible all except for a central circular texture. Mind you, he had to write some code to actually get that textured circle perfectly central inside the square otherwise his wagons and locos rolling along looked very odd!

[Annie]

Ever since I sent the small but fiesty little Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0's off to the other end of the tramway to live because they didn't have skirts over their wheels I've had a problem with insufficient locomotive power to do the work on the roadside tramway section of the line.  Checking the withdrawal dates for G15's again I saw that No.127 was withdrawn in the same year as No.128 so I put another dent in the official GER history record and now No.127 has come to find a new home on the Hopewood Tramway.

 

To create a visual difference with No.128 I gave No.127 some lining and the H.T.Co. crest on its lower bodysides.  I love playing trains on my silly little tramway, but G15's can be very confusing when you can't tell them apart from one another.  I've only just managed to recognise at a glance which end of them is the front so I need all the help I can get! 

Another small triumph has been finally managing to fix the window glass on my G15's as well.  With their original almost opaque white windows they looked like mobile greenhouses.which is not what I wanted at all.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2018 by Annie

[Annie]

Another engine problem I had was that the Kerr Stuart I was using to shunt the sand and gravel sidings was a post war engine.  I really wanted to keep the Hopewood Tramway a pre-war line, but didn't really have an alternative engine I could use.  Then I started to think about the character and habits of light and minor railways and decided that an ancient, but serviceable engine might be just the thing.  I had a hunt around in my digital trainset box amongst my mid-19th century engines and found a large outside framed 0-6-0 saddle tank engine, but when I tried it on the line I'm sure I could hear the rails cracking.  The old monster was just plain too big for what I wanted.  So I dug a bit more and found a smaller 2-4-0 saddle tank engine that looked a bit more like it.  Taking it off into Paint.NET about half an hour later it emerged in a shade of mildly weathered black with tarnished brass work and lined out in white and red. This is one of Paulz Trainz older models and it lacks things like code lamp attachment points and interactive coaling and watering, but it's still a rather nice representation of an 1860's saddle tank engine despite its age..

Further work was needed, - I installed a better engine spec config file as well as whistle and steam sound files and Paul's slightly strange footplate crew figures were replaced by ones made by Steve Flanders.  The final result was an old, but reasonably well looked after engine with a particular job of work to do which it's well able to do which is most probably why it's lasted so long.  Some such engines did last into the 1920's on certain minor lines, but tended to quickly disappear as the decade progressed.

 

 

On testing I found my newly overhauled old engine to be very controllable at low speed.  With it's largish driving wheels the slow swing of its coupling rods is a delight to watch.  Once in a while it did slip with a rapid chutter in its exhaust though recovered quickly, but apart from that it seems to handle moving heavily laden sand wagons about fairly well. 

 

 

Essentially old No.3's job is to shunt sand and gravel wagons between the sand and gravel sidings and the loading tipple at Bluebell Sands and the goods yard at Bluebell Woods.  None of this section of the line is beside a road so old No.3 doesn't need to be all skirted up to performs its job.  It's a fairly demanding part of the line with tight curves and a stiff gradient from Bluebell Woods up to Bluebell Sands so the tram engines couldn't cope with the job and both the Hudswell Clarkes are now busy with hauling logs and cut timber about to and from the sawmill at Elgar Wood so a fairly good sized tank engine was needed that could do the job on its own without double heading or needing a banker.

[Martin S-C]

That is a marvellous looking engine. I am a huge fan of both saddle tanks and the 2-4-0 wheel arrangement so this one ticks all my boxes.

 

EDIT: Do the disc and cross bar signals rotate as well?

Edited December 9, 2018 by Martin S-C

[Annie]

Yes the disc signals do work Martin.  They are based on a design that used on the Ffestiniog Railway.  I tried to represent signalling on the tramway as being in a state of transition with more modern semaphore signals gradually replacing the older types.  Around sidings they are tending to be retained though as a form of shunting signal and they are also used where there's not much clearance to place a semaphore signal or where a semaphore signal could cause confusion with other nearby signals.

 

I'm very pleased with old No.3.  The original engine which I cloned to make No.3 was pea green and I think it looks much better in black (as any LNWR man might tell you).  I also considered a smaller 0-4-2 well tank engine, but it wouldn't have been up to the job since it was no bigger than the two Hudswell Clarkes that are now working at the other end of the tramway.

With most of my mid-19th century engines it's possible 'plug in' a range of different buffer types and I thought the double dumb buffers would be just the job for old No.3.  I do have some older dumb buffer open wagons with low buffers that would be a match for the lower buffers on No.3, but by the time period of my layout they would have been scrapped long ago.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Annie