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

[Edwardian]

I'm always interested in additional potential traffic sources on the Hopewood Tramway and when James mentioned fish oil in his post above I decided to have a go at establishing such an industry.

The 'East Anglia Hygienic Fish Oil Co.'  is not a throbbing hub of industry by any means.  Its production is small and sporadic, but worth a tank wagon or two a week for the H.T.Co. to pick up from their siding and take to wherever fish oil goes (The East Anglia Squeaky Fish Hospital?) and that's all that counts really.  Oh and the H.T.Co. delivers a wagon's worth of coal for the factory boiler from time to time too.

 

 

Not the first of your structures I'd like on my model railway! lovely.

 

The traffic on the WNR reflects the essential whimsicality of the line, but must not cross the line into absurdity.

 

I try to represent real East Anglian traffic, and extrapolate!

 

Baltic timber imports were big through such ports as Wisbech (in my world there is a very similar "Mereport") and King's Lynn (and, in my world, "Bishop's Lynn").  Fruit growing was a feature of the W&U traffic, of course.

 

Seasonal traffic included the herring from the Scottish fleets travelling southward, and Scottish cows coming to Norfolk to be fattened.

 

Sugar beet cultivation was not yet widespread, but had been undertaken experimentally, and we see this in Nearholmer's idea for the West Norfolk Soil Amendment Company.

 

Recently, CA parishioners have discussed egg traffic and poultry promotion.  There was an egg depot at Fakenham (in my world, "Achingham").

 

Owing much to whimsey is the factory producing  Sandringham Lavender Biscuits.  Other of the more whimsical ideas have been coprolite extraction (Kevin again), and the extraction and calcination of iron ore, which enterprises, together with carstone extraction and seaborne coal imports, have given rise to the borderline absurd Norfolk Minerals Railway.  

 

The ultimately fraudulent English Oilfields scheme to extract shale oil at Setch, near King's Lynn, in 1918, is brought forward so we have Norfolk Oilfields Limited. 

 

My personal favourite is the appropriation of the Scottish Fish Oil & Guano Co. (real!) and its wagons for the Norfolk Fish Oil & Guano Co. 

Edited December 21, 2018 by Edwardian

[Annie]

Thanks James.  When I first tried the two buildings together that I wanted to use for the fish oil works I wasn't all that impressed because the larger building's blurry low resolution textures didn't look all that good at all and its roof didn't match the roof of the building I wanted to use for the boiler house.  After working on the larger buildings textures in Paint.NET I had my doubts that I'd made much of a difference so I was pleasantly surprised once I saw it in the simulator.

 

I enjoy touches of whimsy too, but I try to keep it within the wider definitions of plausibility.  No treacle mines on the Hopewood Tramway! 

 

Prodded into a more close examination of my little tramway by some of Martin's useful comments and suggestion in earlier postings I've been considering the types of traffic that would be carried on the line.  In many ways much of the goods traffic is similar to that carried by the WNR.  Being a rural line farm produce is an important traffic and the ventilated vans I've recently completed are setup to accept milk, eggs and cheese.  Fruit is also a likely seasonal traffic especially since I 'planted' the first apple orchard on the layout at Downes Farm just the other day and more will no doubt follow.

 

Timber traffic at present is from homegrown sources rather than imports and unless I decided to greatly expand the small wooden wharf at Bluebell Woods I don't think that will change.  Speaking of the wharf, - I closely examined the wharf model yesterday and discovered that it is set up for handling cattle loading and off-loading so that opens up a further traffic possibility for the future.

 

Fish traffic in a modest way from the Bluebell wharf will eventually happen, but I haven't done much with the idea yet as I want to rebuild and revise my digital fish van model before I officially add it to the traffic roster.  The fish van was my very first model for Trainz that I uploaded to the DLS and I would like to change its textures over to the much better van mesh and underframe kit that I'm using now.

 

I do have to confess though that seeing that photo of the 'Scottish Fish Oil & Guano Co.' wagon on the forum planted a seed within my mind and I also have to confess that Terry Pratchett's books were the instigator for me choosing 'East Anglia Hygienic Fish Oil Co.' as the name for my shabby little fish oil works.

 

What I enjoy very much about small local railways, - and I know you are finding the same kind of enjoyment James, - is thinking over the nature of the area the railway passes through, thinking about who lives there and why and where do they go to work for a wage and how do they get there.  How did the towns and villages arise? - was the railway there first or did it come later?  And so it goes on with examining the types of traffic and where it comes from and is it seasonal or not.  And of course the question Martin put to me about where does the money to keep the line running come from and which of the industries provide the greatest financial support with their traffic.

All good fun and it really makes building my little tramway a process by which it comes to life instead of just being a trainset to whizz trains up and down.

[Martin S-C]

Both of you are very much talking about subjects that inspire and drive me in my layout creation. By "stealing" the Forest of Dean I was lucky to hit upon several key local industries; coal mining, tinplate works, wood distillation works and stone quarrying as well as dressing/finishing the stone are all industries prevalent in this part of Gloucestershire.

To these I have added a brewery, primarily because I love beer and brewery railways are a fascinating microcosm in themselves. The modelling potential of a siding running between the gloomy cliffs of dirty limestone buildings with all the small clutter of docks, barrels, sheds and so on makes it one of those industries I really enjoy researching. One of the Bachmann resin-cast brewery building sets at an extremely good second hand price on e-Bay clinched the deal.

 

A dairy or creamery is less plausible as much of the farming in the Forest (such as it was) seemed to centre around sheep, while much of the actual land surface was given over still to ancient forest or the newer pine plantations but as I'm sliding the layout northwards to a location between Mitcheldean, Hereford and Gloucester, dairy herds are more likely.

The greaseworks is another of those grotty and nasty industries that tended to crop up near railways and ever since finding out a bit about the GWR greaseworks at Swindon as it was in the 1920s I decided I needed such a thing. It also gives a reason to run some tanker wagons of which far too many nice ones are available for me to resist.

[Annie]

The Forest of Dean certainly sounds like a fascinating region.  I must confess to knowing almost nothing about it all, but its name always seemed to invoke a feeling in me of antiquity and ancient places.

 

I considered a brewery and there is a multipart brewery model available for Trainz, but I decided that if I put a brewery anywhere it would be out somewhere on the Valleyfields layout beyond the Hopewood Tramway.  Dairy farming is on my tick list though.  I haven't done a great deal with that yet beyond placing cows in fields and a few static milk churns on station platforms.  I know how dairy farming is/was done here in New Zealand, but I'm not so sure about East Anglia in 1913.

 

I must say your greaseworks fascinates me Martin; - another industry I know not a thing about and I'll be very interested to see how you build your model.

[Annie]

 

Gave in and made some purchases at the Steam sale.  I already had Dovetail's TS  2017 version of their simulator and the Falmouth branch add-on which I purchased over a year ago, but never bothered to load loaded onto my present Xeon computer.  Steam has automatically updated my TS  2017 version to  TS  2019 which was a small surprise.  With Trainz you have to buy the next updated version of their simulator.

 

I haven't tried running the new simulator yet, but something I noticed is that while everything was loading onto my hard drive only two cores of my computer's quad core processor were being used.  At the moment I'm updating the early release version of  N3V's Trainz TS2019 simulator to the final version and all four cores in the processor are being used.  Now I'm wondering if this is going to be a problem.  Strange that Dovetail's sparkling new version can only use two cores and not four which is certainly unusual for a brand new game version released this year.

Edited December 22, 2018 by Annie

[sem34090]

Ooo! Might we see you dabbling with TS a little?

If ever you want any help with that then you know where I am!

[Annie]

I did look at the GWR steam railcar as well Sem, but my pocket money fund said 'NO!'  I'm trying to save up for all the bits to put a second Xeon CPU in my computer and I didn't want to cut into any of what I've hoarded saved so far.

 

And yes if I do get stuck with anything to do with getting TS up and running I'll certainly ask your advice.

[sem34090]

The railmotor is very nice...

[Annie]

Open wagon for Linny.  I've carefully copied the lettering style from the open wagons on their Great Southern thread.  7 plank 1907 wagon with side, bottom and end doors; - a very useful type of open wagon to have.  I may be able to do a 7 plank version without an end door, but it may be a bit of a fiddle fitting 1907 brakes and axleboxes to the wagon body mesh.  4/5 plank wagons with a choice of brake gear can be done as well.  The taller type of 5 plank wagon will need some messing about to fit it with 1907 underframe gear as well.

 

[Skinnylinny]

Ooooh, that's very nice, thank you, Annie! That looks like it might be a Loco Coal wagon. It'll be lovely to see some proper GSR stock in Linton.

[Martin S-C]

That's a cracking texture, though at first I thought you'd got the colour wrong since my Great Shafting livery is a red-brown!

 

[Annie]

Ooooh, that's very nice, thank you, Annie! That looks like it might be a Loco Coal wagon. It'll be lovely to see some proper GSR stock in Linton.

I'm glad you like it Linny.  It's very easy to add the lettering 'LOCO' to the wagon so I can do that if you like.  My main concern with doing this wagon was representing the lettering style for 'G  S' correctly and getting the base body colour close to the dark grey of your model wagons.

I won't be uploading this model to the DLS (unless you want me to) so if you PM me your email address I'll send you the Trainz CDP file so you can have a proper look at it and check it over.

 

 

That's a cracking texture, though at first I thought you'd got the colour wrong since my Great Shafting livery is a red-brown!

 

 

I have a little list Martin, - and no-one shall be missed.  I'll be having a look at your wagons and their liveries again fairly soon as I quite enjoy making digital models of the wagons belonging to the freelance railway companies devised by forum members.

[Martin S-C]

Have you a cattle wagon mesh?

[Annie]

Yes Martin there's one I can use for a medium sized pre-grouping cattle van of a design that was similar to that of several pre-group railways.  I haven't tried doing anything adventuresome with it yet though.

[Annie]

I tried out my new copy of Dovetail's TS and even on simple controls I was having problems.  It's all too much of a non intuitive mess for me and it seems to be a random dice roll as to whether any of the controls work anyway since sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

 

I shall spend the next few minutes hating everything and glowering and then go back to doing stuff on the Hopewood Tramway.

[sem34090]

I can see exactly what you mean...

 

When I'm back home in the new year I'll check a few things on your behalf.

[Annie]

[Annie]

A cheer myself up picture.  This is a GCR locomotive that I'd love to see being made by someone for Trainz

 

[sem34090]

Very nice!

[Martin S-C]

All Atlantics are nice. There's something so Victorian about that wheel arrangement.

[Annie]

Old East Anglia farm film clip from my chosen period.  Not a terrible lot of detail as to the wider landscape, but I'll take everything I can get.

 

https://www.huntleyarchives.com/preview.asp?image=1011018&itemw=2&itemf=0001&itemstep=1&itemx=3#

[Edwardian]

All Atlantics are nice. There's something so Victorian about that wheel arrangement.

 

Is there though?

 

I always think of them as quintessentially Edwardian.

 

In the British context, where the designation "Victorian" would seem to make most sense (I suspect there were Imperial Atlantics in India at some point), most Atlantics were products of Edward VII's reign.

 

The first two classes, the GN small Atlantic and the L&Y Atlantics were, I grant you, Victorian (1898 and 1899 respectively, IIRC), but the GN large Atlantics the two NE classes, the GC, NB, LB&SC H1 and GW experimental Atlantics were all Edwardians.  Only the last class, the Brighton H2, just strayed into the Georgian era in 1911. 

 

In term of their service records, the glory days of many Atlantics lasted well into the '30s. 

[Martin S-C]

Edwardian as a period/style to describe Atlantics works for me as well. They very much look like something before Titanic, before the Great War and before Socialism (with a capital S)

[Annie]

I've finally been able to change all the dreadful old TS2004 era track on Valleyfields for some proper bullhead track.  Along the way I managed to turn the trackwork into a knot at most important junction between the GCR and GER on the layout, but I managed to get it all sorted out in the end.

The new trackwork is made by the same creator who did the trackwork I've been using for the Hopewood Tramway and it's essentially the same model, but without the rust and weeds.

 

This is the GCR station at Bluebell Woods now looking much better than it did before.  (I still need to change the station name boards for proper pre-grouping ones.)

 

 

The view in the other direction.  The GCR semi-fitted goods train and the GCR passenger train are in their operating session starting positions. (And so is a G15 tram engine with its short passenger train at the Hopewood Tramway's small station).  There's only the one goods yard on the GCR section at the moment so all the goods train does at present is circulate on the main line which is a 30 mile or so long oval.  Eventually I'll get round to putting in another decent sized goods yard so goods trains can actually go somewhere that isn't the place they started from.

 

 

The goods shed and the short bay platform on the other side of the station building used be where there was another through passenger platform at Bluebell Woods, but I never used it and the bay platform and goods shed are much more useful additions.

The GER station and the town of Bluebell Magna is in the distance.

 

[Martin S-C]

Very nice, the updated track is a big improvement. One suggestion I would make is to dull down the shop frontages if thats possible. Colourful shop fronts I think are a fairly recent thing and having been looking at suitable styles for town buildings for my own layout I have been struck by how drab shop fronts were pre-war and how small and not "in your face" shop signs and nameboards were.