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

[Annie]

Red, - in the DLC search menu under the username option type in 'KotangaGirl' and you'll find everything that I've uploaded to the DLS.  There's just over 100 items of rolling stock so you should be able to find plenty to choose from.  Everything I make is for TS2012 and it all seems to work just fine in the later versions as well.

[RedGemAlchemist]

Red, - in the DLC search menu under the username option type in 'KotangaGirl' and you'll find everything that I've uploaded to the DLS. There's just over 100 items of rolling stock so you should be able to find plenty to choose from. Everything I make is for TS2012 and it all seems to work just fine in the later versions as well.

Excellent! Thank you Annie!

[Annie]

All the GER tram engines I own, - both G15s and C53s, - have inaccuracies and errors.  In some cases they are right howlers of mistakes too.  I mean how difficult is it to make a mobile wooden 'shed' with all its mechanical bits and moving parts covered up; - going by my collection it must be a seriously tricky business indeed.

 

This is the latest one.  It's made by the member of the creator group who will no longer talk to me after I pointed out the errors in some of his models.  This is it on test just as it came from being downloaded.  For a start it's longer than a C53 and it's supposed to be a G15.  In fact this is the stretch limo of tram engines.  For a 4 wheeler it has a shocking long wheelbase in fact I just about managed to fit two small G15 sized 0-4-0 coupled wheelsets under it only the innermost wheels were fouling each other.  What a tram engine that would have been!

 

 

Possibly making a silk purse out of a sow's ear here.  This tram engine had no couplings, no sound files and no smoke and its config file is a horrible clutter of redundant scripting most of which doesn't actually seem to be for this model anyway.  The dependency list and file folders for this tram engine are also full of irrelevant items that have nothing to do with it either.

 

 

 

I worked on the textures for a bit and it started to look better.  The faded black vertical stripes on the side are due to a mismatched shadow mesh; - something else to fix!

 

 

The empty underneath parts were treated to the same false frames trick I used on the 'not-a-C53'.  The boiler was a strange skinny thing with a weird hexagonal cross section so it got the same length of digital pipe treatment I used on the 'not-a-C53' as well.  In fact this particular tram engine has done a sterling job of making the 'not-a-C53' look good, - almost finescale in fact by comparison.  

 

 

Two workman figures quietly minding their own business were press ganged into becoming the new footplate crew because there wasn't any driver or fireman figures fitted to the model as downloaded.  All it took to get the sound files working was one short line of script in the config file.  Sorting out the total absence of smoke was a bit harder though and there's still more to do with getting it to work properly.  By the way if you're scratching your head over the number on the bufferbeam there weren't any GER tram engines numbered No.122.  Little by little I'm managing to get the thing sorted.  Most probably it will end up being another tramway built oddity like No.7 the 'not-a-C53'.  Ideally it should be fitted with the same 0-6-0 underframe as No.7, but the way the attachment points have been set up on No.122 make this fairly unlikely.  I'd need to either find a way to move the attachment points or else place a new one onto the body mesh and I haven't a clue how to do that at the moment.  So for the moment No.122 will have stay a long wheelbase 0-4-0.

Otherwise it does run reasonably well though the brakes are a bit vicious.  Not surprisingly the config file says it has 3 axles with 2 brake shoes on each; - no wonder it stops so well!  Couplings are next and that's going to be a bit of a fiddle to set up.

 

Edited January 14, 2019 by Annie

[Martin S-C]

Good work, but is it really worth it given you have some other much nicer ones?

[Annie]

I was in the mood for a challenge Martin.  And it's not exactly wasted effort as some of the fixes I've been making have been very good practice for me in the noble arts of config file taming and attachment making.  By the time I've finished it will have scrubbed up ok and it will be useful enough.

[RedGemAlchemist]

Indeed. Uniqueness is always something that you should cherish in a locomotive.

Edited January 14, 2019 by RedGemAlchemist

[Martin S-C]

Hence why this is my favourite steam engine of all time.

[Annie]

Wonderful Martin.  That engine is on my 'Like' list too.

 

In many ways it's a practical wheel arrangement for an engine working over branchlines and the like.  I believe it worked on the Looe branch for a while, - or perhaps my memory is failing me.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Annie

[Martin S-C]

Yes, Looe branch which is where that photo is taken. It worked the Highworth branch around 1922-23 as well. Withdrawn 1926.

[Edwardian]

All the GER tram engines I own, - both G15s and C53s, - have inaccuracies and errors.  In some cases they are right howlers of mistakes too.  I mean how difficult is it to make a mobile wooden 'shed' with all its mechanical bits and moving parts covered up; - going by my collection it must be a seriously tricky business indeed.

 

This is the latest one.  It's made by the member of the creator group who will no longer talk to me after I pointed out the errors in some of his models.  This is it on test just as it came from being downloaded.  For a start it's longer than a C53 and it's supposed to be a G15.  In fact this is the stretch limo of tram engines.  For a 4 wheeler it has a shocking long wheelbase in fact I just about managed to fit two small G15 sized 0-4-0 coupled wheelsets under it only the innermost wheels were fouling each other.  What a tram engine that would have been!

 

 

Possibly making a silk purse out of a sow's ear here.  This tram engine had no couplings, no sound files and no smoke and its config file is a horrible clutter of redundant scripting most of which doesn't actually seem to be for this model anyway.  The dependency list and file folders for this tram engine are also full of irrelevant items that have nothing to do with it either.

 

 

 

I worked on the textures for a bit and it started to look better.  The faded black vertical stripes on the side are due to a mismatched shadow mesh; - something else to fix!

 

 

The empty underneath parts were treated to the same false frames trick I used on the 'not-a-C53'.  The boiler was a strange skinny thing with a weird hexagonal cross section so it got the same length of digital pipe treatment I used on the 'not-a-C53' as well.  In fact this particular tram engine has done a sterling job of making the 'not-a-C53' look good, - almost finescale in fact by comparison.  

 

 

Two workman figures quietly minding their own business were press ganged into becoming the new footplate crew because there wasn't any driver or fireman figures fitted to the model as downloaded.  All it took to get the sound files working was one short line of script in the config file.  Sorting out the total absence of smoke was a bit harder though and there's still more to do with getting it to work properly.  By the way if you're scratching your head over the number on the bufferbeam there weren't any GER tram engines numbered No.122.  Little by little I'm managing to get the thing sorted.  Most probably it will end up being another tramway built oddity like No.7 the 'not-a-C53'.  Ideally it should be fitted with the same 0-6-0 underframe as No.7, but the way the attachment points have been set up on No.122 make this fairly unlikely.  I'd need to either find a way to move the attachment points or else place a new one onto the body mesh and I haven't a clue how to do that at the moment.  So for the moment No.122 will have stay a long wheelbase 0-4-0.

Otherwise it does run reasonably well though the brakes are a bit vicious.  Not surprisingly the config file says it has 3 axles with 2 brake shoes on each; - no wonder it stops so well!  Couplings are next and that's going to be a bit of a fiddle to set up.

 

 

Quite a challenge.

 

Were this me, and a physical model, I'd be tempted to redeploy the motor-bogie and use the body for a brake van!

 

Good practice, as you say.

[Annie]

Funny you should say that James as the tram engine's 'shed' is plainly based on parts of a brake van model made by the same chap.  A brake van model that's full of bugs by the way and which I've never been able to get to work in  the TS2012 version of the simulator for which the brake van model is supposedly made.  In the normal course of events I don't use any of this model creator's work anymore simply because most of it is awful, but perhaps I felt I needed a penance or something.

 

The behemoth(s) revealed.  Yes there's two of them.  While I was doing all the necessary modding and re-working of the magical script incantations I did on a few occasions make a complete mess of things so it was very useful having a second copy to use as a repair source.  After twice having to start all over again I made the clone tram engine No.022 to act as a back up for all the mods and script re-writing I was doing.

 

 

As you can see they just about dwarf the two C53's, - one by Paulz Trainz (back row) and the other by Darlington Works. 

Potentially the C53 by Darlington Works should be the best of all of them since it is a very accurate model, but the texturing is odd with a strange fuzzy dark quality that tries to suck out all the light entering my eyes so they always look somehow indistinct.  It can't be driven from the footplate and it has no code lamps or interactive coal and water loading.  It's a model I've never been able to get on with and it rarely gets used.

The Paulz Trainz model has dimensional errors and I had to fix a few things, but despite that it's a firm favourite in both its rebuilt 'not-a-C53' and standard 'out of the box' identities because of its superb 'on the footplate' driveability.  It has fully interactive code lamps as well as interactive coal and water loading so it can be worked in a very satisfying manner that always cheers me up if I'm having a not so good day.

 

In many ways it's the Paulz Trainz C53 model that's been my yardstick while setting up and fixing the two behemoths.  I still have no idea what the large amount of apparently redundant scripting in the behemoths' config files is for, but it's plain that a lot of it doesn't work.  At some stage I'll get very daring and start to remove some of it since much of my own scripting has made it even more redundant than it was to start with.  It has been a useful exercise though because I've been able to sharpen up my own skills with doing things like properly attaching the screw link couplings to a (created by me) attachment point as well as placing objects such as the  driver and fireman figures using positional scripting.  As you can see from the picture I still need to refine the scripting for the smoke from the behemoths' chimneys, but at least they do now produce smoke!

 

So where to from here?  I still have a few jobs to do on the behemoths, but they are presently more or less functional.  The harbour at Windweather is the industry that pays the bills on the Windweather tramway section and there will on occasion be some quite heavy trains being taken away from the harbour to their various destinations.  I'm going to fly a kite and say that the two behemoths were built to handle this traffic.  The Hopewood Tramway has some lengthy sections of roadside trackwork and a fair percentage of the goods trains from the harbour will be passing over the Hopewood section so a fully fitted out tram engine type of locomotive was needed for the job.  Most probably some older engines inherited by the GER were suitably rebuilt in a spirit of 'waste not want not' recycling in order to save money; - which to my mind suits the character of the Windweather section very well.

[Martin S-C]

I really like the hotel in the left background. Might we have a closer view please?

[Annie]

That's  the harbour master's house and offices with two staff cottages as a part of the main building Martin.  It's based on one at Bude in Cornwall which isn't exactly Norfolk, but until I can find something else it will do.

 

Edit: Found a picture of it.

 

Bude has a harbour with a sea lock, - Wow!  First decent picture I've found of sea lock gates.

 

Edited January 15, 2019 by Annie

[Annie]

And here's a better picture.  The sign is only temporary until I devise something better.

 

[Northroader]

Here’s a link you can follow for some lockgates, mainly at Sharpness, t’other side of the river, but some for Lydney and Gloucester.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sharpness+dock+lockgates&client=safari&hl=en-gb&prmd=misvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi94PW2z_DfAhWIUBUIHYYcAhYQ_AUoAnoECA0QAg&biw=1024&bih=698

[Annie]

Thanks Northroader.  Wow, - some of those lock gates are the kind you call 'Sir'.  The smaller ones are good though and I now have a much better idea how the gates fit into the dock walls.  Only problem is though I'm going to have to devise some more textured dock wall parts to make a decent job of it.

[Victorian Lad]

Been working on this little lady for Train Simulator past few days. 

[Annie]

Very nice indeed.  It's difficult to beat a GNR single for elegance.

[Regularity]

Very nice indeed. It's difficult to beat a GNR single for elegance.

There may be differing opinions on that.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Regularity

[Edwardian]

Funny you should say that James as the tram engine's 'shed' is plainly based on parts of a brake van model made by the same chap.  A brake van model that's full of bugs by the way and which I've never been able to get to work in  the TS2012 version of the simulator for which the brake van model is supposedly made.  In the normal course of events I don't use any of this model creator's work anymore simply because most of it is awful, but perhaps I felt I needed a penance or something.

 

The behemoth(s) revealed.  Yes there's two of them.  While I was doing all the necessary modding and re-working of the magical script incantations I did on a few occasions make a complete mess of things so it was very useful having a second copy to use as a repair source.  After twice having to start all over again I made the clone tram engine No.022 to act as a back up for all the mods and script re-writing I was doing.

 

 

As you can see they just about dwarf the two C53's, - one by Paulz Trainz (back row) and the other by Darlington Works. 

Potentially the C53 by Darlington Works should be the best of all of them since it is a very accurate model, but the texturing is odd with a strange fuzzy dark quality that tries to suck out all the light entering my eyes so they always look somehow indistinct.  It can't be driven from the footplate and it has no code lamps or interactive coal and water loading.  It's a model I've never been able to get on with and it rarely gets used.

The Paulz Trainz model has dimensional errors and I had to fix a few things, but despite that it's a firm favourite in both its rebuilt 'not-a-C53' and standard 'out of the box' identities because of its superb 'on the footplate' driveability.  It has fully interactive code lamps as well as interactive coal and water loading so it can be worked in a very satisfying manner that always cheers me up if I'm having a not so good day.

 

In many ways it's the Paulz Trainz C53 model that's been my yardstick while setting up and fixing the two behemoths.  I still have no idea what the large amount of apparently redundant scripting in the behemoths' config files is for, but it's plain that a lot of it doesn't work.  At some stage I'll get very daring and start to remove some of it since much of my own scripting has made it even more redundant than it was to start with.  It has been a useful exercise though because I've been able to sharpen up my own skills with doing things like properly attaching the screw link couplings to a (created by me) attachment point as well as placing objects such as the  driver and fireman figures using positional scripting.  As you can see from the picture I still need to refine the scripting for the smoke from the behemoths' chimneys, but at least they do now produce smoke!

 

So where to from here?  I still have a few jobs to do on the behemoths, but they are presently more or less functional.  The harbour at Windweather is the industry that pays the bills on the Windweather tramway section and there will on occasion be some quite heavy trains being taken away from the harbour to their various destinations.  I'm going to fly a kite and say that the two behemoths were built to handle this traffic.  The Hopewood Tramway has some lengthy sections of roadside trackwork and a fair percentage of the goods trains from the harbour will be passing over the Hopewood section so a fully fitted out tram engine type of locomotive was needed for the job.  Most probably some older engines inherited by the GER were suitably rebuilt in a spirit of 'waste not want not' recycling in order to save money; - which to my mind suits the character of the Windweather section very well.

 

Very nice version by Darlington Works, but I share your reservations over the colour.  I suspect GER/LNER coach brown was a little redder. 

 

 

And here's a better picture.  The sign is only temporary until I devise something better.

 

 

Is it possible to replace the 2 glazed doors with wood panel doors?

 

A great model you've made there. I also really like the cottages to the right.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Edwardian

[Annie]

Oops, - I may have given the wrong impression James.  The harbour master's house and offices isn't my work, - it's a model I downloaded from the DLS.  I don't think I'm quite good enough yet to make a model building like that one.  But as to those doors, - yes I can readily change them.  There's a few buildings about on the layout that need backdating for one reason or another and I will be getting around to doing that fairly soon.

 

Once I've completed work on the behemoths to my satisfaction I'm planning on having a closer look at the Darlington Works C53s.  I do have a single lonely Darlington Works C53 in GER livery with the rest being in either BR or LNER livery.  They all came together in a digital package and I would have much preferred  it if the GER had been better represented.  They all have the same colour faults and while they run nicely I don't like them as they are very much.

 

As for the behemoths they are shaping up very nicely and I've got them running very well.  Following a hunch with all the complex config scripting incantations  that didn't seem to be doing anything I deleted it all and it was fine.  I did take a backup copy first though just in case.  I sorted out the widely spaced wheels by replacing one axle with a short wheelbase 0-4-0 chassis which just fitted nicely.  I set it up with some scripting incantations to rotate around its attachment point  and now it tracks much better and can cope with navigating even the tightest curves on the tramway.  Fortunately the tramway skirts completely hide its single Fairlie like nature and 2-4-0 wheel arrangement.  After a few tests with other engine spec files I finally settled on one intended for an Avonside industrial saddle tank which seems to suit very well.  The torture test was stopping on a tight curve with a train of wagons heavily loaded with shingle and seeing if the tram engine could move the train from rest.  As you might have guessed there were a few failures before I tried the Avonside engine spec.

 

[Edwardian]

Oops, - I may have given the wrong impression James.  The harbour master's house and offices isn't my work, - it's a model I downloaded from the DLS.  I don't think I'm quite good enough yet to make a model building like that one.  But as to those doors, - yes I can readily change them.  There's a few buildings about on the layout that need backdating for one reason or another and I will be getting around to doing that fairly soon.

 

Once I've completed work on the behemoths to my satisfaction I'm planning on having a closer look at the Darlington Works C53s.  I do have a single lonely Darlington Works C53 in GER livery with the rest being in either BR or LNER livery.  They all came together in a digital package and I would have much preferred  it if the GER had been better represented.  They all have the same colour faults and while they run nicely I don't like them as they are very much.

 

As for the behemoths they are shaping up very nicely and I've got them running very well.  Following a hunch with all the complex config scripting incantations  that didn't seem to be doing anything I deleted it all and it was fine.  I did take a backup copy first though just in case.  I sorted out the widely spaced wheels by replacing one axle with a short wheelbase 0-4-0 chassis which just fitted nicely.  I set it up with some scripting incantations to rotate around its attachment point  and now it tracks much better and can cope with navigating even the tightest curves on the tramway.  Fortunately the tramway skirts completely hide its single Fairlie like nature and 2-4-0 wheel arrangement.  After a few tests with other engine spec files I finally settled on one intended for an Avonside industrial saddle tank which seems to suit very well.  The torture test was stopping on a tight curve with a train of wagons heavily loaded with shingle and seeing if the tram engine could move the train from rest.  As you might have guessed there were a few failures before I tried the Avonside engine spec.

 

 

What a great scene.  Wonderfully windswept and the the line being taken over by those coastal grasses ...

[Annie]

Thanks James.  I've been putting a lot of work into the landscape especially along the coastline and it was really nice to see it all down at driver eye level while I was conducting tram engine trials this afternoon.

 

[Edwardian]

There has just been a brief segment on Radio Three concerning ghost trains to ghost stations, apparently services run as 'place holders' to keep stations open and avoid the cost of closing them!

 

The stations and services are 'ghost' because they do not appear on public timetables.  The example given is Berney Arms in the misty Norfolk coastal marshes, naturally I thought of your latest layout ...

[Martin S-C]

Fantastic top picture - ghost-like in its own right. Brrrrr!