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

[MikeOxon]

On 06/07/2024 at 16:10, Annie said:

I know the tender isn't the correct one

With regard to those early engines, I doubt whether anyone does - beware of illustrations produced years afterwards! 

 

Your close-up view shows the simplifications made for the Trainz model very clearly (including polygonal wheels!) rather clearly and makes me feel I wasn't wasting my time trying to tease out the various components from  Nicholas Wood's 1838 drawing.  He did quite a lot of consultancy work for the early GWR and I believe he knew 'Thunderer' at first hand.

[Annie]

24 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

Your close-up view shows the simplifications made for the Trainz model very clearly

For reasons I don't completely understand wheels that are completely round take a sizeable amount of resources to render in the simulator.  More recent models might have polygonal wheels that have more facets, but nobody that I know renders them as perfect circles.

 

You definitely weren't wasting your time with your recent work on Nicholas Wood's 1838 drawing Mike as your rendered 3D image in Fusion clearly shows.

 

The old TS2004 models of 'Thunderer' and 'Hurricane' are likely to stay in my digital trainset box and not be brought out again.  They are an interesting curiosity to have, but that's about all.

 

37 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

With regard to those early engines, I doubt whether anyone does - beware of illustrations produced years afterwards! 

Yes there's a certain amount of imaginative guesswork that has been published here and there when it come to the early years of the Broad Gauge.

[Annie]

Time for a cuppa.... Paddington station 1937.

 

 

I'm buried in terrace house models and roads, - and footpaths!  The more I do at Rathtyen the more there seems to be needing to be done.  Doing small traders down the northern end of town at the moment and presently working on a chimney sweep's house and yard.

[Adam88]

4 hours ago, Annie said:

Time for a cuppa.... Paddington station 1937.

 

 

I'm buried in terrace house models and roads, - and footpaths!  The more I do at Rathtyen the more there seems to be needing to be done.  Doing small traders down the northern end of town at the moment and presently working on a chimney sweep's house and yard.

 

Ah, PG Tea - post grouping tea.  Fifteen years earlier it would also have been PG Tea.

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Adam88 said:

 

Ah, PG Tea - post grouping tea.  Fifteen years earlier it would also have been PG Tea.

With the photo being from the same time period as 'Tristyn in Winter' I thought it was appropriate to the occasion. 

[Jake The Rat]

22 hours ago, Annie said:

The more I do at Rathtyen the more there seems to be needing to be done.

Same here. Rathtyen has yet another problem: the town is cut in halves by the tracks, & the only connection is the level crossing at the northern end of it. This is obviously not enough for a town of this size, so I had to build a bridge...

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Jake The Rat said:

Same here. Rathtyen has yet another problem: the town is cut in halves by the tracks, & the only connection is the level crossing at the northern end of it. This is obviously not enough for a town of this size, so I had to build a bridge...

Ooooo wonderfully daring and definitely a good solution to the problem.  I considered a bridge with the station building on the bridge to serve the two island platforms, but ended up deciding against it; - perhaps I should reconsider and put a bridge in after all.  That level crossing at the northern end of town would be an absolute bottle neck to traffic with a town of this size.  I tend to have a cavalier attitude towards motor vehicles at the best of times, but that level crossing is something that even I can't ignore.

I see you've shifted many of the buildings around for a much better result, - and isn't it great how putting in some proper roads makes everything look better.

I decided to remove the very tall buildings either side of the station as I thought they dominated the skyline too much.

 

The lack of snow on roofs tends to haunt me somewhat.  And I really need to find some better Winter tree models.

[MikeOxon]

30 minutes ago, Annie said:

The lack of snow on roofs tends to haunt me somewhat. 

In the days before loft insulation in most houses, it was usual for the snow on roofs to melt quite rapidly

[Annie]

41 minutes ago, MikeOxon said:

In the days before loft insulation in most houses, it was usual for the snow on roofs to melt quite rapidly

Perfect, - thank you Mike.  Having lived in non-snowy areas for most of my life I was not aware of that.  I suppose that makes my towns with only scattered snowy roofs here and there completely plausible then.

[Jake The Rat]

I don't like snow at all, so I prefer the non-winter version of this layout.

Only on very hot days in summer I play Trainz on snowy layouts, mostly in Canada. The psychological cooling effect is quite convenient. On the opposite, I like to drive Santa Fe or Southern Pacific trains across Arizona on cold winter days. 🌞

For the other 350 days or so, when temperatures are between 0 & 30°C, it's mostly the UK for me.

 

I'm feeling a little tired of working on all this non-railway stuff like streets & houses, & I think tonight I'll drive GWR 7028 'Cadbury Castle' around the whole route.

[Annie]

4 minutes ago, Jake The Rat said:

I'm feeling a little tired of working on all this non-railway stuff like streets & houses, & I think tonight I'll drive GWR 7028 'Cadbury Castle' around the whole route.

I spy a black cat sitting on a station name board.  😄

 

It's 1 degree C outside at the moment so I must be nuts to be playing in the snow on Tristyn & District this morning.

[Schooner]

Long over-due catch up. Thread much enjoyed; self much cheered :) 

[Annie]

Broad Gauge Cheer Up Painting:  Painting by Terence Cuneo depicting ‘Firefly leaving Box Tunnel, Great Western Railway, c.1841’.

 

Edit:  Can you find the mouse?  I haven't been able to.

 

Edited July 18 by Annie
more to say

[Caley Jim]

Spotted the mouse! 😄

 

Jim

[Northroader]

5 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Spotted the mouse! 😄

 

Jim

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/mouse/
 

[Annie]

5 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Spotted the mouse! 😄

It's not that wee thing halfway up the embankment is it? - what I keep thinking is only a tuft of grass.

[John Isherwood]

2 minutes ago, Annie said:

It's not that wee thing halfway up the embankment is it? - what I keep thinking is only a tuft of grass.

 

I'd guess that is sitting on one of the lower climbing irons on the RH side of the TGP.

 

CJI.

[Annie]

2 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

I'd guess that is sitting on one of the lower climbing irons on the RH side of the TGP.

Now how the heck would a mouse get up there?  I think you're right though and that is the mouse.

[John Isherwood]

Just now, Annie said:

Now how the heck would a mouse get up there?  I think you're right though and that is the mouse.

 

You should see where mice get to when our cat is after them!

 

CJI.

[Annie]

24 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

You should see where mice get to when our cat is after them!

I know that mice can jump surprisingly high when they have a need to.

[Annie]

The things I get up to when I'm not properly supervised.  This viaduct building nonsense is not that easy to do.

 

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, Annie said:

Now how the heck would a mouse get up there?  I think you're right though and that is the mouse.

He did at times put his trademark mouse in some odd places.  His painting of a train crossing the Forth Bridge has the mouse running across the top of one of the masonry towers IIRC.

 

Jim

[MikeOxon]

11 hours ago, Annie said:

Can you find the mouse?  I haven't been able to.

 

another artist who used mice as his trademark was the furniture maker Robert Thompson.  I recall hunting them down on the tables and chairs in the school library.

[Mikkel]

13 hours ago, Annie said:

The things I get up to when I'm not properly supervised.  This viaduct building nonsense is not that easy to do.

 

 

No mouse? 🙂 It would be a nice trademark to leave in there. Do people do such things in VR modelling?

 

Edited July 19 by Mikkel

[Annie]

3 hours ago, Mikkel said:

No mouse? 🙂 It would be a nice trademark to leave in there. Do people do such things in VR modelling?

Sometimes, - not that often though.  Jake the Rat who posts images of his layouts here occasionally always has cats somewhere in the picture and I did have hidden rabbits on one layout I built up some time ago.  You've given me something to think about Mikkel. 

 

Edit: A quick check in the DLS index turned up no mice, but a chap who has made a number of animated animals has done some animated rats.  Unfortunately though they are for a later version of Trainz and won't work in TANE.  He's done some animated cats as well.

Edited July 19 by Annie
More words needed.