[Large images] Godwick-Egmere Railway

[SwedishMagnum]

Egmere station now looks more like a... well, proper station! Most of the resemblance to the real-life Loughborugh location concern the station layout and the bridges as the track work has taken a mind of its own somewhat.
One of the trickiest parts about this particular type was the design of having a set of stairs go up to the station building on the bridge. After multiple attempts I have managed to find something I like rather a lot.

The stair kit did not have any side panels to cover the the entire length so I looked about for something that could blend in with a similar colour. The result was a concrete spline which does the job very nicely!

A brief look at the previously mentioned track work

Progress is slow but I am happy with the current set up

 

[SwedishMagnum]

Progress has been made on and around Egmere!
The station sign is now one that has a better fit on the canopy, as the other one felt a bit too large upon looking at it for a bit.

Egmere town is no longer an empty baseboard, it now has some rows of houses and streets lined up.

An overview of how the streets currently go in Egmere. Red areas mark places where I am to put down industrial buildings and the like.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Oh wow SwedishMagnum what you've been able to achieve with your route building is downright amazing. The creative way that've made use of what assets are available on the DLS is really inspiring as well.

 

[SwedishMagnum]

Very kind of you to say so! I am not sure I can take too much credit but I am glad you like what you have seen so far

No screenshots to show progress right now, but I put together a short clip of 'Humorist' departing Egmere. In the best BR steam era livery, of course!

In the video 'Humorist' would eventually end up at Godwick the way the track is directed at present, however I intend to have the mainline divert off to left and disappear into a tunnel or something like that!

 

[SwedishMagnum]

A rather nasty cold over the holidays took away motivation for working on the route, but I have made some slight progress.
After a few revisions I think I have decided on how I want the mainline connection to diverge away from the Godwick branch.

And finally, a short video with the Ivatt 2MT reskin by 2995Valliant. The train is coming from 'Somewhere-in-the-distance' with a stop at Egmere, before continuing its way down the line.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Glad you're feeling better now. Nice to see work on your route continuing and that video clip was a good bit of icing on the cake.

 

[georgem2010]

What an exciting and interesting project, love the way you're basing points of interest on real world track plans and locations.

 

[SwedishMagnum]

Very kind of you to say so!

Now, some 'good news, bad news'...


Obviously I have not updated this thread in some time. Events happened and the desire to work on the route dropped rather dramatically for quite some time.

I have gone back and done slight revisions here and there and I had thought to begin again when another spanner was thrown into the works. I upgraded my computer a few months back with a new drive and moved all of my games over, I checked Trainz and everything seemed to still be there, all downloaded files still intact. Yesterday, I decided to see if I had missed any new fun DLS items from the authors I check on periodically, I noticed I no longer had anything left installed from any of them.

The loss of all DLS items is a bother, but I can of course re-download them, even if the prospect of rebuilding my entire collection is not something I exactly look forward to doing. Perhaps a perfect opportunity to finally use that FCT voucher I have laying around. The worst thing of course is the loss of all my own routes and those by third-party and other non-DLS items I had installed. A disaster to be sure, if not for the fact that I have a back-up of all my own routes that I thought worth saving.


It will take take time to get back up to speed, but not impossible.

 

[rogueranger1993]

That is a real bummer, but I think we're all very happy that you were wise enough to keep a backup of your stuff - I, for one, would be very sad to see this route turn into vaporware, as I look forward to the possibility of enjoying it myself someday.

 

[SwedishMagnum]

A good while downloading items later, I have begun to shave some rust of route making. Since I last did any work, it would appear Trainz 19 had an update to its rendering/lighting, several assets I've used no longer look quite right any more. On the other hand, other items seems to look better, clam1952's trees looked off in the past in my Trs19 install, but now look fine. Whatever is the cause of this, I took this as an excuse to play around with the environment settings and to brush up on my scenery making skills.

Godwick as it appears on the very first post in this thread...

..and how it looks now

Scenery making is a tricky bit of work, and something that can get overwhelming at times, but I am quite pleased with the 'feel' I managed to put together so far. I suppose if I don't work it out for the rest of the line, I can just winterize the route by coating it in white and calling it done

 

[SwedishMagnum]

The 'Roughton Road' based section bothered me a bit, as the track work felt too stiff and generally awkward when riding over it, so I reworked it. See the .gif below for a quick before/after view of the area.

A close-up of the reworked track section...

Before:

After:

An alternate view of the new track work:

After being satisfied with that for the moment, I began working on smoothing out the 'trench' and began preliminary texture work. Other additions include the bridge and extending the track in the 'Northrepps road' direction.

And finally for this update: I did some light work on Godwick town, plotting out more roads and placing down some more buildings to get a feel of the eventual size of it.

 

[georgem2010]

Stunning work! And I really enjoy your narrative. Your creative thinking has been a great influence for my fictional Highlands route.

I have seen this technique for smoothing slopes before, I see it must involve splines, but if you could talk me through it that would be greatly appreciated!!

Best regards,

George

 

[SwedishMagnum]

Stunning work! And I really enjoy your narrative. Your creative thinking has been a great influence for my fictional Highlands route.

I have seen this technique for smoothing slopes before, I see it must involve splines, but if you could talk me through it that would be greatly appreciated!!

Best regards,

George

Very kind of you!

As to how I smooth out the hills, in a nutshell, it is with this command:

After I have decided what is the 'top' and 'bottom' of the slope, I next place down track on a hillside that I want to smooth, go to the 'advanced' section of the track menu, hit the "Smooth spline height" button, and click the track.

Of course, you can also adjust the height of the track ends to further customize, and then smooth it out, though I do not do this as often.

Now, while I tend to prefer using track, you can of course use the same function that is available in the 'spline' section, like with this pavement spline:

Another tip of course, is to make the hill in a rough out line and then place a bunch of tracks/splines so you can quickly terraform the land by just clicking all the tracks or splines in one go, that is what I tend to do, especially if I have a hillside or valley that goes on for quite some distance.

 

[georgem2010]

Ahh brilliant, thank you for this, very helpful indeed!

 

[rogueranger1993]

That really is a neat tip for creating smooth slopes, thanks for sharing!

I also think the reworked section of track looks better than it did before - I'm assuming the short stub track is the remnants of what used to be a connection to some other track or line?

 

[SwedishMagnum]

I also think the reworked section of track looks better than it did before - I'm assuming the short stub track is the remnants of what used to be a connection to some other track or line?

Ah, that my good friend is my attempt at a trap/catch point!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_points

It was my thinking that (on this side of the slope) that a catch point would exist here to protect trains going up or down the hill from runaway trains arriving from the direction of 'Northrepps road'. But primarily, my reason for adding it was 'because it was fun', the 'sense making' part happened afterwards.

And, because I cannot resist making a scene...

I intend on having another set of points on the other side, specifically for runaway trains/wagons coming down from the hill, to protect any trains beyond the bridge.

 

[rogueranger1993]

Interesting idea, and a fun way to make sense of a good-looking bit of trackwork!

 

[SwedishMagnum]

Something I brought up early in this thread was the lack of appropriate speed board signage for the era I am attempting to model, and I have decided to give it ago and get a 'temporary' fix in place (which is probably going to be permanent, that's just how it goes).

Instead of relying on the tedious method of stacking multiple assets to get a one sign, I did a quick reskin of 'Parish notice board' by ray_whiley, and ended up with a promising result. This is loosely based on the North British Railway speed restriction board, as referenced on this website: https://www.railsigns.uk/sect13page1.html

A change of font as well as a different shade of white I think is in order, but overall not a bad first attempt.

 

[georgem2010]

An ingenious fix! Reskinning assets is definitely very useful sometimes. I've made several variations of railway buildings to match certain eras and companies, such as converting a generic engine shed to one in the colours of LMS. But this, using a notice board for a speed sign is next level.

 

[SwedishMagnum]

Indeed, reskinning assets can be quite the addition to a route. My modelling attempts have always fallen flat, so I am most thankful for creators that allow reskins.

Speaking of which, an unhealthy distraction later I have managed to churn out some signs. For a freelance design, heavily based on what the NBR supposedly used, I am quite happy with the end result. All static, not actually set up as track objects, but that gives me some flexibility when and where I place them down.

And of course, a speed restriction sign of 125 mph, for all those famous InterCity HST trips of the late Victorian era.