Layout Bashing or how to get more enjoyment out of Trianz Model Railroad....

Well it has been some time since I posted any updates...I decided to also begin a passenger friendly version of the Brazemore.....I purchased a couple of Amtrak P42s from Jointed Rails and realized they had no home....below are just the beginning stages of a passenger conversion.

As you can see in the above pic the farm tractor dealership has gone away and is now replaced by an Amtrak station, actually joined 2 of these together to form this station and added some details, people, signs, a clock, parking lots and cars....

Above: For the back of the station I added some tables with umbrellas for a mini café





And some misc shots of the station above



Above: I also replaced the long silo with a smaller station......no details yet..

I also changed the grain elevator with a different version on the otherside of the yard. This is actually 2 Western States Elevators merged together to form one...



Also added 2 small storage silos as well. remember the red barn at the beginning of this thread .......

We interrupt this thread now for something completely different......I was pondering on how I could use multiple MOW vehicles on a single track running in small groups like on a real railroad when the idea for using an invisible bogey/train came to my mind. And with Christopher824 suggesting what to find it under I came up with this.....


Of course the spacing is a little off but I think the general idea is represented..(using the speed command I set the Mow lead to 5mph)............I hope more MOW items are released because this they are really needed...........

Next up was an empty space before approaching the engine service facilities so I thought a nice place for a little station:

Below are some shots of the same area with an Amtrak Station. I added some details with signs, parking lot with curbs, a bus stop, some surveyors looking to expand the station lot a little further ...









Hope you like....

Summertime.....sun....grass and weeds....time for some upkeep... Below an empty space

Add some utility trucks, workers, riding mower and push mower and some cones and a sign warning traffic there is work ahead:

Wonderful pictures!

May I suggest you to put a white spacing between the pictures?
It will look so much better.

☼ ☼

Richarde57 said:

Wonderful pictures!

May I suggest you to put a white spacing between the pictures?
It will look so much better.

☼ ☼

Click to expand...

Noted and will be applied for future pictures...............

Funny thing happened on the way to work today.....got stuck at a RR crossing for an extremely long UP mixed freight that was going by (almost a 30 min wait), as it was rolling by I noticed some coil cars and thought hmmm...so I was trying to figure out what to do with the area you see below:


Then I thought maybe a small steel industry would fit here after being stuck for the train and the following pics show you what I came up with:

So the steel coils are delivered here by rail and then the steel company fabricates them into their products and sends them back out by either rail or truck.

th



Above: A steel delivery by coil cars while a semi trailer is loaded with finished specialty parts to be delivered to the Coldwater Steel warehouse for the fabrication and modification of large engines.


Above: Finished steel goods get sent out by rail to the distribution center or to the yard for out of town deliveries...




Below: So the finished steel products that are delivered by truck go to this warehouse for further distribution....



Both areas are works in progress, need to add some more details and then I will show the results...

Originally the steel industry with the transfer crane was going to be a cold storage warehouse for my reefers but since it has been replaced I needed to find a new home....the area below was a office/apt building...


This is where I began some serious "building bashing" taking the Budweiser warehouse and using it 4 or 5 times to form one warehouse now known as "AA Cold Storage"...




I think it turned out pretty good. I added a loading platform by Jointed Rail and put a billboard on top to hide the original building's view....just need to do some more detailing after the steel industries.......



Orange Juice or Chocolate anyone ?

Update: AA Cold Storage...decided to detail it a little further, first lined up building sides to be more even across the front, Next paved the lot and added a worker next to the forklift lining some pallets up. Added some debris on the side and for the smaller building on the left, added a sidewalk and some weeds along with some spaces on its side with some cars:

More Mow.....Found some nice static Hi Rail pieces tonight, perfect to go along with my working BNSF Hi Rail and Fairmont Speeder.....great views when driving in either one, I highly recommend trying them out




Below: The interior detail on the running Hi Rail


Picking up leftover RR ties ...............

Update: Coldwater Steel: Below are some new pics of the steel industry being detailed...added a wooden fence to the front side of the transport crane, an office on the left side with cars parked and barrels, coils, pipes added in....







Above: Workers are about to load a semi trailer with specialty parts for a rush order for there warehouse

Update: Coldwater Steel warehouse fabricators...this is the warehouse for Coldwater Steel where they do the final modifications and fabricating of huge engines from custom parts they receive from their main plant.


Here we see the crane that is used for loading and unloading engines...


Busy day at this location...crates of parts have to be shuffled from outside to inside for the engines that they will be receiving shortly...


Muscle moves the engines after the crane releases them...pallet jacks help too

New improved industry !!! If you have been following this thread you know I like "grain" related industries for the Brazemore Layout. The grain elevators I have need an industry to supply...below is the original "before" I building bashed version of the JR Grain Corp....it has an unloading shed as you can see below: (Note the door on the roof on the rightside, looks out of place....not for long)


I did not like the way it was isolated by itself, I thought this would be a good location for a larger industry....so I took the same JR Grain Corp and used the reversed side of it and attached it to the left side as you can see in the below shot.....



And a side by side shot of front and back of this facility so you can see what I did...just by turning the structure around and attaching it


Next on the right side I added the JR Clark City Distributors to make a warehouse so besides being able to get covered hopper grain deliveries for the shed I now have outgoing goods by box car for the warehouse such as cereals, breads, cakes etc...I just placed the building over what was previously there and then added one more of it using the height tool to raise it to make the second story......as seen below


Now Grain Corp is one large multi industry that can handle covered hoppers and boxcars..pretty easy to do with great results, all I need to do now is add some details to make it stand out.....

I don't think any hand pulled pallet jack would lift any engineblock, and would not be able to roll on gravel, or anything but smooth concrete

Aluminum, and they had their Wheaties, (didn't get a chance to black top the lot yet lol) https://www.uline.com/Product/Detai..._term=H-4710PJ&utm_campaign=Material+Handling as close to it as I could get...anyway some minor details added to the Grain Corp. area......
The always standard "No Trespassing" sign:


Some workers beginning their shift and a shot of some forklifts waiting for assignment....

beautiful... supernice layout... crazy pics... colourfull sphere ..... just dazzling ......
drooling musthave.....
so let me know when it is sharable ... or buyable ........

thank you for inspiration with your creative talent...
daveric

How do you go for frame rates with all the additional detail?

You might have seen and tried my latest version of "Trinity Bay". I found that procedural track really had an impact and I would not be game to add any more detail to that which is already there. I did try adding foliage (trees, grass, ... ) but that brought frames rates down a shade too much so I deleted them all.

Phil

philskene said:

How do you go for frame rates with all the additional detail?

You might have seen and tried my latest version of "Trinity Bay". I found that procedural track really had an impact and I would not be game to add any more detail to that which is already there. I did try adding foliage (trees, grass, ... ) but that brought frames rates down a shade too much so I deleted them all.

Phil

Click to expand...

Honestly, it seems to be holding a steady mid 30s fps throughout the layout. I do notice slow down when I fill the yard up with rolling stock but I also noticed that if you change the viewing angle you can either increase fps or decrease it and there seems to be no rhyme or reason why it happens. MY fps is usually above 30fps and consistent with most of my settings on high or maxed out. I am running an AMD FX-6300@3.50 mgh with 16gb ram and a GTX-1060 6GB gpu. My resolution is 1920x1080 on a 32" Samsung monitor. I really think the key is that all though you have a lot of detail, it is spread out over the layout instead of "bunched" together like a city layout would be. I have areas with not much detail other than some grass and trees which breaks things up. I do experience some stutter every once in a while and hope a SSD will solve that along with eventually upgrading my cpu and motherboard. Hope that helps......

Update:.....I also use the Cortex Game Booster by the Razer hardware makers but I just did a run around the layout's figure 8 loop, lowest fps was 18 and highest was 64.....the actual fps killer seems to be the trees vs. other scenery....I usually choose the middle of June for my setting when the foliage is at its highest (thickest) where I noticed my fps really drop by clusters of trees....no trees I max out at 64fps but when trees are bunched together the fps begin to really fall so it seems most of the processing power is locked into the tree settings and like I said mine are maxed out plus combine that with the June setting I can understand why the fps drops.....I will trying running the same config of 2 P42s and 4 horizon coaches in a winter month when trees are bare just to compare any differences.....(draw distance was at 4200)

Update Update:.....Ok. so I set the environment to middle of December for Winter and lowest fps was 21 and only for a second or so and the highest was 74fps, so got an extra 10fps on the high end for having bare trees on most of the route.....I will tweak the other settings

Updating another building....so below is an industry that I felt was lacking a little....it is on the left side of Northern Propane .....


First thing I did was add a duplicate of the building and put it over the smaller attached building and next I added 2 Jointed Rail Warehouse doors for receiving and outbound loads...


Next I wanted to fill in some empty space by expanding the main building with a smaller warehouse area with a loading dock as seen in the below shots...I used the Jointed Rails loading dock and the JR Metal fabrication shop to do this





Added some details such as weeds, debris, dumpster, another forklift and some pallets....