The Afan Valley line

dangavel

Well-known member
This isn't Trainz related but since i am buying a PC and may decide to also get another sim to make more use of the beast , I'd be interested to know if anyone has this route and does anyone know if this line is available commercially ( or as freeware) ? , I used to have grandparents who lived in one of the villages on the line and thus, its of great importance to me to get a drive on it.
Cymmer to Blaenrhondda by train in 1950

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N2diZTvoOg
 
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Best place to ask about that route is uktrainTrainsim seems to be quite a lot of posts about it, none recent that I can find though.

Interesting find as I spent the first few years of my life not far away, with the railway alongside, blame that on starting my interest at a very early age.

Would be a good Trainz Project though.
 
Best place to ask about that route is uktrainTrainsim seems to be quite a lot of posts about it, none recent that I can find though.

Interesting find as I spent the first few years of my life not far away, with the railway alongside, blame that on starting my interest at a very early age.

Would be a good Trainz Project though.

Having a father and grandfather who both worked for the Great Western meant its always had a special place for me, I grew up in the area of the Afan valley and have many memories of the final days of Welsh steam, including cycling from Port Talbot to Barry to view the rusting engines in the scrapyard in the early 60s.
It would indeed be a lovely line to model and its not too big a project in the grand scheme of things either, it would be nice to do a UK route, however I'm very busy with other stuff for the next couple of years at least , I might get in touch with the guy who put it on youtube and see what he proposes to do with it. its not on the list of the train sims commercial routes :-(
 
There was someone making the route for Railworks (including the Glyncorrwg branch) but it seemed to drop off the radar.

When we lived down in South Wales a few years ago, we walked some of the old line after parking at the Afan Valley Country Park - it is a lovely part of the world but it is quite staggering when you walk past wooded hillsides and the crystal clean river in the gorge below that the whole area was once a hive of heavy industry and coal mining.

It's actually a route I tried to start myself in Trainz but on each occasion found rather a mismatch between the DEM data and the old OS mapping. The other issue is to what extent you follow the route as there was in fact a whole network of lines surrounding it. In addition to the main line and Glyncorrwg branch you had the short branch from Cymmer to Abergwynfi, the line from Cymmer towards Maesteg (through Cymmer Tunnel), the residual South Wales Mineral Railway which ran on the other side of the valley at least until the Gyfylchi Tunnel was abandoned which then fed into a whole further network of mineral lines. Unless you were to restrict the area represented in the route it could turn into a huge job of work trying to represent all the period industry at Treherbert and Port Talbot. One option might to be a "re-imagining" as a preserved railway, perhaps running from Maesteg to Glyncorrwg and Cwmavon to Treherbert, which would still be a substantial amount of work but perhaps more manageable in today's post industrial setting.

Incidentally in the real world there are plans to try and re-open the famous Rhondda Tunnel (buried at both ends) http://www.rhonddatunnelsociety.co.uk/ as a cycle way similar to the Two Tunnels project at Bath, but I'm not sure how much of a viable prospect the project is, given the photographs circulating from the "Morlocks" who managed to get inside via the old drainage system, do not show a structure in very sound condition! http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/tunnels/gallery/rhondda.html
 
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It's actually a route I tried to start myself in Trainz but on each occasion found rather a mismatch between the DEM data and the old OS mapping.

I've had similar problems with attempts to do the East Kent Light Railway, and discovered the issue due to both colliery spoil tips being levelled out over a wider area and Lidar innacuracies over man-mad lakes such as the Stonar. In the end I had to do those areas manually.
 
In the case of the Afan Valley I couldn't reconcile the west end of the Rhondda Tunnel with Blaengwynfi station and the river confluence, all in such a small area. It's possible the old OS maps aren't 100% accurate and of course the satellite DEM data is reading and averaging the dense forests that now surround the area. That said, I'm still working with the old OS DEM data obtained from UKTS, I might see if there is more accurate up to date data available for the area.
 
In the case of the Afan Valley I couldn't reconcile the west end of the Rhondda Tunnel with Blaengwynfi station and the river confluence, all in such a small area. It's possible the old OS maps aren't 100% accurate and of course the satellite DEM data is reading and averaging the dense forests that now surround the area. That said, I'm still working with the old OS DEM data obtained from UKTS, I might see if there is more accurate up to date data available for the area.

If you can ever get the dem working that would be fantastic, it is a very nice route, the hills were pretty much bare when we used to ride up to see my grandparents , the forestry came a bit later as well as the reclaimed pits and now it is all green again . According to legend , either my grandfather/or my uncle walked through that tunnel one night, its possible , although i would not like to have met an overnight freight. I do have a dvd documentary of the valley and port talbot if anyone is interested for further info .
 
A couple of attempts to get the area up and running in Transdem have proved a bit frustrating.

The site for LIDAR UK DEM appears to be unresponsive so I had to fall back on the UKTS DEM.

Sabre Maps are now blocking some of their overlays from being accessed by Transdem and while I was able to get the 1:25000 maps overlaid, the detail is a bit blurred and indistinct in Trainz Surveyor. So I had a go with Open Street Map data but this lacks detail and is off to some extent - river up the side of the valley etc. None of the other mapping data that can be accessed from Transdem is anywhere near accurate enough to pick up the course of the old line(s) and attempt to follow them.

Back to the drawing board...
 
A couple of attempts to get the area up and running in Transdem have proved a bit frustrating.

The site for LIDAR UK DEM appears to be unresponsive so I had to fall back on the UKTS DEM.

Sabre Maps are now blocking some of their overlays from being accessed by Transdem and while I was able to get the 1:25000 maps overlaid, the detail is a bit blurred and indistinct in Trainz Surveyor. So I had a go with Open Street Map data but this lacks detail and is off to some extent - river up the side of the valley etc. None of the other mapping data that can be accessed from Transdem is anywhere near accurate enough to pick up the course of the old line(s) and attempt to follow them.

Back to the drawing board...

Just had a look on google earth, i can see the problems, tress are covering a lot of the pathway that was the course of the old line and the route to the old tunnel at Blaengwynfi has all been built over. If you contacted the guy who did the route on youtube, he might be able to help with source material .... he has three videos of the route online , unfinished as of 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcXCZCuG7BU there has to be detailed maps of the route somewhere , possibly local museums ? lots of photos here, https://www.flickr.com/groups/1568431@N22/
but only a few of the old railway- bu there are lots of the line as it is now, a lot fo ones of the bridges, which would be invaluable in reconstructing the line , a nice one shows before and after shots of Abergwnfi station , now covered with trees and shrubs :-(
 
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these bods may be able to help as they are hoping to reopen the tunnel. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/full-steam-ahead-group-hoping-8381309
For 47 years it has lain dormant but now ambitious plans are being drawn up to reopen Wales’ longest tunnel as a tourist attraction. Opened in 1890, the 3,443 yards (3,148m) Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway Tunnel connected the coalfields of the Rhondda with Swansea Bay.
It was closed in 1968 as part of the Beeching cutbacks that decimated the railway network in the 1960s and led to the closure of thousands of train stations.
Both ends of the tunnel - at Blaencwm, in the Rhondda and Blaengwynfi in the Afan Valley - were filled in around 1979.
The Rhondda Tunnel Society group has now formed with the long term ambition of re-opening the tunnel, the seventh longest in the UK.
To find out more, contact Stephen Mackey on 01443 777200 or see the Rhondda Tunnel Society on Facebook.
 
I actually think this is one case where cutting and pasting maps together in Paint Shop Pro and manually georeferencing might prove better than using the Transdem tile function which as noted is giving poor resolution.

As it happens, I have the OPC (?) track plan book of the route purchased from the Ian Allan shop in Cardiff (now closed) years ago when I thought about doing the line in MSTS.

Anyhow it's one on a list of several projects I plan to take a look at over the coming winter months.
 
A couple of attempts to get the area up and running in Transdem have proved a bit frustrating.

The site for LIDAR UK DEM appears to be unresponsive so I had to fall back on the UKTS DEM.

Sabre Maps are now blocking some of their overlays from being accessed by Transdem and while I was able to get the 1:25000 maps overlaid, the detail is a bit blurred and indistinct in Trainz Surveyor. So I had a go with Open Street Map data but this lacks detail and is off to some extent - river up the side of the valley etc. None of the other mapping data that can be accessed from Transdem is anywhere near accurate enough to pick up the course of the old line(s) and attempt to follow them.

Back to the drawing board...
The 1950s 25K OS map (while still linked to Sabre, it's actually the NLS map) should work as ground textures when applied to the 5m baseboard grid. And then we have the 6in and even the 25in maps. Those needs UTM tiles, of course. Hi-res LIDAR for Wales here: http://lle.gov.wales/GridProducts#data=LidarCompositeDataset
 
Yes the 25k map still works, it is the first map in the Sabre set which generates the warning about unauthorised linking.

I did try an extraction using the Viewfinder 60m DEM and my jigsaw map - the results were a little better. Not perfect but probably workable. I will have a closer look tomorrow, though with a couple of other projects also running, this one will have to take its turn.
 
I did try an extraction using the Viewfinder 60m DEM and my jigsaw map - the results were a little better. Not perfect but probably workable.

Why are you making this so complicated? With the right data you get all the cuttings and embankments nicely shaped, and definitely no "rivers up the side of a valley" (unless the river turns out to be a canal).

From the 2.6.3 announcement in 2018 (LIDAR DEM link in previous post):
Then we go to Wales. Again there is some 2m LIDAR, a bit hard to find on the Lle website. Files are ESRI ASCII grid, but coverage is limited again. It will often need complementation with some other DEM, typically O/S Terrain 50 as for this example in Porthmadog, with the historic 6inch map on top.

 
I like complicated... :)

Will give it a go with the LIDAR data, see what the outcome is (might have to upgrade my Transdem version for the data though).
 
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