British Goods Wagons on the DLS.

Hello all,

I'm going through my collection of vintage UK equipment and doing some organization. Can someone please give me the breakdown on the different versions of the wagons John Whelan and other members of TCCW (Trainz Carriage and Wagon Works) produced for different versions of Trainz that are available on the DLS and what of those are best suited for use in TRS19? Thanks.

Well I can tell you that my own pre-grouping era goods wagons are fine in TRS19 even though they are built in TS2012.

You are aware though that the goods wagons made by John Whelan, Bob Sanders and the rest of the TCCW crew number in the hundreds so what you are asking is a monumental task. Some old TS2004 goods wagons are perfectly fine in TRS19 and others aren't. In general goods wagons made for or updated to TS2012 will be fine. If they aren't then delete them and make a note not to download them again.

Alright. I'm currently looking at the wagons used by the "Big Four" companies. I'm renaming some of the wagons after download so that they follow a common naming convention (ex John Whelan has three Southern 12 ton Dual vent vans for TC3 that were renamed so they would appear together in order on the list.)

I have to agree that some sensible renaming would be a good idea since they are definitely all over the place at the moment.

KotangaGirl said:

I have to agree that some sensible renaming would be a good idea since they are definitely all over the place at the moment.

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Yep, definitely. Mostly with the plank wagons, but some of the vans too, I see different versions that are labeled with the suffix "with JAG" or "detailed." The JAG versions seem to have the less detailed chassis sets. Otherwise they're identical to the detailed versions.

shebashetan7 said:

Yep, definitely. Mostly with the plank wagons, but some of the vans too, I see different versions that are labeled with the suffix "with JAG" or "detailed." The JAG versions seem to have the less detailed chassis sets. Otherwise they're identical to the detailed versions.

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It depends what you're after. JAG is just the scripting used for coupling and lights. It's much more robust than bluestar etc which came before it. ACS followed and JAG uses ACS as it's base. It also does a few other things if you look at the guards vans you'll see the guard move to different places as the train travels.

Basically the tops are much the same, same textures etc but the undercarriages differ. There has always been a trade off between performance and realism.

Jack Barber created a number of UK wagons that were quite high poly but he tempered that by using the same undercarriage and just putting a different top on it. Repetition in Trainz is cheap.

Jack created a number of undercarriages for me of three different lengths. It is possible to change the axle boxes, brakes, and buffers by changing the config.txt file. So if it says early detailed in the config.txt file then it uses Jack's undercarriage. These are not meant for a laptop or low powered machine.

Edward Heaps created a wooden high detailed underframe for me, these are labelled early detailed wood frame. Again you can change the axle boxes etc. I seem to recall he also created a different undercarriage. These are available in different lengths.

Then you get to the 17_5 which uses a very simple low poly undercarriage and repeats it. That way Middleton for laptops can run on a laptop. The tops are the same as the high detailed models except they all are 17.5 feet long so if you don't look too closely at the under carriage then these have the lowest machine impact.

The wagons often use the same texture layout so if there is one in one variation that you'd like to see in another you can often just clone it and copy over the texture file.

Reskins are just what people thought to create at the time. I haven't kept track of them but there are quite a few. If you'd like to try your hand there are blank versions of the wagons and vans for that matter floating around to make it fairly easy to reskin.

Think about what time period you're modelling, that will decide which underframe you want to use. TCWW isn't terribly structured so people just create what they're interested in. Look at the library for the underframe that should give you an idea of which axle boxes etc are available.

With a high end machine I'd go detailed or early detailed. With a laptop go 17_5 variations.

Have fun.

Cheerio John

'JAG' is a automatic coupling (and other asset) scripting system that was developed by a member of TCCW to replace the old 'Bluestar' script system. 'Detailed' means a detailed chassis either by Jack Barber or Ed Heaps. In general van and wagon bodies will have little difference between the vanilla, 'JAG' or 'detailed' versions. However some 'detailed' vans and wagons are based around textures made from photographs.

Edit: Oops cross posted with John.

I should mention that the detailed underframes have a lower impact if they are repeated. However mix two or three types and use different lengths and it will have a much greater machine impact.

Cheerio John

johnwhelan said:

Edward Heaps created a wooden high detailed underframe for me, these are labelled early detailed wood frame. Again you can change the axle boxes etc. I seem to recall he also created a different undercarriage. These are available in different lengths.

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The underframe originated for a series of relatively high detail early wagons I did (cattle wagon, bolsters, 4 plank, dropside etc.). The other underframe system I created was for NPCC vehicles (horse box, carriage truck etc.). My wagons/underframes are generally aimed at a slightly earlier period than some of the other available wagons.

If anyone thinks there's any really obvious gaps in the available goods wagons for the early part of the 20th century I've been thinking about making some more...

So these are the 17_5, JAG and detailed versions of the SR 5 plank wagon 10017

shebashetan7 said:

So these are the 17_5, JAG and detailed versions of the SR 5 plank wagon 10017

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Basically the same top, the detailed under frames are for the rivet counters who may like to vary the axle boxes and brakes to the particular time period. The 17_5 version actually uses JAG but the ones marked JAG will vary in length from 15 foot through to 21 feet long, the 17_5 are all 17.5 feet long. Remember the 17_5 ones will have been gone through with a fine tooth comb to eliminate any polys I could for performance reasons. The ones pre 2012 are basically reskins of other content creator's work. Then you get a couple of GMAX based models, after that comes the Blender based ones with normal mapping.

Scripting has always been a problem with Trainz especially different versions having different capabilities. I use third party scripts because of this. JAG was developed to avoid the problems that many scripts had.

I'm not an historian so my wagons and vans may not be absolutely accurate but a number of people have been kind enough to take photos and send them to me so the textures are fairly accurate. As the detailed under frames became available it was a fairly simple job to chop the top off an existing wagon and add it to the under frame.

Cheerio John

Well here's what I achieve with the different choices of SR goods wagons. Kinda wish the post-2012 detailed/jag versions had ARN though, but can't have everything.

shebashetan7 said:

Well here's what I achieve with the different choices of SR goods wagons. Kinda wish the post-2012 detailed/jag versions had ARN though, but can't have everything.

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Remember my background is hardware so most of my models are fairly efficient and ARN is a bit resource heavy. What you can do is clone the wagon then use something like paint.net to change the number. Remember also that in the UK at the time of the big four probably sixty percent of the wagons and vans would be private owner and of the rest quite often a GWR, or other company van or wagon would be seen on SR as goods travelled across the network.

Think of my wagons as a starting point.

Cheerio John

Well looks like I'm gonna go in and find the private owner wagons made by you guys and try to rename them under a common prefix so they'll be able to found in one place. Currently I have a lot of wagons, reskins by Bob Sanders that I'm renaming under the prefix "P.O." for Private Owner so they won't be scattered across the list.

That's what I do as well with private owner wagons, - I give them a PO prefix if they haven't got one already.