!! Note this page may occasionally contain franker comments than the rest of the site or mild expletives and youngsters should view with parental supervision !!

29th July 2010

Six weeks have gone by and still no new route - shock! horror!

I'm quietly working away on a couple of projects though the main issue at the moment is lack of time. The other thing I'm trying to do is lay out a proper "road map" (sorry if that sounds rather political) for the projects that I have in mind, which will hopefully avoid the inertia and distraction that has hampered my efforts in recent months.

At present my emerging interests are in tram/traction routes and Indian narrow gauge. So without saying any or all of the following will get built I am looking at the following projects...

1. East Troy Electric (8 mile traction line in Wisconsin).

2. Matheran Hill Railway (26km ng railway in India.

3. SF Muni - probably N-Judah, from its Beach terminus to the tunnel portal.

4. Satpura Ghats, part of the Indian Satpura Lines ng network, probably the section from Nainpur Junction to (just short of) Jabalpur.

5. Well the above represents @ nine months work so I think that's enough to be going on with!

At this stage Railworks is still looking like the preferred medium though I continue to be pissed off at what I see as the overbearing payware dependance and influence on free discussion particularly at UKTS. Unfortunately a recent experimentation with MSTS did not encourage me to start back in the old sim and Trainz still seems just a bit too model like. So far as the trams are concerned I have been encouraged to see there is a Zurich tram add-on at least sometime in the future which, while probably payware, will provide some modern style trams hopefully just in time for Item 3 above (unless anyone builds some freeware trams first).

15th June 2010

Just a quick update that the route building foundry is (sort of) rolling again with a couple of projects in the early stages. However given the track record so far this year, much too early to go into detail!

24th May 2010

After another week on the German route, it just wasn't working out with all those trees. Started a couple of side projects but to be honest at the moment I just can't find that much enthusiasm. My creative "mojo" seems to have evaporated. Maybe it's the fine weather, maybe it's the 101 odd jobs to do around the house but the prospect of sitting in front of the laptop building a route I've lost interest in has little appeal at the moment. So I've decided to kick all my ongoing projects into touch and put the route building in hiatus at least until the end of the summer. By then I'll hopefully have found which route I really want to spend two or three months working on and which sim I want to build it in. I honestly think I'm not the only one feeling that the time spent building a route in any of the current sims is out of proportion to the end result and we need a sim that offers a better and quicker way of dealing with that.

Enjoy the sunshine, I will be!

18th May 2010 (Calmed Down)

Well first off, following my comments about the 9F on here and UKTS I did receive a reply from the developer which dealt with most of the issues. In particular it seems the braking issues and unsolicited throttle opening and wheelslip are a bug within Railworks itself, which one would have thought RS.com would be dealing with fairly urgently. Anyhow things are all peace and light again though I still reserve my views regarding pricing of the payware and that there is too much vs the freeware. So far as the latter is concerned a few days off work have seen good progress on the RW Brocken route which I've now settled into without fear of distraction. Scenery is in place on around 18 of the 38 - 40km route length, luckily due to the heliptical climb to Mt Brocken itself and later where the HSB "Main" line runs parallel to the mountain line for a few km things get a bit quicker. The route is looking good, the only drawback is that an alpine style route really flags the shortcomings of Railworks when it comes to placing multiple trees. With no forest objects as we had in MSTS, several tiles already contain over 4000 objects and that's not particularly densely packed. I fear some optimisation may be needed to get the count down @3000 per tile, no one really knows what the maximum count is for a tile - unofficial recommendations are around 2500 but that isn't going to give you much of a forest.

16th May 2010 (Sunday Rant)

Kind of an interesting few days. Some ongoing research into the TS2010 Surveyor performance issues has now pointed the finger firmly at Speedtrees. Work on a route was going fine until I planted some of these and - presto - the single FPS slideshow returned. Unfortunately there's no easy way to identify the Speedtree varieties in the Surveyor menu and once planted and impossible to move in Surveyor you can't delete them. Ho hum. Posted about this on the Auran Trainz forum but the response tends to be from those who aren't having problems (lucky them) who pooh pooh what all the fuss is about. NeverWhatever aka Auran are unsympathetic as they see Speedtrees as the way forward and they're not going to concede they might be wrong. However while postulating that users wanted to see better trees in the sim, they sidestep the fact that track still draws in TS2010 as it did in Trainz 1.0, i.e. no frogs or checkrails on points and no superelevation either. Nice trees, shame about the rest of it (even Zusi 2 can do proper points).

However all is not rosy back in the Railworks camp either. I'm starting to get quite pissed off (sorry had to let that out!!) at the micro-payware fast buck culture that seems increasingly rampant. Currently engaged in two discussions on the UKTS forums - the first regarding a guy who released a beta version of a Scottish route which has now been pulled because Just Trains have offered to publish an upgraded version. Fair dos, contrary to popular belief I'm not actually anti-payware having collaborated on a couple of projects myself in MSTS days. However it appears this will on publication be nothing more than the route plus default rolling stock, including a Class 166 DMU reskinned to look like a Class 170. Well sorry chaps, but in MSTS for payware we got a proper team together including loco and rolling stock modellers so when a route pack went out it was with some custom built trains as well and we earned our cut of the royalties. The other DLC I'm not entirely happy about is the Class 9F Evening Star pack from IHH. Now this was actually against my better judgement at the price pitches in at £13.99 which is at the higher end of the DLC market to be sure. Having bought the loco I can say the artwork is nice enough but there are more than a few gremlins which to me shout out that the loco should not have been released in that state. For example there's no separate loco brake, just the train brake. Starting a scenario the train brakes are fully released so bad luck if you're on a gradient. Thrashing up one of the hills on my Sulitjelma route, the safety valves were blowing off due to far too much steam being produced but at the same time hardly any exhaust visible from the chimney. YeGods, under those conditions the loco should be outputting its own mini weather system. Finally (and the doozy) on arriving at the destination and leaving the brake in apply, the throttle opened itself up resulting in massive wheelslip (at least some exhaust finally came out the chimney) and I couldn't close the regulator/throttle. Fortunately the scenario ended not long after but £13.99...come on. As I said, get rich quick and with Steam/DLC there's no selling an unsatisfactory add-on secondhand or getting a refund. Suffice to say once burned twice shy and I won't be putting that sort of money out again for a Railworks loco pack.

Anyhow back to the original theme of this diary, where does leave the current status of route building? Well after the TS2010 experience I launched back into Railworks with a very freelance route based on Brocken Mountain in Germany. However I have a feeling my current jacked off view of Railworks payware and my vocal articulation of that on UKTS may lead to me parting company with both, if the mods try and censure me again. So that leaves going back into TS2009 which is up and running quite nicely on the laptop, if I can find a suitable prototype to build. Or I might just load up GTA (IV) Episodes from Liberty City which cost £3.00 more than the 9F addon, has a complete and detailed gameworld with graphics, sound and characterisations which leave Railworks and its overpriced underwhelming DLC in the Stone age.

3rd May 2010

Not too much to report this week as work shift patterns haven't been conducive to getting much worked done. Managed a bit of scenery placement on the RW Kuranda route is about all. Now for all my ranting and raving, I have taken the decision to reinstall TS2010 on the development laptop. It's like a bad road accident or that You Tube video of the guy getting electrocuted on top of the Indian train, you know you shouldn't look but can't help yourself. I've picked out what will hopefully be a shortish (30km route) and optimised everything to hell. I'm determined to crack it and get a route produced in TS2010..!

26th April 2010

Well the Kuranda project has certainly gathered pace and I've already got most of the track laid. It's going to be slightly longer than 33km as the main train yards and loco depot at Cairns are about 3km to the south of the Central Station, but in terms of scenery placement not too onerous as the terrain is fairly flat and largely industrial or wasteland. There's a few scenery challenges coming up with the route, the first being Cairns Central itself which is a curious station built under a shopping centre with a car park on the roof. Nothing in the default items comes remotely close and I'm not sure if my 3D creative abilities are quite up to that challenge. The second toughie is waterfalls or indeed any sort of rapid white water, which is encountered frequently on the hill section. The default water in RW is fine when it comes to representing meandering rivers in English flat-lands but a bit naff when something more spectacular is called for. By now you would have thought train sims would have incorporated some means of dynamically representing water, so when you define its course a steep dropoff or riverbed will automatically generate a waterfall or white water rapids. Thinking cap on for that one, too.

As regards laying out the rest of the infrastructure, well the route is wide open to operation by stock from all sources including the UK stuff, so some form of raised platform will be necessary at all passenger stations, albeit set slightly lower than normal so as not to be at odds with any US, European or other stock that might get run on the route.

In researching the Tableland Route, I have uncovered a fascinating railway world that I'm sure many people aren't aware exists. Of particular interest is the Savannahlander train, which runs once a week from Cairns to Forsayth and travels through the Kuranda section at the start of its journey. The train takes two days each way on the @ 250 mile journey including overnight stops for the passengers and crew. You can read more about it at their official site - I can recommend the blog for a fascinating insight into what must be one of the most remote railway lines anywhere in the world. I particularly enjoyed pictures where the train runs along a dried up riverbed and the somewhat ropey track and casual operation is worlds removed from our regimented railway operation in the UK. I guess when the infrastructure is only used once or twice a wek in each direction, it's a miracle the railway survives at all! Also branching off from the Tableland Main Line (ha!) at Mareeba is an equally fascinating sideline to Atherton then through the outback to the little town of Ravenshoe. Most of the line south of Atherton lies disused but an isolated steam heritage operation survives at the Ravenshoe end. For me, this is one of the joys of train simming - that it can transport you way beyond any preconceptions or existing interests in an utterly unexpected direction.

There's certainly tremendous scope to expand on my initial project and I hope my enthusiasm for doing so comes through in the text above. I may just have finally found a route to do that hits my personal spot and will firmly banish any thoughts or distractions of doing anything else.

23rd April 2010

Mentioned last time that I'd started a small RW route based around the north of Glasgow. Track work on this is substantially complete, with the exception of Eastfield Depot which probably needs another road or two. In the meantime, however, I have suffered a couple of usual distractions...

The first was the ongoing test of whether I really had fixed the frame rate issues in TS2010. So a slight token diversion from Railworks back into the world of Transdem and Trainz. Set up a route (doesn't really matter where) and after laying about 5km of track started to backfill with terrain paint and scenery. Regret to report, while copying and pasting terrain textures plus planting a few trees (admittedly these were the new Speedtree type), Surveyor was once again crawling around as a slideshow with FPS in single figures. Certainly not good enough for route building and even if I kicked out the Speedtrees, I'm reluctant to commit time to a project that might just run into fresh problems a few virtual km further on. So with Auran still going ahead with scaling down support for earlier versions, that seems to be me pretty much finished with Trainz for the foreseeable future. Just wish I hadn't splashed out £17.00 for a First Class ticket on the Download Station, as it's unlikely to be seeing much use. Seems anyway the company now running Auran see more future in creating train racing games for the Nintendo Wii, not quite the "Future of Trainz" as envisaged by Greg Lane and John Banks back in the early days. 'nuff said.

Which leads us back into...Railworks. As I said above, the Scottish route is under way but I still have a fascination for creating exotic (ooerr missus) projects based on overseas prototypes. Shuffling round the north of Glasgow is, well okay but kinda mundane and workaday experience not exactly escapism. Now it so happens that while looking at possible prototypes, my eye caught on the Cairns to Kuranda line in Northern Queensland, Australia. This is a very scenic route which climbs from the coastal plains through increasingly spectacular hills and gorges. The actual line (known as the Tableland Route) carries on beyond Kuranda but the stretch between Cairns and Kuranda at 33km, suddenly makes it a very doable candidate for a train sim project. A quick check of the forums seems to indicate no one else is doing it and, if they are, well I'm still planning my own version anyway! Interest turned to considerable enthusiasm on discovering, after a bit of digging round, that the infrastructure section of the Queensland Railway web site includes publically available track plans and...wait for it... the Grail - the GRADIENT PROFILE!! So to cut a long story short, Glasgow is on the back burner (though most definitely not scrapped) while I attend to the Kuranda route. There's going to be a few compromises, standard gauge in lieu of 3' 6" track and some Anglicisation of the scenery, but a Class 37 and Mark Ones (or a F7 and chair cars) will look and sound good climbing up to Kuranda. The initial terrain extraction is sound, albeit only 90m DEM available as hgt data for this part of the world. Good Google Earth coverage too making marker creation a cinch (I still haven't really got the hang of using RW Decal). There's also good potential for extending the line further, in due course.

So got a good feeling about this one and I'm seriously hoping it doesn't join the regrettably long list of projects that ended up on the route builder's equivalent of the cutting room floor. At least by putting TS2010 out of its misery (I've now uninstalled it from the development laptop) I know my efforts need to focus on what can be done with Railworks, for the forseeable future...

16th April 2010

Progress on current projects has been temporarily halted while I process an updated version of my Tanigumi Tramway for Railworks. This is following my comments about the signalling not working correctly, I received a very kind offer from Adam Lucas at RS.com to take a look at the route and see if he could identify what was wrong. I'm very pleased to say that the changes made now allow AI traffic to flow very well (seems there was a bit of "user error" on my part) and I'm currently reworking the scenarios to add a bit of AI before uploading the updated version at UKTS.

Choosing which sim to build a route in is a bit like our current General Election here in the UK. All of the parties have something good to offer but that is tempered by the more idiotic ideas they have. So if Trainz = New Labour (new coat, same old same old underneath!), I guess Railworks = the Tories while the LibDems represent the minor programmes like OpenBVE, Loksim, Zusi and Rail3D - tempting but ultimately too complex or obscure to be considered mainstream. (As an aside, I wonder if any of our budding Prime Ministerial candidates play the odd train sim...?!).

With RSAdam having resolved the signalling issues in Tanigumi and having a good reference now as to how signals should be placed, I feel I owe it to RS.com to devote a bit of time to doing another Railworks route by way of a thank you to the team for taking time out to help a struggling user. What other game developer/publisher would offer that kind of assistance? That said, please don't all bombard RS.com with requests to signal your routes, take a look at what they've done in my Tanigumi and use that as a guide. So I'm setting aside the North Devon route I started in TS2010 for a little while to start another RW project. I'm not going to print exact details yet (I'm still finalising the ideas in my head) but a little clue is that I have been spending a lot of time recently absorbed in the SimSig Central Scotland simulation and look forward to taking you to the land of Annie with a nice sweep back through the grove of bells to the fierybouncy bits. With a steep bit and Her Majesty's road in the centre. So if any budding 3D modellers out there fancy making a Class 303 or any other UK AC EMU for that matter, now is the time...

8th April 2010

Been kind of an interesting week or two. First thing I discovered my laptop had picked up some rather nasty adware (when you start seeing ads for "intimate" lubricant or male organ enlargement popping up at the bottom of Google Maps, you know something unwanted got in). A Windows System Restore seemed to create even more problems, so rather than try and cure it I took the more extreme step of reformating this from scratch. This would also put everything back to new and put right two and a bit years of fragmented files etc. over the place. In the process I did sacrifice the various half baked and half started route projects, but in terms of achieving a better focus I figured that wasn't a bad step.

With the system all back in place and all the little odd jobs that appear after a reformat, I reinstalled TS2010. Initially very disappointed to see the install on what was essentialy a refreshed system had done nothing to improve frame rates. Following a bit of a rant on the Auran forum, I was encouraged to update my video drivers. Now previously when I tried this, Nvidia referred laptop users back to the manufacturor (in this case Dell) and the only drivers Dell offered were old 175.xxx version from 2008. On a hunch however I trawled the Nvidia site and - presto - they are now offering their own updated 197.xx series driver for Geforce 8400 fitted laptops. Duly installed and the frame rates on TS2010 have leapt from @6 FPS to @60 FPS. So my advice to anyone sceptical when told that updating drivers will fix their problem, is do it and see what happens.

Anyhow with a clean slate and fully functional TS2010 up and running, a whole new world of route building possibilities has opened up. Broadly speaking I want to stay with the same paradigm of building shorter, easier to finish in a month or two, projects than the straggling long routes of yore. With the sun finally coming out and the first proper glimpse of spring, thoughts have centred on a UK coastal route somewhere in the South West. The old Barnstaple to Ilfracombe line at 14 miles fits the bill nicely, very scenic, double track (mostly) and with some very challenging gradients. This will also serve as a full test that TS2010 really is working properly before possibly committing to any larger projects.

28th March 2010

Well a little bit of progress this week. I started another RW route based on the Northern Heights extension in London but that has suffered from the ongoing distraction of overcoming the problems in TS2010. Well I'm pleased to report after a bit of trial and error I've got the basics of a 15 mile route up and running and all seems to be okay. It's based on the scenic Flam branch in Norway, I say based because the DEM is not 100% accurate and I've already got a bridge where a tunnel is shown on the map. I tried to build this route once before but came unstuck, so here's to the second attempt.

Out of interest the other day, I jotted down a list of all the routes I've thought about making or even started but laid aside. On a rough calculation I reckoned they would take over three years to produce (mostly for Trainz, I hasten to add). Staggering thought. Of the list, the ones most likely to get built - either in TRS or RW - are the shorter projects. I haven't got the stomach or stamina to spend months working on one mega-route which then bombs on release. Without going on about it, at least with Tanigumi not being very popular, I only spent about a month on it. In fact, I think there is a trend towards shorter routes anyway in train sims - look at RW's charity project, Phorum Peninsula. The remit was to build a route in a short space of time and the result is essentially an extended diorama but with a great deal of interest packed into a small space. Sorry to those waiting for the WCML from London to Glasgow or the Trans-Siberian Railway, but it ain't going to happen.

19th March 2010

It's been a fairly fallow week and a half. Lot's of ideas floating round the old noggin but nothing really concrete emerging. I'm still moderately disappointed at the poor popularity of my Tanigumi tramway for RW, just over 100 downloads in two weeks and I can't see anyone has even looked at creating or loading a few additional scenarios for it. It seems there is a peculiar parochialism building up around Railworks with most of the support coming from the UK and to a lesser extent Germany and the USA. Particularly where the UK is concerned, release something a bit offbeat and watch it sink like a brick. On the other hand, try and do a UK prototype and no doubt the complaints about this or that not being accurate will come pouring in. I don't want to sound negative but that's the impression and "vibe" I'm getting. There was a time in the train simming hobby when each and every route released was eagerly pounced on by people wanting something new; I don't know - maybe even the users have become jaded too.

In addition to musings about the state of RW, I've had a little plod around in TS2010. I still prefer building in Surveyor (combined with the power of Transdem) but remain unhappy over the support issue as detailed last time. Auran just put out their SP2 patch for TS2010 and there are all sorts of adverse reports popping up on the forums about the ill effects it is causing. And I still don't know after adjusting some settings if TS2010 will now work as it should when applying terrain textures (i.e. not grind to a slideshow).

So at the moment I'm looking for a 15 - 25 mile prototype (country unimportant) that will be of interest to myself and potential end users, that has useable DEM data and detailed imagery available in Google Earth or decent mapping to overlay in Transdem for Trainz.

10th March 2010

All change again...

Well the first thing is that further to my report on the main page about Auran's plan to scupper support for TRS2006 or earlier versions, you can pretty much count me out of any further route building in Trainz for the forseeable future. Not that TS2010 isn't a good platform to build on, I just can't use it in Surveyor mode on my development laptop. So that, as they say, is that - as well as being a protest on behalf of their end users. They've also lost a FCT (first class ticket) renewal out of me which was due in the next month or so. Pah, big deal you say but multiply that by several 1000 customers feeling the same way and the pain may go a bit deeper.

I'm still feeling a bit burned out after the Tanigumi route (as of today up to a staggering 80 downloads on UKTS) and I think that has spilled over into indecision about what to do next. Suffice to say I've got a couple of potential Railworks projects on the pot boiler though the Japanese ones have dropped back to the rear echelons. A crowd pleaser might have been Weymouth up to Maiden Newton and down the Bridport branch (including the famous Quay line) but reading the forums on UKTS seems that has already been bagged by someone else. So the favourite at the moment could be a little bit of Canada, specifically the former BC Rail line out of Lillooet and up the Fraser gorge, for about 40 miles to Kelly Lake. Initial marker and DEM viability assessement currently under way and I should know in a day or two if it's a go-no go for launch.

7th March 2010

Pleased to say the Tanigumi route is now live on UKTS and has attracted a reasonable number of downloads.

Now I know I said yesterday my next project was the Joetsu line but, as tends to happen with Railworks, this hit several major snags today.

The first is that my attempt to create a "loft" to represent a concrete tunnel interior met with miserable failure. Even consulting the Railworks Wiki (which deals mostly with 3DS Max, nice if you can get it) and various threads on UKTS there just isn't enough coherent step by step information how to start from scratch and produce a lofted tunnel lining. Looks like that's one for the superior beings of train simming only. Second up, I found the 90m DEM a tad too averaged for the very hilly terrain that the Joetsu line runs through. It's one thing making a few alterations to the terrain by hand, it's another thing finding what you've done looks all wrong. The final check, on reaching the section with the long tunnel, is that it's virtually impossible to lay these when markers are on top of the terrain 500m or more above and Railworks will only allow you to lay 500m maximum length of track at one time.

So work on the Joetsu line has been shelved, at least for the time being. I'm now looking at alternative less onerous projects, at least one possibility being the route that featured in the Tomy SL de Ikou steam sim, from Otaru to Niseko on Hokkaido. Will report back in a few days whether or not that's a go...

6th March 2010

Well the Tanigumi route has been uploaded to the UKTS file library and just waiting approval before available to publically download.

Now despite 'er indoors noticing I'd finished the route and nodding rather pointedly at various paint pots, wallpaper and associated decorating accessories I've been looking at what to do for the next project. I've decided to see how the Tanigumi route does download wise before embarking on another Japanese tram route - so Minomachi is on ice for now. I mentioned a few days ago about the Joetsu line, this continues to be a favourite of mine so I decided to check out the data availability. Google Earth offered a mixture of high and low resolution data so not so good. However, just as I was about to give up I managed to find a plug in to a Japanese web map server which overlaid the GE imagery with arguably more useful raster topographic mapping data and I was able to get the primary rail markers done this afternoon. So on to the DEM, the only stuff available is the SRTM 90m data and after setting up the route in Railworks (sorry TRS guys, you'll have to wait a while for the next Trainz route now) went through the course of the line with the DEM. Good news 97% of the data is sound though there are a few holes which will need to be patched if visible from the track. No biggie, should be possible with a few road sections and use of the terrain tools. However can I appeal again to RS.com, much of the DEM data is flawed in this way and Railworks needs some kind of built in facility to heal holey DEM. None of the proprietary external DEM handling programmes which can fix the holes is capable of saving back to SRTM format, RW doesn't recognise any other format and the one programme I found that purports to turn BIL data back to SRTM creates vast terrain spikes and towers - worse than the original holes.

What this route also has is tunnels - lots of them. Now the Japanese tunnels have a particularly distinct orangey/brown concrete texture, nothing like any of the default tunnel sections in Railworks. So the next challenge is using various 3D modelling programmes to see if I can create my own tunnel "loft" to go over the buried sections. I'm also going to need to build some cave stations, but that's for another time.

5th March 2010

Good news is that my Tanigumi Tram route is now in the final stages of testing and I'm planning to release it (via UKTS) at some point over the weekend.

Bad news is that RW's lack of decent AI/signalling/pathing where you have opposing movements using the same section of track seems to have struck again. Despite, to the best of my knowledge, having signalled the route correctly and gone back to double check, I cannot set up a scenario that uses any AI trams as it constantly generates cannot find path type error messages. So I'm afraid the included scenarios are going to be a bit lonely like, you and the solitary tram. The performance (or lack of) RW AI where single track routes are concerned has been an ongoing issue even back to the days of RS. Put simply, AI trains do not like to interact with the player train.

All of which creates a bit of a dilemna as the next tram route I had planned - Minomachi - if anything has even more in the way of single track/crossing loop running. What is the point in building in Railworks if you can't recreate the busy hustle and bustle of a real urban transit route. Could build it in Trainz but I'm not sure how adaptable TRS is to tram style routes (plus of course the issue of having to self change points along the route). Still it is tempting to shun Railworks for anything other than double track lines where the AI can be confined to its own track seperate from the player and ne'er the twain shall meet. It's certainly annoying having spent the best part of a month working on the route and, though I say so myself being quite please at how it looks, to be frustrated at the last stage of the creative process.

FFS, RS.com, sort it out... You can begin to understand why in some quarters Railworks is now being referred to as RailFail!

28th February 2010

Been a little while since I posted in here, that's largely because I've been the victim of another distraction. However this one's good - trams. The release of several tram models for Railworks stirred me into thinking about creating a short route to go with them. That, combined with my ongoing exploration of OpenBVE, led me to try and recreate at least a resemblance of the Japanese Tanigumi line in Railworks. Fan's of BVE may recall Tanigumi was one of several routes built by the talented Mr Gaku and is a scenic trolley run north of Gifu in Central Japan. Only 12km in length but starting through the suburbs then climbs through mountainous and hilly terrain. It's probably all going to look a bit incongruous with double deck Blackpool trams and various RW default scenery masquerading as a very anglicised Japan, but hey if it gives a good tram run - that's the main thing. Good news is that construction is well on, most of the 3D placement has been carried out just the signalling and testing etc. to do so hoping for a mid-March release.

Once bitten by the tram bug, it's hard to shake it off. I've already pencilled in a possible next project which is the Minomachi tram route - also in Gifu. Those with a broader view of train simming may recall this was the tram route which featured in Taito's Densha de Go Nagoya collection. If you haven't got/can't play the DDG version, there's a BVE version (also very good) which works well in OpenBVE. Sadly the Nagoya Railroad closed the real tramway in 2005 which means both the DDG and BVE versions now represent a little bit of history.

Looking even further afield, I suspect my route building efforts may remain in Japan for some time to come. In addition to the trams, there are several Densha de Go routes which it would be nice to take a crack at in RW or Trainz. There's also a couple of crackers I've found in BVE, at the moment my focus being on the Joetsu Border line. This is an incredibly scenic mountain line, with the Up and Down lines running on separate alignments, featuring a heady mix of long tunnels, spirals and the trademark Japanese "cave" stations. More to come on all of that.

12th February 2010

The issue of not being able to build my Taieri route in TS2010 started to rankle a bit during the week...aka I'm a sore loser. Even though it meant starting over, I did a fresh Transdem extraction of the terrain and mapping into TRS2006. I managed to get track etc. laid out during the week so effectively back to where I was with the original version. TRS2006 may not have quite the amount of built in content but at least I can apply terrain texturing without slowing the laptop to a crawl. Also I've noticed routes I built in TRS2006 open and scroll okay in TS2010 so there's definitely something performance sapping how TS2010 applies textures. To twist the famous quote from "Jaws", if I ever want to route build in TS2010, "We're going to need a bigger laptop..."

Having got things sorted out in TRS2006 it seems that's where I'm planning to stay for the time being. In fact I've been trying to set out a campaign plan, or road map if you like, of projects for the coming year. Taieri Gorge is the #1 priority. Following that I definitely want to return to Scotland and do a bit more with my West Highland route. Biggest blow of all at the moment, is that last year I had fairly well advanced a US route in TRS2006 based on the Adirondack Line in NY State. Unfortunately I "lost" the route when I uninstalled TRS2006 in favour of the distraction(Railworks) but was confident I had backed up the cdp file as it stood if I wanted to return to it. However the file is nowhere to be found on the laptop or any backup media. Gutted. Ten weeks work down the drain for a moments impatience. Fellow route builders, if you take any lesson from this (as I have done) is never, ever delete or uninstall anything unless you're 110% you are absolutely finished with it. So at some stage I will have to put part of the Adirondack back on the agenda, even if it's just Lake Placid to Tupper Lake. The lost version had track and a fair proportion of scenery all the way up to Moran Jn. Muppet.

4th February 2010

They say a week is a long time in politics, the same can be said of train sim route building. I wrote last week of my mild disillusionment with Railworks and that I had sought solace in TS2010. However these things have a habit of biting you back. The TS2010 Taieri project started so well with the terrain extraction. I got most of the track laid over the last week and, like an artist with his blank canvas, poised to start terrain painting and 3D placement. However after placing textures and trees on one linear kilometre, Surveyor has slowed to a crawl. I had this before in TS2010 when starting a route, at the time I blamed that on using the 5m terrain grid feature but this route was laid down to the 10m standard. My suspicions are pointing at the Speedtrees of which I placed about 12 in total so far, or maybe it's just my laptop (which I hasten to add has no problems with TRS2006, MSTS or Railworks). Further experimentation needed there but to all practical purposes as this is the second instance, I don't think TS2010 is going to be suitable for route production on my current hardware.

Anyhow the upshot of that is I've gone back into Railworks (which now seems to be behaving) and dusted off the northern ECML project. Well it's only been dormant for a week so only a little dust. I think it's a question of plodding on with that for the time being and placing any other distractions firmly to one side. Taieri Gorge will come at some point, even if I have to downgrade to TRS2006 or build it in Railworks... Next week is going to be a bit hitty, missy for route building due to a particular point on my roster at work which combines two 12 hour weekend day shifts with afternoon shifts Monday and Tuesday, which is not conducive to getting much done. However I'll hopefully squeeze another km or two of placement on the ECML, to keep things ticking over.

28th January 2010

On distractions, frustrations and other sundry matters...

One of the biggest problems we face as route builders is embarking on a project, with the sudden realisation it is going to occupy most of your spare time for several months. Strange to relate this is not an issue I encountered that much with MSTS but with Railworks in particular it has become a major challenge. Despite best attempts to remain focused, it is all too easy to get distracted and decide something else might offer a better use of that precious spare time. Well folks, I regret to say I have sucuumbed again. The first distraction has been the release of the freeware Chinese locomotives and coaches for Railworks. These are so much better than even the best of the payware UK and US items produced thus far, that thoughts turned to perhaps creating a route on which to run them. Unfortunately Railworks, has an Achilles heel with its reliance on Google Earth to produce markers in that much of China is only covered at very low resolution, nowhere near good enough to plan a decent route. Distraction #2... Loaded up TS2010 the other night to find that not only are the Chinese diesel locos also in there as default items, there's also a bit more rolling stock - all to standards which surpass much of the other content. However same problem again. There's no decent topographic maps of China to download into Transdem and provide an overlay for a Chinese route. A brief struggle with imagery pasted together from Google Maps (also not very detailed) proved fruitless.

So, back to the ECML in Railworks. First check yesterday on loading Railworks is it seems Steam wants me to re-enter my password every time I start the wretched thing, even though I opt to remember it. At least half the time it tells me that password is invalid, even though I typed it correctly. I hate Steam. Next thing on going to load the fledgling route in Railworks, the programme locked up and eventually exited with the dreaded "Railworksproc" error. Why? I haven't done anything to the programme. However it does appear Steam interferes with files on your PC. The other day I also had to reinstall the IOW route (the RS version off DVD) as it had disappeared from my Railworks installation. There has been confirmation that Steam will delete files it thinks shouldn't be on your PC, after it inadvertently downloaded the Tornado payware to some users which was promptly snatched back by Steam a few days later. A post regarding this on UKTS, to gauge whether anyone else had the problem and to discuss the implications was promptly snuffled by the mods over there which has also increased my generally pissed off state with RW (and UKTS) again - though don't worry the teddy is staying in the pram at present as regards my file library uploads. Finally, on going to start RW today, after once again going through the Steam log in process and getting the route to load this time, the whole thing was running like a slideshow.

At the moment then, Railworks is back on the virtual shelf. Thoughts have now turned to creating a route in TS2010 on which the Chinese stuff will look good. I've picked out a prototype on which to base a project, it's the Taieri Gorge line on the South Island of New Zealand. (Wikipedia entry here). One plus of a NZ project is that the amazing Transdem programme will connect to a web mapping service for the country. Consequently it is a doddle to overlay the course of the line on the DEM and have a fully extracted and mapped out set of tiles in TS2010 in just over an hour. Eat that, Railworks... Now I'm not saying at some point I won't return and finish the ECML in Railworks but frankly it was already beginning to bore me. Not that many people seem to be downloading the routes anyway (the count for Heartbeat Moor and the updated Sulitjelma are not good), in fact I wouldn't be surprised if less than 1000 people in the UK are actively using Railworks. Trainz has a huge target audience and while things can get a bit flakey with the DLS and uploading files etc., for starters there's vastly more scenery items and textures available in the default items alone. I love Trainz!!

25th January 2010

Well I can report that things are off to a pretty good start. The first part of the process was marker creation in Google Earth. The railway itself has been traced from Alnmouth to Berwick along with the coastline and roads in the Beal to Tweedmouth area. In creating such a potentially long route as this I was very conscious of past experience, it is comparatively easy to lay lengthy track mileage quite quickly but that can create a huge mental block when it comes to the process of decoration, which takes much longer. So I've decided on this project not to race ahead and lay 50 miles of track in one go, but to work in ten mile or so sections. That is to say, lay 10 miles of track then break off to do the terrain painting and primary 3D placement. Rinse and repeat. That way, I don't get faced with a whole lot of 3D placement to do and there's always something else to look at when I get fed up of decorating yet another section. Signalling/speed limits and other interactives will of necessity go in right at the end. This is an old MSTS habit, probably not strictly necessary in Railworks but always in the back of my mind, this thing was programmed by the same outfit and there are similarities in other areas, so let's not take any chances.

Anyhow the first section is approx 9 miles from Beal to Berwick. Track laying took no time at all, though having driven the OpenBVE version a couple of times since I probably need to tweak the DGL at Berwick. The default DE viaduct in Railworks was an almost perfect match for the Royal Border bridge. I've started 3D placement working north from Beal, I normally work in 1km strips across the line, for non-urban areas generally speaking it's about 3 to 4 hours work to paint the terrain and plant the 3D objects. Terrain painting is one of the main chores in Railworks. As I've commented on the forums in the past the tools and techniques are quite different from the "pre-printed" tile patches we used in MSTS or the relatively easy swirl and mix of TRS. You can't copy and paste from one area to another either which makes it probably the most time consuming task. 3D placement is about the same as the other sims, slow in the country and painstakingly slow in towns. I do wish they would fix the snap to terrain function for lofted objects so they properly follow the lie of the land. Nothing more annoying than laying road sections and finding a piece pops up in the air rather than flush with the terrain. Trainz splines are better in that respect.

So progress to date is 4 x 1km strips with primary placement and the fifth underway. Wow, that's about 5% of the total... I reckon this 9 miles (or around 15km) will take at least another two weeks to work through with the 3D stuff plus I need to dive back in Google Earth and finish off the markers for roads etc. around Berwick. At some point I will need to think about 3D modelling. There's all the station signs to be made plus structures like Tweedmouth signalbox which can't really be represented generically. However that's in the future, for now the key is to get a solid base to build on and ensure I have enough time invested and confidence in the project to carry on.

More news soon then!