Scarborough to Whitby

JohnKendrick · Post by **JohnKendrick** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 12:42 am

Thought it was time I shared an early screenshot of the route. This is the Flying Scotsman approaching Scarborough Station on the mainline from York (which it does for real several times a year!)

Finescale is being used for the trackwork. Not many objects have been added to the route yet, I'm completing the trackwork first (not far to go now).

<IMG width="640" height="480" SRC="http://album.atomic-systems.com/showPic ... 116/Flying Scotsman approaching Scarborough (MSTS).JPG">

I'll add a few more pics soon with some comparisons to the 'real thing'.

John

southcoasttrains · Post by **southcoasttrains** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 12:45 am

looks brilliant with the finescale. Can we see more?

mikesimpson · Post by **mikesimpson** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 3:26 am

That looks very nice John, that line from York to Scarborough went past the end of my garden at Crossgates when I lived just outside Scarborough, so I will be sure to let you know if you get the number of houses wrong

JohnKendrick · Post by **JohnKendrick** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 11:03 pm

I'll be careful then!!

John

Zackybong1 · Post by **Zackybong1** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 6:48 pm

Last summer me and the wife cycled along ther closed northernmost part of this line which is now a national cycle trail. Absolutely breath taking. I look forward to a comparison!

JohnKendrick · Post by **JohnKendrick** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 1:38 am

Yes, it's a superb route - if you were to cycle the whole lot it goes up and down quite a bit. Ravenscar has a 1 in 39 up to the summit on one side and a 1 in 41 on the other.

I popped into Robin Hood's Bay earlier (yesterday now!) to get a new video of the line - 'East Yorkshire Steam' which came out this year (seems like a mis title when its about North Yorkshire Steam!). I also found out that the chap selling the video was the author of several books about the line - a useful contact found. Afterwards had a little stroll on the track bed to the north, to check how close TStools had got my cuttings and embankments. They were spookily close!

If anyone's interested, the video is by CineRail, and it's #11 in their Archive Series. I also have an earlier video (not quite as good) 'Brake Van to Whitby' by Marsden Rail.

John

TOMMO79 · Post by **TOMMO79** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 5:08 pm

Zackybong1 wrote:Last summer me and the wife cycled along ther closed northernmost part of this line which is now a national cycle trail. Absolutely breath taking. I look forward to a comparison!

I wish i had my bike the day i walked Whitby to scarborough Had to take a day of school afterwards to recover.

Can't wait for the route to appear cos its quiet close to home. Will be ideal for extending too. I want to start work on the Teeside to Boulby line (Which continued to Whitby) but i'm not sure which period to model. If i did the fifties maybe the routes could be joined if i ever get that far. I wasn't planning anything to accurate though.

I know its early days but when you are finished are you extending the route or calling it a day?

JohnKendrick · Post by **JohnKendrick** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 6:04 pm

I intend to extend it, but even now think about changing some of the early bits I did, so I'll have to see if it gets extended or re-done. When I compare track layouts to seeing the real thing in videos, they are not always the same! I'll carry on with what I've done so far though, as all the time one is learning, you pick up tricks to do something that you couldn't do yesterday. I'm trying to make it as accurate as possible, but in the end it's the effect of looking right that matters.

Decision time will really come when I've finished this part, and what effect a new MSTS2 will have, if any (if it comes about).

All being well I'll do the Esk Valley, Grosmont to Malton (and back to Scarborough via Seamer), and the line north to Middlesborough. Probably a bit of each concurrently. On my first try I even cut the tiles down to Bridlington, so maybe go that way too! And not forgetting the Forge Valley Line! The trouble with routes here is, of course, they are so hilly that it can take ages just to draw the contours for terraforming. Oh for some sensibly priced DEMS.

The route will be much the same as the Trainz Ultimate Heartbeat route (its author seems to be able to layout a whole network in a matter of days!)

Presently I am laying the tracks by the Gasworks under Larpool Viaduct on the Esk Valley Line, and have had 4472 round to Whitby, so 'we're getting there'!

If you do a route that's joinable, then why not? (It will need to be fairly accurately mapped to join up though.)

John

TOMMO79 · Post by **TOMMO79** » Mon Dec 30, 2002 2:37 am

I have the same problem. Don't know if to buy the route editor book or see what they come up with on MSTS2. Might be worth the wait or it might be easier to start now. I'll do my best to make it accurate though but it may take a while cos i only have limited info on the Loftus to Whitby section and no 3D modeling software yet. I haven't used route editor yet but i'm sure any mistakes could be sorted out before the route is uploaded.

Best of luck with your work so far.

JohnKendrick · Post by **JohnKendrick** » Mon Dec 30, 2002 4:11 am

Thanks,

Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get something released. I held back until recently even mentioning it in case it all went pair shaped, and I only started it about September time. I'll post some more screen shots soon, but much of the route is just track on a standard texture - not very interesting yet.

I found the only way to make a start with the route was to get the Abacus book (download) and work through the examples - it is a great help unless you wade through the various tutorials you can download. The problem is that way is unstructured, you don't know what you need to know until you've read the guide. Then the other tutorials suddenly make sense! Anyone could get started, having gone through the book, and make a reasonable stab at producing a route under their own steam (no pun intended!).

I can't see that knowledge from it would be wasted with a new version, but who really knows. The routes themselves will still have objects, tracks etc. to be laid. The problem is with the present editor which can be unstable if you try and do too much all at once, and some things you do can cause it to freeze even though you are supposed to be able to do them (like put in telegraph poles). Hopefully a new one will improve on the stability of it.

If you can reasonably afford the book, then suggest you do. Abacus have a reduction for those buying the new version who already had the first, so hopefully will they will extend that to a third version from the current one.

I wish I could say the same thing about their TSModeler though. The program itself is reasonably good and stable (so long as you're not short of memory) but its documentation leaves much to be desired, and glosses over much of what you would like to know. It is still worth getting as you can use it for its intended purpose sucessfully, but if only the documentation was a quarter as good as the route building guide.

Regarding joining the routes, as far as I know it is not possible to merge the contents of two route tiles, but it should in theory be possible to join two routes by deleting one of the duplicates, and somehow rework the edges to hide the join (without getting too technical about it, as no doubt posts will be added to say what to do - in fact there are some already elsewhere in the forums). The two route sections would also need to have their landscaping tweaked to match, and a careful eye kept on track gradients, especially in this part of the world where level gradients are rare. (I've redone some sections several times to get the gradients reasonably correct and still match the landscape).

Good luck to you too for when you make a start, shall look forward to seeing it. Make sure you let us know when you do.

John