Atomic Systems

Ok
A couple of screenshots to show the second Ffestiniog coach that I have built.
This is #102 which is a Guard/1stClass Observation coach so we can now have a reasonably realistic trainset with a guard!!

The internal view is set so that you can look behind you and watch the journey from a different perspective!

Click the image to zoom in


Click the image to zoom in


Click the image to zoom in


Click the image to zoom in


Click the image to zoom in


Cheers!

Hi everyone,

It's about time for an update from digital North Wales, especially as the rolling stock stable is expanding - with many thanks to Steve for the hard work going on in that direction, lovely to see an obs car for the route!

The railway itself is now complete as far north as Waunfawr station, and a lot of the basic distant scenery has been put in place beyond for the last few miles to Caernarfon. This has been quite routine simple stuff with nothing particular to show for it (hence the lack of recent updates) and as the area has no clear cut-off for the distant view I've had to lay down a lot of far-off walls and suchlike - one of my pet hates is zooming out from a train only to see the Great Green Billiard Table of the Beyond stretching off into the distance. I've probably already modelled far more than anyone will ever look at! But it does make the world look more real so I think it is a worthwhile effort.

Geographically there are only about three miles between Waunfawr and Caernarfon but rather than linking the two towns via the shortest route the railway actually follows two sides of a triangle to get there via Dinas. This comes about from the historic origins of the WHR which was cobbled together from several other preceding route projects in the area, and in fact it was partly due to this indirect route (and also the inconvenient need to change onto the standard gauge at Dinas Junction) which meant that the original Welsh Highland Railway was never really a commercial success in the 1930's. From a modellers point of view it just means a whole load of extra world that I need to replicate!

Now that the distant world has taken some sort of shape, I can see where the railway needs to fit in and it should be quite straightforward to move on with tracklaying. Once that is done and graded there are only a few really big challenges left from an asset placement perspective, the biggest of which will be to somehow get Caernarfon and the castle to look right. The rest will be a simple but time-consuming matter of filling in the fields and suchlike, putting speed signs and whistle boards in, sound domes, night lighting, detailing nearby settlements, and putting about seven thousand sheep into various fields. Not much, right?!

Then once all that is done I'll have to face up to the software bits and pieces to swap the ground texture sets etc etc and figure out why I can't get any other season than summer to show... but that is currently waiting until the scenic stuff is more or less complete.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of random shots taken at Waunfawr...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =848640898

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =848641150


Thanks again for reading, more updates on progress as and when!

ThePhantomPhish

Beautiful and evocative. Keep on chugging, excellent work so far! I check the UKTS forum regularly just for updates on this route, very glad to see the amount of hard work you've put into this project paying off.

This route i am looking forward to

Hearing that people are looking forward to the route keeps me motivated! Thanks!

Since my last update, an awful lot of work (or maybe a lot of awful work?!) has been going on. I was feeling a bit bored of building seemingly endless fields and farms in the distance, so I shifted my focus a little bit and did some track work and a bit of urban building. Nothing really photogenic has resulted yet, but the framework is in place for me to concentrate on some more detailed scenery from now on.

There is still much that needs to be done, but for now I'll just leave this here...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =859639854



ThePhantomPhish

Looking good

Looking soo good.
Can't wait.

Hi everyone,

It has been quiet regarding this project recently, but lots of work has being going on in various areas, it's just that not much is yet complete enough to show meaningful pictures of ... there are still a lot of gaps to fill and about six miles of close-up scenery still to complete. But some areas are taking shape nicely...

So as a little 'something for the weekend', by way of another teaser for the route, here's a slightly hastily set up and taken shot of another focal point on the Welsh Highland end of the route (with more work still to do before totally finished):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =880850623

I'm now looking at mere months or maybe even weeks before the asset placing is finished; then I'll need to do some work to swap track and ground texture sets to get ready to make the route available for release. It's taking time but it's getting there!!

Thanks to all readers as always for the continued interest - and if anyone can find front or rear view video footage of the stretch between Waunfawr and Dinas / Caernarfon I'd be glad to see it to make that bit more accurate; otherwise I'll just have to be fictional rather than having appropriate walls, fences, and the many foot crossings and so on!!

Work continues...


ThePhantomPhish

Dinas looks incredible Steve!!

appropriate walls, fences, and the many foot crossings and so on!

Not a complete answer, I know, but Google Earth will provide field boundary locations and hints of other features, giving a framework that can be filled in as more detailed views become available...

Kind regards,

John M

I absolutlely agree, the Google Earth overlay has been priceless, as has street view for the areas by or near the railway. Using the two together really helps get the character of the area to look and feel right.

The problem I have now is that between Waunfawr and Tryfan Junction there are no nearby roads, and the railway is surrounded by trees, so I'm going to have to make up the close scenery as I go along... there are some great youtube videos of the route which show superb details like whether the boundary is wall or fence, local vegetation types, and the styles of individual crossings - but none that I have found seem to feature this particular stretch of the line either!

It's tackling these little challenges which keep things interesting!


ThePhantomPhish

thephantomphish wrote:I absolutlely agree, the Google Earth overlay has been priceless, as has street view for the areas by or near the railway. Using the two together really helps get the character of the area to look and feel right.

The problem I have now is that between Waunfawr and Tryfan Junction there are no nearby roads, and the railway is surrounded by trees, so I'm going to have to make up the close scenery as I go along... there are some great youtube videos of the route which show superb details like whether the boundary is wall or fence, local vegetation types, and the styles of individual crossings - but none that I have found seem to feature this particular stretch of the line either!

It's tackling these little challenges which keep things interesting!


ThePhantomPhish

Have you seen this one?

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