Jolly Good Fun ... Narrow Gauge rails in North Wales

[thephantomphish]

I did think about which assets needs replacing with a mind to asking on here but haven't looked into it for so long I couldn't remember - I've been concentrating on finishing off the scenery!

As I've had a few minutes spare this morning, I had a quick look at the route with RWTools and if I've checked it correctly, the assets that I'll need to look at (all from PhorumPeninsula) are:

belazdumptruck
camping_caravan
Garden_Shed
house_semi_02a
Petrol_Station_01
Skips_group
Skips_single
wall_retaining_02 (loft asset)
Digger01
Dumper_truck
Quarry_blocks01
Quarrywall_03
Rockwall_03
Shed_Brick02

Most of these (like the skips, house, and petrol station) will be easy to swap out for an alternative. I don't seem to have any suitable replacements for the diggers yet, but they are purely cosmetic and mostly distant so I haven't worried about that too much.

The rock assets are the trickiest as I need to see where they are and how they look before trying to find replacements. The one that I think I may struggle with is the Quarry_blocks01, because they have been used in a couple of places to represent stone rubble next to the line, especially alongside The Cob and around the Deviation, so a quite a distinct part of the scenery... and when I last looked, I couldn't find anything remotely similar to replace them with!

Whilst thinking about assets, there are still no custom-built assets called for by the route, although some nice ones do exist which may be incorporated if I can figure out how. Right now I'm trying to keep it limited to the DLC requirements as much as possible before enhancing it beyond those...

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on the above!


ThePhantomPhish

[rabidcirquefan]

Sorry I am unable to help in terms of asset switching, but very glad to see you're somewhat near the home stretch! I've been following your development of this route very closely.

Also looking forward to seeing what the "nice little loco in development" is! Since the double fairlie is already announced and the garratts aren't exactly little, I'm thinking Linda or Blanche.

My continued thanks for your hard work in bringing the F&WHR to our computers.

[thephantomphish]

Thanks again for more kind words of support, it makes all the hard work worthwhile!!

There hasn't been much photographic evidence of progress recently to show pictures of - the line from Waunfawr follows the river valley and is forested for a while, with many little level crossings which were very difficult to place accurately due to the tree canopy covering them from the satellite views. I think I've got that area done as well as I can, it seems to look and feel right when driving along it, but all you can see for a while is trees!

The line then passes through relatively open farmlands, which I have tried to recreate as well as possible, but there are not many noticeable landmarks along the way, so my attempts at screenshots looked just like a bunch of fields - so I suppose I have got that are right too! The gradients on that section are quite steep so it gives a challenging drive for the littler locos.

Further on, beyond Dinas, most of the distant stuff is now complete and Google Earth has 3D images for the final two miles - this is almost too much detail as I can see every little hut and shack and shed! I'm working through it and despite distractions of real life I am making good progress, so hope to have that dealt with in the near future. Then the asset swapping, track swapping, and texture swapping will become the focus.

Just to show that this is all still bona fide WIP, I've put some more shots up... (I hope the links work!)

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 31214987B/ - with Waunfawr in the distance

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 8A35FBAC9/ - the Ugly Bridge should be a bit more grey but it looks close enough for now

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... F5AA7EC4D/ - one of the few real landmarks, Tryfan Junction station (the station building needs tweaking to not look so fat)

and finally https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 15B1E5D3C/ - the agricultural lands can hide the fact that stretches of the line are at 1:60 and even 1:45 along here

I've used 3' gauge stock for these photos, and unless you look really closely at the wheels it actually fits the Welsh Highland really well!

And as for the mystery loco... I've seen evidence of it elsewhere on the internet but will still keep quiet-ish on here for now... It's not my project to let out of the bag but it is very very Ffestiniog, historically even more so than a Penrhyn Lady...

Thanks for reading, everyone, and as always - more news as and when!!


ThePhantomPhish

[bailey7802]

I think I know what it could be

[spontin]

Ok.
To end speculation, here's the second Ffestiniog loco. The single Fairlie - Taliesin !!!
I am happy with most of the externals now so happy to show progress
Along with three coaches, we now have a realistic coach set for the Route.


Click the image to zoom in

Leaving Harbour for Boston Lodge


Click the image to zoom in

Taking on Water at the Harbour Tower

Steve

[bailey7802]

Very nice

[xguerra]

Ok.
To end speculation, here's the second Ffestiniog loco. The single Fairlie - Taliesin !!!
I am happy with most of the externals now so happy to show progress
Along with three coaches, we now have a realistic coach set for the Route.


Click the image to zoom in

Leaving Harbour for Boston Lodge


Click the image to zoom in

Taking on Water at the Harbour Tower

Steve

Looking even more fantastic than when I last saw it!

My father sends compliments.

[bailey7802]

Hope we will get two whistles for certain engines with two Whistles.

[xguerra]

Hope we will get two whistles for certain engines with two Whistles.

David Lloyd George definitely has two working whistles.

Taliesin when I first got to have a go had one working whistle, but I'm sure Steve has the second one taken care of.

[thephantomphish]

I can certainly agree that the Tal is a lovely addition to the fleet!

I've not had time to do much testing of the route or the loco recently for the simple reason that I have been going hammer and tongs click-click-click at finishing off the final bits of the WHR section. I'm on the very brink of finishing 'the build' before moving onto testing (which will include the Tal, I am sure!) and then swapping out the PP stuff for other assets. Nearly there but still a few things to do!!

Seeing bespoke Ffestiniog stock is a fantastic result for all the work that has gone into recreating their home turf. With a bit of luck and/or patience I'll have the full route finished soon, to be able to do final tweaks and investigate releasing it...

Not too long now, hopefully (route-wise, at least) !!


ThePhantomPhish

[spontin]

Hope we will get two whistles for certain engines with two Whistles.

David Lloyd George definitely has two working whistles.

Taliesin when I first got to have a go had one working whistle, but I'm sure Steve has the second one taken care of.

Yep - Taliesin has two very different whistles

[sprulish]

Been following this for some time. Looks absolutely brilliant. Well done for all your hard work and certainly looking forward to this.
Many thanks
David

[rabidcirquefan]

I'm on the very brink of finishing 'the build' before moving onto testing and then swapping out the PP stuff for other assets.

You might not have to get so invested in replacing Phorum Peninsula assets after all: https://train-simulator.com/capital-heritage/

[thephantomphish]

Hi All,

I had the same thought too about the long-awaited re-release of the Phorum Peninsula route! At first glance it would solve a lot of problems immediately, but after further thought...

It is quite possible that the files for the 'new' PP route will have changed from the originals, so would still need some swapping through RWTools to point the current FfR route requirements to the right bits of file structure once the new PP route is available. If the few essential scenic assets needed, rolling stock, and ground textures are essentially the same then this would be a great solution indeed.
As that route is not out yet to investigate, the present plan is still to swap track for Corris and the textures for *any appropriate other*, although I will still be eagerly looking out for this new route to see which is ultimately the best way to proceed.

Meanwhile... I am very happy to say:

The asset placement stage of the route is now complete.

Apart from the usual tweaking, tidying, sunsequent enhancing, and testing/checking, all 40-odd miles of railway and all close, middle, and distant scenery. Done.

I can't believe I can now write that, but it is true! I have to have been surprised by the quality of some of what I have somehow managed to produce. Some screenshots will follow when I get a chance to go photographing again... Meanwhile, here is a link to a shot of The End Of The Northern Line: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =918609042

Since that stage was reached, I have only just started to dig into the current build with RWtools, so haven't swapped any track or texture sets yet but have had some success reducing the original PP assets requirement list shown a few posts above, leaving only the square blocks scenery asset that would be noticeably missing without that version of the PP route once the tracks, track rules, and ground texture sets to be swapped. This is a new area of learning for me but seems to be going ok so far...

I'll keep you all updated on progress with how that goes!


ThePhantomPhish

[thephantomphish]

Hi folks,

Time for another update from Digital Gwynedd...

I have used the last few weeks to look at swapping assets and have now removed the entire Isle of Wight dependency from the route, and everything from the old Phorum Peninsula route apart from the square quarry blocks which I haven't yet found a suitable alternative for. The route looks lovely and I am keen to get it out into the wider world, especially as visually it is finished and could potentially be released straight away! But there are a few fiddly bits to attend to first.

Because this was only set up for a bit of fun as a personal project I now have to retro-fit the software side of things to properly eradicate the PP requirements. This is forcing me to learn more about the software side of the project than I had ever really intended to, so is a slow process in which I have been going round in circles. So any help or advice on how to correct the following issues would be appreciated!

Experimenting with a RWTools clone of the route, I did successfully manage to swap the track for the Corris track, which looks very smart, but according to RWTools all the PP narrow gauge tracks .bin files still seem to be required and I cannot swap them or uninstall them. Where should I be looking to remove this - routeproperties.xml? tracks.bin?
I also annoyingly cannot remove the PP Tram Track rule (originally used for the standard gauge lines). Despite swapping it out for various others it still shows as a requirement when I check the route with RWTools. I'm obviously missing something out of these processes - but any ideas what?!

Regarding ground texture sets - it looks like the Falmouth branch uses the same sets as PP according to the list in the world editor, although I have noticed that some of the files in the folder structure have slightly different names. I have searched various fora and can't seem to find any clue as to what to try to edit and how to do it to swap this stuff out - although a lot of people do say that it is possible but a bit of a pain and sometimes doesn't look right once it has worked. I can't even seem to start to get it swapped! Again, any advice appreciated to at least get me moving with this (after all, it's a fairly important PP requirement to need to remove).

And finally - I need to do something to change things so that when from the main build menu you choose 'create new scenario' you can then choose between FfR&WHR locations rather than the PP locations. I know this is done by adding .csv markers with Lat and Long etc, but I suspect this needs to be done within some sort of new route file which will then need to be referenced rather than the old PP file. Once again, I'm trying to learn to make fire in a dark room and progress is slow - any advice or pointers towards useful tutorials? I tried to add some markers to the cloned test route and they didn't show up at all.

I realise that these issues are self inflicted but I really want to try to resolve them before saying that the route is finished, and at the moment I'm spending ages trying things which are just not working. The sooner I can get this done, the sooner this route will be ready to release! So anything that the population of UKTS with your massive amounts of wisdom and experience can offer will help me hugely and I will be very grateful!! (Pre-release early copies for anyone whose advice solves any of the above issues quickly, perhaps?!)

Thanks again for reading, and really hoping for some either supportive or useful feedback


ThePhantomPhish

PS Sorry for straying into 'Route Building' territory in the 'General Discussion' section - please forgive me, it was a general discussion to start with!!