Highworth - keeping the route alive.

[saddletank]

Thank you for the kind comments. The Swindon Works buildings are all Mark Ollard's work. He cleverly took default textures from some of the Settle-Carlisle Factories so there were no extra ace files to load. One of my favourite places on the route is the Nitrate Works (the factory complex with the two colossal chimneys), there is a 'Supply Train In' activity there that takes you between some of the very tall buildings and its got this grimy filthy claustrophobic feeling to it that I was trying very hard to achieve and am very pleased came out as well as it did.

Some of the shunt activities around the Nitrate Works are a lot of fun too and a couple use Robin Howell's fine fleet of GPVs.

The route has probably only been worked on for half the time it took to be finished, the rest of the time it just languished because I either got too cross with it or too cross with TrainSimming generally.

[longbow]

The Highworth project was quite inspirational to me as it demonstrated that a trainsim route could deliver the level of authenticity, custom content and detailing that I had previously aspired to in a model railway layout but never had the time/space/money/skills to deliver.

[lightandlighting]

I just wanted to say a big thank you. The wait has been well worth it. A cut above any other route I have seen.
One comment is that I already have quite a lot of the stock under other folder names, as I have downloaded them from the Highworth site over a period or and from MSTS. It might be useful if you could include a "translation" list referencing your folder names against the MSTS download references when you do an update sometime. Mind I am not sure it will ever need an update!
Jonathan David

[saddletank]

Hi Gentlemen,
May I add my thanks for all the hard work which must have gone into this route. I've only run the demonstration activity, but WOW!, Swindon Works looks magnificent! I've only been there once in real life, but it gives the 'closed in' feeling as you are moving past. And the countryside is great; the quality of the scenery is fantastic, and, I may be wrong, but I didn't notice the distant trees 'popping up', as on other routes - they are just there! (Could be my eyes!!)

A great effort by all concerned, thanks again.

Regards,
Ged

Thank you. One of the things I like about the run along the line is that transition from deep gritty urban to wide open birdsong rural. When you start at Swindon with all the works and factory buildings around you and main line trains charging past its quite a surprise, but once you get past the second bridge on the branch and leave the nitrate works behind you, you are out in open countryside and later on the line meanders through such pretty places through parkland full of deer and alongside babbling brooks and farms to end at such a pretty station as Highworth with one of the finest views in Wiltshire, its a really refreshing change of visuals.

When I started the route I wasn't going to go into Swindon because it was so daunting (I'm not sure now what the heck I did intend) but I'm glad I did because there's corners of Swindon works like the land sales coal yard and the derelict Wilts & Berks canal and the stores sidings that I enjoy exploring with just a light engine. I invite people to write more activities for the route, particularly 'shunty' type ones at Swindon where there's tons of potential.

If anyone wants help or guidance with how different areas of the station were worked, just drop me a PM.

[saddletank]

I just wanted to say a big thank you. The wait has been well worth it. A cut above any other route I have seen.
One comment is that I already have quite a lot of the stock under other folder names, as I have downloaded them from the Highworth site over a period or and from MSTS. It might be useful if you could include a "translation" list referencing your folder names against the MSTS download references when you do an update sometime. Mind I am not sure it will ever need an update!
Jonathan David

Ian Mac is the man to ask about the stock library naming conventions but I'm pretty sure the stock that is in the 3 packs here is all prefixed 'HW_'. Yes they do duplicate some models but the activities threw up so many issues with both engine performance and vehicle weights and bounding box type stuff that I think in the end just about every single item was reworked. The vast array of stock is one of the reasons the route was so delayed. My view is that the recent 3-packs of stock are vastly superior to previous versions, whether in 3d model optimisations or physics so if you can remove older versions I'd recommend it.

I suppose I could go through the stock and list what each folder replaces of the old versions but it would be a massive job and tools like Route Riter I am sure will find you the duplicates quite quickly.

[lightandlighting]

Thanks for responding to fast. Point taken about improvements to the stock, and yes they are easy to identify with the HB prefix.. I intend to take your advice and remove older versions. I'll just have to be sure where I have used them. A bit of time needed to learn how to use Route Riter properly, I suppose.
And a big thanks again for the work you have put in on activities. i am used to writing activities for my private use, but have never got any to the standard where I would dare publish them, and even that has taken a lot of work, and often frustration dealing with quirky results such as AI trains suddenly deciding to stick at a signal even though there is no conflicting movement.
For me to have anything at all in the pre WW1 period is fantastic as this is the period I also model in 4mm, but much, much more slowly than Highworth has been developed!
Mind you, I am also looking forward to the rest of the activies, though not to soon please as I also have a life to fit in!!
Jonathan

[rufuskins]

Mind you, I am also looking forward to the rest of the activies, though not to soon please as I also have a life to fit in!!
Jonathan

What! You expect to fit life in around Train Simming? Believe me it's not possible!

I'm sorry to say that life will have to take second place!

Alec aka Rufuskins

[partyspiritz]

Fantastic there is so much I can relate to in the route. I left school and went into Swindon Railworks
Joined the Swindon & District Bus Company which is now Stagecoach Have driven the 7 service to highworth many times.


Very well done to you all



Regards



John


Ps Nice touch with the planes from vickers

[bigvern]

Fantastic there is so much I can relate to in the route. I left school and went into Swindon Railworks
Joined the Swindon & District Bus Company which is now Stagecoach Have driven the 7 service to highworth many times.
Very well done to you all

Regards

John


Ps Nice touch with the planes from vickers

I wonder if the guy who runs the Swindon Bus Site might consider putting a plug for the route on his page? I know it's trains not buses but of huge local/historical interest.

[saddletank]

Over the course of making the route I have had several enquiries from locals or ex-locals, many are working on family trees and other related family history and I have had some fascinating conversations with people. One lady had a letter in her family sent from Hannington and it transpired one of her ancestors was a railway navvy who worked on the line. She is American-Irish and lives in New York and was doing an internet search for 'Hannington' and found our site.

[ianmacmillan]

I though I shoud tell my story concerning Highworth.

I only got involved with Highworth when the route was almost complete.
Martin asked me to darken a texture to make a shadow under a bridge.

He then discovered I had bought TSM and asked if I could make domed coal loads to replace the flat ones in the wagons.
I went on to create other loads and these were my first models in TSM.
I might not have bothered to learn modelling if it had not been for Highworth.
Since the loads would be used in several different wagons, I came up with the idea of the Common.Loads folder rather than duplicate the same files in each wagon.

A short time later I got a copy of the route from Martin at a roadshow.
I took a trip from Highworth and was astonished at the sudden change from quiet rural branch to the vast yards at Swindon.
Unfortunately these yards were empty. Putting even a few wagons in killed the frame rates.
This led to me making low poly wagons and coaches.
I always think that these low poly vehicles, despite being the most basic available, are my greatest contribution the MSTS. They bring to life the small country goods yards as you pass thru in an activity.

Then came the great dissaster when one of the most prolific model makers withdrew his permission to include his work on UKTS CDs.

The comunity rallied and set to making replacements.
It was felt the replacements had to be better than the originals and this had the effect of pushing up standards in general with some people with no experience saying "I'll have a go anyway" and becoming regular contributes.

Gradually the CDs re-appeared - but not all.
One of the routes I realy liked was Bala. When David Ward started the produce locos and coaches for this route I began to replace the dated wagons with new build.
We realised that the route could be made available again and set to retesting the activities with the new stock.
I learned a lot about activities from this despite a lot of frustration when they didn't work.

When the author Gordon Mckenzie came back to MSTS the route was completed and the CD is still popular today.

Driving the same route over and over again can be boring especially when you find a problem two hours in and have to restart - often several times.
I vowed never again.
Then Pete posted for people to revive Highworth and like a fool I volunteered.

I had already replaced a lot of the wagon stock for my own use but this made to rest of it look dated.
The biggest challenge was the private owners wagons and these were all replaced. Forunately I had photos of them all and enjoyed the challenge - especially trying to fit in all the lettering on some of the Welsh wagons.
I did not touch the GWR stuff. They were good enough to start with and, as they were the work of the original Highworth team, I regarded them as an integral part of the route.
I only made minor tweeks to the physics. Part of the problem with Bala was replacing the locos with ones with accurate physics. They could not get up the hills that the earlier models romped up with their Scotsman .eng files.

I had made a Midland cattle wagon with outside framing but this made the Midland vans look flat so I had to replace them, These then made the LSWR vans look flat so they also had to be replaced.
When I started to test the activities I discovered that many of the new wagons were only used as static and had to be replaced with low poly versions to keep up frame rates.
Still the wagons are included in the stockpacks so someone may use them in an activity.

I am glad I was involved in the release of Highworth.
It set new standards when it was almost completed in 2006 and still does today.
It pushed up the quality of MSTS modelling. Even those who had never heard it it will be using techniques and ideas originally pioneered on Highworth.

It still sets a standard today and we all need to strive to match it and perhaps better it.
It pushes the limits of MSTS but hopefully Open Rails will allow us to push the limits even further.

I just need to get on with the remaining 40 activities.

[saddletank]

Thank you Ian. In many ways that's a very touching post. I had forgotten those days long ago... 2003? 2004? When I asked you to add heaped coal loads. I think in those days people were working on Ian Morgan's basic wagon build tutorial (which in itself should be given some kind of award for all-time value to the MSTS community) and we were moving on and pushing boundaries without even realising it. It is like the several 00 gauge model railway layouts I've built. You start the scenery in one place, then 2 years later when you finish the first bit looks rubbish because your techniques have improved in the intervening time.

While I knew the low-poly wagon rakes came about because Swindon was being a pain I was unaware the Common_Load folder idea had stemmed from your work on the rolling stock for the route. I have this feeling the Invisiwag idea of yours came from this too.

Martin Heywood's wagons that are piles of dirt used in the contractors activities pre-date 3DTrainStuff's 'Winter of 1952 over Donner Pass' add-on. We did it first.

I did have this idea of having invisiwags with a very high mass and bar couplings parked at the end of each siding. That way you could loose shunt wagons down a siding (carefully) and they'd bump into the buffer stops. I still think that technique would work and routes like Highworth where a pick-up goods drops wagons at several passing stations and you are short of time and need to kick off the wagon and go would be a bonus.

Something for the 1923-1947 activities maybe?

[ianmacmillan]

I was waiting until someone posted that they can't keep time on the mixed train activities to explain that the real timings depended on loose shunting.

I'll upload the 1000T wagon if folk want to give it a try.

[lightandlighting]

I'm glad to see Ian Macmillan writing here as it gives me a chance to add my thanks to him for all the wagons he has produced. Bitish routes would be pretty empty without his stock.
One possible usefuyl comment, though I am sure it has been done before and it should really be in another thread.
The only stock i have produced is a few South wales anthracite PO wagons. These have the advantage that they are almost all black with plain white lettering but lots of it. So i scanned photos from books, useed Gimp to straighten them up and get the proportions right and then dropped in the wagon side on an existing ACE file for the right wagon type. They are purely for my use as there are definitely copyright issues, but it is a way of solving the problem of accurate lettering in this particular case. Mind you it would be difficult to use for wagons with shaded lettering. It could also be used for wagons of companies such as the Rhymney Railway where the livery is white lettering on grey (but there are no suitable prototypes to clone and few photographs). I did try with one brown wagon which has black ironwork, colouring the ironwork by hand, and it's not too bad from a distance. I have a screengrab of three wagons done this way but no experience of putting photos on the forum. If anyone is very inbterested I am willing to work out how.
If Ian is looking for a new challenge can i suggest wagons for the Rhymney? There is a new book of drawings with some photos from the WRRC. Certainly no-one else will have done them. mind you, then we will need a suitable route!
Jonathan David

[ianmacmillan]

I use PSP selections when I paint a wagon.

You can try it with this.

RCH 7plank Fixed End Wagon Paintkit [3373669 bytes] - RCH_7p_Fixed_End_Paintkit.zip File ID: 12858 Date: 18 Aug 2005 - 483 Downloads

You paint, letter and weather the wagon using a guide layer then add the Highlights and shadows to bring out the detail.
This ensures the highlights and shadows do not dissapear under the lettering and weathering.

Every time I make a new PO wagon I backup the selections. I have almost every varieties of PO wagon so it only takes about an hour to paint a new one.