The Four Counties

[yeovilrig]

Hi I Just wanted to bring you up to speed on the latest news from my growing route The Four Counties. My route for those who do not know started life in the route building challenge 2 and was originally called Yeovil Back From The Past and heavily featured the Yeovil Triangle. The route is based as a semi real route in a 1980 - 2000 time frame, all the routes that was closed under Dr Beeching are still thriving with the current main lines, no downsizing if it was double then its still double track now!
The route now covers (completed) Castle Cary to Weymouth including the Quay, Yeovil Junction - Gillingham (Dorset), Maiden Newton - Bridport, Yeovil Junction - Yeovil Pen Mill - Yeovil Town Triangle and now the newly completed Yeovil Town to Taunton branch. I have also made a few amendments like installing the Yeovil Town to Salisbury direct Link and connecting the Weymouth Line with Yeovil Junction.
I am currently working on Taunton - Chard Central and the GWR main line to Castle Cary, once these two project are completed then I will release as The Four Counties Version 2. Version 3 will be Honiton - Yeovil Junction.

This has been a massive project for me and I do hope that you all like it and use it? Every time I say right that's it no more then I start the next bit! ultimately the route will be Westbury - Frome - Weymouth, Honiton - Yeovil Junction - Salisbury, Taunton - Westbury, Taunton - Yeovil Town and Weymouth to Wareham. so as you can see many more nights in front of the pc to go! besides the four counties needs to be four and not two as it at the moment!

Looking at Yeovil Pen Mill From the A30 road bridge.

Looking Towards Weymouth from the A30 bridge.

47801 at journeys end after working the sunday only Basingstoke to Yeovil Town NSE service.

view of Hendford Halt, main stop for Westlands Helicoptor factory.

Regional Railways Class 31 works the Bristol Temple Meads to Taunton service via Yeovil Town at Hendford Halt.

The same RR 31 pulls away from Montacute.

Awaiting the arrival of the class 33 on a Taunton to Westbury service via YT, in the background 50035 can be seen having a once over before it's next service

a one car 153 can be seen leaving the main line and joining the Chard branch

The new Salisbury spur at Yeovil Junction joining the Salisbury line with Yeovil Town.

[Silverstar46]

This is very welcome and exciting news, thank you. I have enjoyed many hours on the existing Four Counties route as although I live in Sussex I love rail trips annually to the West Country on an All Line Rail Rover and this route really reminds me of the Castle Cary, Yeovil and Weymouth area. Looking forward to the eventual extension in version 2.

[yeovilrig]

More random shots of the route;
Somerton Viaduct, still wip
]
This is where it all began, my favourite trainspotting location, Yeovil Junction Two bridges, summer Saturdays! Weymouth line at the bottom, Waterloo line furthest away with new new Salisbury to Town spur in the foreground.

Weymouth Summer Saturdays

A pair of cromptons power over the new Town to Salisbury spur

Exeter Riverside to Eastleigh engineers

[firstborn]

This looks pretty awesome...

but why do most of the pictures look squashed? - Did that happen while shrinking to fit them in the forum or do you have your game set in a weird field of view

The picture from the cab window looks like a photograph

[black8]

Awesome indeed, even with the 'squashed' pictures.
Good work yeovil!
Jos

[theorganist]

This is looking fantastic.

Peter

[yeovilrig]

by firstborn on Wed Nov 28, 2012 4:46 am

This looks pretty awesome...

but why do most of the pictures look squashed? - Did that happen while shrinking to fit them in the forum or do you have your game set in a weird field of view

I really don't know why the shots look squashed, i can assure you the routes field of vision is ok, i'm running 1920 x 1080 resolution and the images look nice but when i resize them to 800 x 600 they go like this!

I've got next week off so planning to complete as much as possible! Railworks time!

Chris

[alanch]

I really don't know why the shots look squashed, i can assure you the routes field of vision is ok, i'm running 1920 x 1080 resolution and the images look nice but when i resize them to 800 x 600 they go like this!

When you resize your images look for a setting that says 'retain aspect ratio' or something similar - 800 x 600 is not the same ratio as 1920 x 1080, hence the horizontal squashing. To maintain the ratio you will need to resize to 800 x 450.

[yeovilrig]

by alanch on Wed Nov 28, 2012 6:47 pm



yeovilrig wrote:I really don't know why the shots look squashed, i can assure you the routes field of vision is ok, i'm running 1920 x 1080 resolution and the images look nice but when i resize them to 800 x 600 they go like this!


When you resize your images look for a setting that says 'retain aspect ratio' or something similar - 800 x 600 is not the same ratio as 1920 x 1080, hence the horizontal squashing. To maintain the ratio you will need to resize to 800 x 450.

cheers for that.

[yeovilrig]

More Playing;
50048 Dauntless gets a drinks and some loving at Martock Fueling point

Langport West, Vep awaits the road

Taunton Blue!

47085 awaits the road with the Taunton to Westbury via Yeovil Town.

[chrisreb]

Oh wow this is really exciting. Love this route both for the BR Blue era and also somewhere to run my Light Pacifics.

Keep up the great work. With the various branches lots of scope for scenarios. Cannot understand why the route has not got much more attention. Hopefully this will berectified woth the next release.

Regards

[Bobg58]

I was getting a bit worried when the original forum stopped after my last comment (which a moderator edited out an ordinary everuyday word of expression that can even be found in the Bible?) Lol I know we Aussies use it every other word but thinking the forum had been locked because of it? LOL
Well I look forward to the release and thus will not pester with questions such as; Why a bridge at Henford Halt? It was a level crossing over the A30 near the bottom of Henford Hill! But it's fine by me because I just want to get my hands on it!
Sadly my rail families day out crashed (the program) when steam upgraded me to Rail Simulator 2013. The scenarios came through but are empty!

Will re build them when Four Counties V2 is released.

[yeovilrig]

At 05:30 the down Bristol milk empties await the road to Chard Junction at Chard Central.

With the first dmu from Chard Central in Ilminster platform 1 a loaded milk train from Chard Junction is waiting for the road to Taunton.


Approaching Creech St Michael

And approaching the main line at Creech


so sorry about the length of time it has taken me to get to this stage! every time just lately I start to make progress then my work life takes off and I have no time for Four Counties.
The good news is that I'm very close to finishing the latest section as can be seen in the screenshots attached.
To answer Bob's question with reference to why is there a bridge on the a30 at Hendford Halt, the simple answer is that many of these lines had been closed in the 60's and I wanted to show them here in a modern era, so now there is a dual carriage way going through Hendford Halt so I decided to show the line upgraded to a bridge and not a large level crossing across a dual carriage way. There will be many instances of this throughout the route, I have tried to be as close as possible but this could not always be achieved.

[rivimey]

You're doing really well... no need to apologise for anything at all!

VBG

Ruth