I've been a bit quiet recently, but that's not to say idle.
I've now finished all of the activities for the long-awaited Highworth project and have handed over to the rest of the guys for final testing and whatever tweaks they decide to make to the route, models and activities. It was a strange feeling picking up a project that I last worked on 4 years ago, a bit like turning the clock back. Anyway, after testing and amending the original 30 activities, I eventually continued with my journey from 1879 to 1964. Altogether there are 86 activities covering the entire history of the line from construction through to closure. Now you know why it's taken so long.
With Highworth safely put to bed on the external hard disk, Cambrian 2 is now out of its box for some serious Dukedog thrashing. There's a series of 8 freeware activities featuring my favourite class of loco on the Cambrian main line on a mixture of trains:
1. 1947 - Stopping passenger from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth.
2. 1947 - Express passenger from Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury (doubleheaded).
3. 1952 - Stopping passenger from Oswestry to Aberystwyth.
4. 1952 - Stopping passenger from Aberystwyth to Oswestry.
5. 1956 - Stopping passenger from Machynlleth to Newtown - I think 5 and 6 were school trains
6. 1956 - Stopping passenger from Newtown to Machynlleth
7. 1958 - Cattle special from Aberystwyth to Welshpool.
8. 1959 - Bridge engineers' train from Moat Lane to Dovey Junction.
As you can imagine, these are quite a contrast from the Highworth activities in terms of duration. Those stopping trains from Shrewsbury and Oswestry take over 3 hours and are really hard work to complete on time. Of course going the other way you get the joys of the Eastbound ascent of Talerddig - whatever you do, don't let the locos slip on the doubleheaded activity.
Seven out of the eight are now finished and I'll be uploading them to this site one at a time as soon as I'm 100% happy with them. I'll then turn my attention to finishing the activities for the proper 3DTrainstuff payware add-on with its diesels, extra rolling stock and dozens more activities. The plan is to compile another epic series (will I ever learn?) following the career of a locoman from 1935 to 1985. You got the first 20 with the route. There are 36 new activities already written taking the story to the end of World War 2 and I'm guessing about another 40-50 to come (I'll stop when I get bored).
Have fun!
Martin
