Annapolis Royal Pt 1

[Paul Charland]

Hi All,

Took a day off drawing and filled in some scenery from the end of the last update to Highway 101 just beyond the Annapolis Royal wye.

Train 26 crocces the 486' bridge over Allen's Creek just before the Highway 101 Crossing south of Annapolis Royal station.



8131 passes the station as it enters the small yard.



After lifting an empty tankcar, the crew heads back to their train.



8131 heads north out of Annapolis Royal on their way to meet Train 25 in Middleton.



Paul

[stem]

Every time you add something new, I get this stupid looking grin on my face! Very nicely done Paul. I can't see from the photos you posted but I imagine you've got the bulk fuel depot(s) there too? How about the old train shed? Did that make it into the 70's?

Looking forward to seeing your Fort Anne treatment too!

[Paul Charland]

Hi Steve,

The bulk terminal is complete, if Esso had storage tanks they were removed by the time people started taking pictures of the area in the '70s.



Fort Anne is also finished, just need to add a few trees when I get that far. Not overly detailed as you can only see so much while running a train but you sure can see those three chimneys sticking up from a distance! In the background you can see a cluster of building that complete the customers on the old line that once went to the wharf, that's the last build area to draw, the buildings that line the area between Church St and Drury Ln.



The engine shed would have been long gone by the 70s.

Hope to have the two miles south of Allen's Creel finished today.

Paul

[SamuelMClark]

Hey Paul how long does it take you make a section of the DAR? I know you've been working on it for a while but lately noticed you have been pushing to try and complete it.

I was thinking of expanding on your layout and do the Halifax and Southwestern so they could interconnect in both Yarmouth and Middleton - Bridgewater. Also if you plan on doing any of the Truro Sub I walked along the line from Windsor out to the St Croix river this past week and took some pictures and I have the layout of the Wentworth Gypsum Siding which could help and also if you need any scenery pictures I do have some or could get some for you.

Have you tried Train Simulator 2013 or 2014? They recently just updated to 2014 which I got a free upgrade too as I had bought 2013. The graphics in that game are amazing. And for the 2014 they included a new feature in building your own layouts so you can use google maps as the referencing of where the track and roads should go. I'm currently trying to just do Windsor Junction but being new to virtual railway building it's going to be a long road. But I've been able to get the Google Maps over lay which is very helpful, but getting terrain and tracks laid our correctly is going to be time consuming.

[Paul Charland]

Hi Samuel,

The Kentville Sub is completed, started it back in January. It started in Coldbrook and ends about two miles down the Yarmouth Sub, so that's about 5 or 6 miles a month. I'm drawing a lot of the actual building, so that takes a lot of the time.

The original route has the last 8 miles of the Truro Sub included to a could of miles north of Brooklyn. From what I gather other then the odd car for Stanley there isn't any customers the rest of the way to Truro so I haven't been in any big rush to complete the Sub.

While I wait for v2 to get tested by others I've started v3 which will expand the Bedford Sub to Southwest Junction and the Yarmouth Sub to a couple of miles beyond Digby.

Haven't tries other sims, problem would be having to start the DAR from scratch, finding out what software you need to draw things like buildings. Not sure if this is the one but one of these new sims wont even tell you what program, expecting you to buy everything from them, another you have to be connected to the internet just to load routes and objects.... no thanks!

MSTS might be old an weary but it still works. If they get all the bugs out of OR and get a set of editors that's probably the way to go for me. Steve Meridith has been testing the DAR in OR and for the most part it's looking pretty good. One really nice thing in OR is the ability to change your viewing distance form MSTS' 3000m to 10,000m in OR. Not really something I'd normally do while running trains but in Greenwood MSTS can't see across the airfield but in OR you can see the entire field plus the trees surrounding it... looks a lot more realistic.

Paul

[stem]

Like Paul says, I have been running the DAR in Open Rails. OR has many features I really like. I am trying to make sure that Paul's route will run in a pure OR environment, insuring all the files are in place to operate so that a "distribution" can be made for people to run it with the free Open Rails for those without access to Microsoft Train-Sim. OR supports multiplayer and I hope that one day to set up an OR server so that once a month or something we can all get a session going online. Another feature I plan to explore is OR's ability to replay an entire session so that I can record it to video and make a cool video to run in the museum on a constant basis.

Even though I have Microsoft Train Simulator those are the reasons I'm running it in Open Rails.

[SamuelMClark]

Hey Paul the buildings you make what program are you making them in? As it would be cool if we could import some of them into a program for 3d printing so people could download them and print them out if they have a 3d printer! Or I could just remake them from scratch.

[Paul Charland]

Hi Samuel,

Train Sim Modeler is what I use. There are others that I don't use but others do, Google Sketch up for instance. Think TSM is now free in the library at Trainsim.com. TSM has a few, bugs I guess you could call them, but for the most part is pretty stable. For $20 six or eight years ago and the amount I've used it, it was a good buy and I can't complain about the odd flaw.

I'm not sure what format a 3D printer uses. I do know that the owner of 3rd PlanIt has sent one of my Shay drawings out after it was "converted" to be printed, but I never heard what it was "converted" to!

Paul