Utter Lies

Ok, so after my post yesterday, I must have somehow guilt tripped myself - I spend the whole day looking out all the information (I've not lost anything, yay!). And then in a few short house, I added over 1.6 square km of new detailed area to the route. As usual Some pics below;

Some of the new scenery along the route. The railway line is just before the line of trees in the center

A touched up area of scenery as well as new scenery off to the right.

Noticing the complexity of the features below, I find it amusing that this picture as actually a good representation of the actual area as it was back then.

A close up of the picture above: We see the railway cross a river then a road then another river. Not well visible here, but the road actually fords the river on each side of the track!

(Ignoring the marker billboards) This is looking down the line, showing the new stretch of the railway added.

Life on the back burner

As you all will probably have figured, things aren't exactly moving anywhere quickly with the route. A busy semester at uni as well as moving house has left me with little extra time. That and I fear I may have gone and lost the gradient information for the route, so while I can still do small tweeks to the scenery, I cant make any changes to the track until I either find it, or get the information again.

Unfortunately Uni is about to start again, I hopefully things will pick up during the summer breaks.!

More Updates

Hi all,

Don't worry; no more useless videos from me for now! Just a quick note on the latest updates for the route. With the original Gifford area now pretty much finished, today's work was entirely on new areas. The countryside between Gifford and Humbie is just under half way done, with about 2 miles of countryside now completed. Still a few more days of work before I can start thinking about Humbie station and preview releases.

As usual, here's some pictures of the latest updates.

The far end of the completed area; mostly just fields and general countryside, but with several interesting features throughout. (Just noticed the roads on the fields on the left. These roads are only there to help in the placement of the fields, for once the decals were removed)

Looking back towards Gifford with the new updates in view

The occasional pools that lie along side the burns are now included.

A picturesque view of a burn passing underneath the railway just after Inglsfield

Another production shot of the route. Unlike with dealing with scenery near the track, where you can use the gradient to accurately maniputlate the surroundings, far into the distance , all I can use is several spot heights as well as extrapolations from contours. Since this only works for small areas, I placed roads from each height, to every other height and then used the embankment tool to take an average of the heights. After further tweeking with the smooth tool, the end result (see the first picture) is realistic and accurate hill that is not generic.

Video Time

Hi Everyone.

Just a video I tried to get uploaded for the last post but it wouldn't let me. It's Derek's Class 101 descending into Gifford station, as it appears now. Word of warning though: I'm utterly rubbish at making videos, so I hope this goes well.

Just some notes about the video.

Firstly, thanks to going over the video, I've noticed a fault with the river (namely, it jumps into the air before it disappears into the forest)

Secondly, the trees as you head into Gifford need to be reworked, or there's going to be many a virtual engineer missing eyes.

Some of you will notice billboards along the route, not befitting the time period. There's a good reason for that. I use billboards as sort of markers along the route. They'll probably still be there on alpha releases. Basically, 1 billboard in the middle of the track is just to help me with navigation and distancing. 2 on either side of the tracks denotes the point of gradient change.

A final note on the Class 101. The Class 101 did actually see service on lines near to the Gifford and Garvald railway as railtours, visiting the area. Unfortunately, by the time that particular railtour arrived at Smeaton, the line from Gifford and Macmerry, all the way to Smeaton, had been lifted. In a similar situation, a railtour woked by a Class 24 also arrived at Smeaton. In the long run, I intend to include both as scenarios, however, you will need the respective addons, to run them (Derek's Class 101, Mesh's Class 24).

Hope you enjoy the video.

Major Updates

Hi again all!

Sorry for the lack of posts of late (seems to be a bad habit of mines). I've still been keeping busy with the route tough. Now, all of the decals between Gifford and Ormiston have been created (backing up the route now takes over 2 hours, but don't worry, there will be no decals in the release!).

Necessity, being the mother of invention and all (as well as RW not being able to utilize my 8GB RAM), has forced me to start removing decals from the route: My idea was to lay the decals between 2 stations, get the track laying and basic landscaping done, then go back and go over the intricacies and remove the decals. However after around 20 decals, RW just crashes when I try to place more decals, so I've now started lifting some of the decals around Gifford. Still a WIP but it now looks a lot closer to how it will in the final release. Here's some more pictures of updates

Flaunting Derek's Class 101 at Gifford

And again, towards Edinburgh. The Class 101 did actually see use on the lines near here in railtours, although the Gifford and Garvald railway had been lifted.

The real deal - barring minor custom work, this is the finished Gifford station and area.

The finished hills and farms near Gifford

Remember those blasted pillars from the last post? Well, they're back, and making my life difficult in decal laying.

Hi again,

Heres some pics of the latest update. I'm now past the point (In less that 12 hours) that it took me several months to get to before. Probably no more this weekend though, work! Pah!

The view looking up the hills away from Gifford. The hills look more gentle and rolling than before, but this one still hides a nasty 1 in 53 gradient!

As a desperate attempt to get a large farmhouse with a courtyard in the middle, I stapled 4 of the same building together. After adding a conservatory, an allotment and greenhouses, I feel the result isn't actually bad.

Doing a dummy run without decals, this is Gifford station, which is actually now almost complete. It seems a bit empty, but more clutter will be added.

View looking away from Gifford station again with the decals off. The results aren't bad but more work still needs done on the background here.

The real Gifford station was built up so that the station could be level, a fact I neglected before because it made things too awkward, but shown here as a fairly good representation. The eagle-eyed of you will notice that the old 5-compartment carriage isn't present anymore. That's because i can't figure how on earth whoever put it there managed to keep it there without having to build another platform for it!

View looking towards Gifford from the fields.

Miles away from everything, I discovered the results of a furious contest of wits between me and the RW height tool. I had thought I had won, but evedently it got its own back - these pillars extend for many miles in both directions!

Gradients and Giggles

Hi all!

Firstly, my route's been saved by the grace of RW tech support, only downside is that all the track gradients are jumbled. The main line is easy to fix but at Gifford station the track is quite complicated and I don't fancy my chances of being able to re-lay it again, so since the gradients are menial (1 in 85,000!), I'm just leaving it be. Above is the latest development picture, there's not much change, but the run round loop has been completed.

Anyway, all this talk of gradients brings me neatly the article on heights and gradients I wanted to do. My problem with the route is, first and foremost, the fact it no longer exists. Secondly, even in its prime, the route was very obscure (In one of my first posts, I described it as a branch line of a branch line of a branch line of the ECML) and so there's not much information availible on it. All I have to go on, is Google Earth, following the scars in the landscape, and OS map, the railway plans and a book on the railways of Midlothian. This may seem a lot, but theres pro's and cons to each resource. For example, the OS maps offer high detailing of railways, yards, infrastructure and surroundings, but lacks information on signaling and gradients. The railway plans weirdly lack information on the railway (It only covers the main line and not yards or stations) but has excellent gradient information.

With all my resources, I have a good idea of what the surroundings are and where the lines and yards should be. My problem is gradients. The OS maps show spot heights on roads and rivers but not railways as well as contour lines, making accurate gradients difficult. The plans for the railway show excellent gradient information, but only for what was expected of the route, so the actual gradient information is lacking. In the book (The Haddington, Macmerry and Gifford Branch Lines by A.M. Hajducki) there is a gradient diagram from after the construction of the line, the only issue is that the diagram is rather wonkily drawn and so I doubt its accuracy.

The issue list extents when you use all the information together! For example, the hill just outside Gifford is shown as 1 in 50 on the diagram, but only 1 in 53 on the plans. Also, the plans show the whole railway, which was originally supposed to run from Ormiston to Garvald, on which Gifford station is on a 1 in 50 hill, however the line only completed as far as Gifford, there the gradient was leveled to accommodate the terminus.

My solution, is to use the gradient from the plans, then compare it with the information from the OS maps. If the railway ends up 10m above the ground or is otherwise unreasonable, try switching to less accurate diagram and compare results. If it is favourable then use that instead. If it is still unacceptable, then you just have to use a combination of the plans and the diagram, validating it with the OS information, to create an in-between that works. For example, the problem on the hill outside Gifford, I originally tried the 1 in 50 gradient, but this left the railway mid-air, so i tried again with 1 in 53 gradient and it fit rather well!

Well somewhat pointless, but thats my article on why conflicting 110-year-old records are somewhat of a headache to use. More updates soon!