G'day All,
Just a quick question. Does anyone have any information regarding Chris Nelson's NSW North-West route, I was on another MSTS site the other day when I noticed that he was building the route to Armidale. Is he still building it? And does anyone know when it will be released?

Cheers

Billy

Brian has taken this route over, as I had made the mistake of many rookie route builders and taken up a much larger task than I should have. As such I can't stand the sight of said route anymore other than to work on it for about two weeks a year.

As for when it will be released, I can't give a spot-on accurate answer, but probably some time before Christmas of the next millennia (we hope).

Now that Chris has 'officially' mentioned that he has passed the 'NSW-NW' route over to me, I can provide some more information on the progress of the route.

This route is 'HUGE' and as such will take quite some time to finish off.

The NSW-NW route covers a vast area of north-western NSW. The following sections of line are included in the route - there is a total of 753 miles of main line track in this route:

Main North - from East Maitland to Armidale (238 miles)

Merriwa Branch - from Muswellbrook to Merriwa (51 miles)

Barraba Branch - from West Tamworth to Barraba (61 miles)

Mungindi Line - from Werris Creek to Moree (157 miles)

Dubbo Line - from Werris Creek to Binnaway (84 miles)

Gwabegar Line - from Gulgong to Gwabegar (162 miles)

A short section of the North Coast Line from Maitland to just north of Telarah

A short section of the South Maitland Railways from Maitland to just west of Mount Dee

Because of the vast size of the route, it is anticipated that the route will be released in three stages:

Stage 1 - East Maitland to Armidale & Muswellbrook to Merriwa

Stage 2 - Werris Creek to Moree & West Tamworth to Barraba

Stage 3 - Werris Creek to Binnaway & Gulgong to Gwabegar

Although the route contains some sections, such as Farley, East Greta and Mount Dee, Telarah, Maitland, High Street and East Maitland, that are duplicated in the ‘Coals to Newcastle’ route, by Peter Newell, these sections have been included in this route for ‘comparative completeness’ at the southern end of the route. This allows for any Activities along the Main North line to have associated AI traffic running on the Coal Lines to/from the SMR lines, or associated AI traffic running to/from the Main North Coast line. Note also, that the Farley to East Maitland section is a completely new build, it is NOT the existing CTN section merged into the NSW-NW.

I am currently working on Stage 1A - the totally unfinished section from East Maitland to Muswellbrook.

The current size of the route as it is at the moment is 3.6 GB, so, it can only be distributed on DVD - we have yet to work out the best way it can be distributed, so the costs are fairly divided - however, this problem won't manifest itself for quite some time yet, as it will be sometime into 2010 before the first stage can be released.

Now - the real problem:

Before I became involved with the NSW-NW, I was fully engaged with another 'large route', my own 'Short West + Short South' - as reported in other forum topics, this was coming along quite nicely - BEFORE the 'great meltdown'. Once I had realised that the 'SW+SS' was 'lost forever', I committed to helping Chris get the NSW-NW finished - but then I got quite a surprise, Chris mentioned that I had sent him a copy of the 'SW+SS' some months back (I had totally forgotten that I sent him a copy - thank goodness for small mercies). Subsequently, Chris sent it back to me, and I now have the route again - however, I have lost around 8 weeks worth of work on the route, so it has set me back considerably time wise.

So, the current situation is - I'm working on TWO 'BIG' routes simulataneously - this means that there will be substantial delays to the ultimate completion of both routes - but I'll get them done !!! My current program is to try and get the NSW-NW to at least a Stage 1 release, then I'll move back to 'SW+SS', which will also now have to be released in stages, rather than 'all at once' - with SW+SS, I'm anticipating that the SW+SS Stage 1 will comprise the section from St Marys to Lidcombe, so that the 'Short West' section is complete - Stage 2 will complete the Picton to Lidcombe section to complete the 'Short South', and the final Stage 3 will fill in the other areas, like the Richmond Branch, the Granville to Cabramatta suburban line, the Sandown industrial branches, etc.

So the plan is, roughly:

Release NW Stage 1

Release SW+SS Stage 1

Release NW Stage 2

Release SW+SS Stage 2

Release NW Stage 3

Release SW+SS Stage 3

I can very clearly state that this will see me FULLY occupied throughout the whole of 2010, and maybe even into early 2011 - so, hang in there, have some patience and you will be rewarded with what will probably become the 'definitive' NSWGR steam era routes for MSTS.

Regards, Brian

Hope ya got good backupses.
Cheers
Allan

Brian, We appreciate very much the time and huge amount of work you are devoting to both these Routes, I hope all goes well for you.
Regards,
Robert.

Brian, What an icon, i'm sure your hard work is an inspiration to other route constructors, what your doing is a fantastic thing and will make a lot of people happy and thats the main thing!

but once again I'd like to just personally congradulate you for your very, very, VERY hard efforts into completing the routes.

Cheers

Billy

Just a bit of an update to the 'NSW-NW':

When Chris passed the route over to me, he had done some work between Werris Creek and Muswellbrook, including some around Quirindi - however, I decided that Quirindi was going to be the one 'signature' township in this route - here's how it turned out:





Anyone who has ever been there should recognise it straight away !!!

Regards, Brian

Beautiful work Brian. Outstanding.

And my other little 'pet township', if you can call Caroona a 'township'





My wife came from a 3650 acre wheat farm ( it was 4km from the property gate up to the homestead) just up the road from Caroona - what you can't see in these couple of screenies (but you will see in the route itself), is my late Father-in-law and two of his sons, driving their wheat trucks to Caroona Siding - the third son was still too young to drive !!!

For me, Quirindi is the 'signature' town in this route (along with Caroona - not that Caroona is a town !!!), so I've put in far more effort than normal, to ensure that Quirindi in the route looks as authentic as possible (subject to MSTS's limitations).

I've taken a couple of aerial shots looking both north and south, for my new 'signature' Quirindi and Caroona. Have a look in Google Earth, and compare my MSTS version, with the real town !!!

This will be the 'ultimate' representation of Quirindi (and Caroona) in any simulation software anywhere, being rail based or anything else for that matter !!!

I even have 'St. Albans' church at the top of Henry Street on the corner of Hill Street (where I got married) and the Bowling Club across the line (where we had the wedding reception). And I made up a couple of sets of 'parked cars', with the characteristic Quirindi 'rear to kerb, angle parking', and placed them in all the visible sections along George Street. I also added a couple of car spawners along George Street, which pass either side of the Quirindi War Memorial Clock, in the 'roundabout' (to make the car spawners work, I had to fiddle with the 'roundabout' shape a bit, it's more like a square than a roundabout, but at least I get moving traffic through the most prominent intersection in Quirindi) between the station and the Terminus Hotel on the corner. My wife said I had to make sure I had the War Memorial Clock in the route, as she 'had to drive around it as part of her Driver's License test - every learner driver in town had to negotiate the roundabout correctly, or they wouldn't pass their Driving Test'.

So, Quirindi is special to me, and this is my tribute to a lovely little township in north-western NSW. But, I got 'the best thing to come out of Quirindi', a lovely lady called Yvonne, and she is still with me 36 years later !!!

Regards, Brian

That's terrific work there Brian. Having a personal connection makes it alot easier to want to spend time in a certain area on a route. What does Yvonne think of the 3D recreation?

For me, it's Junee. I'm slowly adding custom scenery to the place where I live and work.

As an aside, we're doing work at Junee Railway Workshop on the Graincorp 48 class locomotives. These locos were handed to Graincorp by PN to run grain services after PN failed to meet their contractual obligations.

The question of a new colour scheme came up, and I've worked with the technical manager here and Graincorp staff to design a livery. I reskinned a number of 48s in the various proposed liveries.

It was good value to run the locos (with relettered NGHX wagons) in the sim, around Junee Loco and up to Coota, then down to Bomen. Seeing them in the sim impressed them and they decided on the livery, which is currently being applied to the first of their locos to be repainted. I'm not sure when I'll be able to show the new scheme.

So, a personal connection to a location in the sim makes it worth the extra effort.

Cheers,
Matt

Wonderful work Chris and Brian!
Great detail from these screenshots, looking very promising.
In the pictures is that the 44 class?
I've been waiting for them to become available for download from steam4me for a while now

Cheers,
Matt Oaten

Yes, certainly is - however, this is one of the original 44 class released around 5 or 6 years ago - I keep copies of all the stuff I download, just in case (as they did in the case of the 44's) 'disappear suddenly'. Lucky I did, as many want to get the 44's, but I'm not able to send any copies off to anyone else without breaking copyright - so, you'll just have to wait it out, like the rest !!!

I usually use a 'light' 44 as my 'test' loco, as it can be run up to speed, slowed and reversed quickly, to allow detailed testing of routes - however, the ones used in actual running sessions in my activities have authentic consists taken from lots of photos of the class in service.

Regards, Brian

Thanks for that Brian,
I remember them being up for download but I was too young then to download what I wanted.
I have to play the waiting game now.

Cheers,
Matt Oaten

Another little teaser !!!

The 'Northern Tablelands Express' crosses the Hunter River at Singleton. It is the early 1960's and DEB sets have taken over from steam hauled passenger trains. The express will be split at Werris Creek, the front 4-car DEB set continuing on to Armidale, and the rear 3-car DEB set will run north-west to Narrabri and Moree.



The 'peg' has cleared, and the Up 'Northern Tablelands Express' is ready to depart Muswellbrook for its final destination - Sydney Central.



The DEB sets - coming soon !!!!!!!!!!

Regards, Brian

Looking very good Brian.

I thought that - while I'm at it, I might as well do a couple of 2-car branch diesel sets, seeing the basic body shape is the same - so, there will also be a 600/700 and a 620/720 set coming !!!





When they're released, it will be a single download pack with the 7 different DEB cars + the 2-car 600/700 set and the 2-car 620/720 set - still got a bit to go with the physics, etc before release.

Regards, Brian

They look magnificent, Brian. Mate, The numbering that's on it, Before you release it do you want any of my NSWGR Carriage lettering ace files for it? Offers in the house!

Gidday Josh,

For the lettering on my models, I use MS 'Image Composer', a nice little 'bonus' graphics tool that came with FrontPage way back in the Win 98 days - still works quite OK under XP and now under Vista - one of the things I liked about it was its text handling, I can choose any font, and size it, colour it, overlay it - it is easy to do NSWGR lettering - I make one set in red, then another set in yellow, overlay them with a slight offset, and I get yellow lettering with red drop-shading to the right and below - for the small size lettering that I normally use, this is a more than adequate approach. I've used this on all the models I've released over the last 5-6 years or so !!!

Thanks for the offer anyway !!!

Brian

Great work and it will certainly be a great pack.

As a young child I thought that DEB sets and Two-Car diesels were the same thing. But as time progressed I realised what the difference was.

Brian those 620/700 sets look very impressive.
Would they also come in another livery?

Cheers,
Matt Oaten

No, sorry - the 600/700 come in Tuscan/Russet only - the 620/720 come in only the tuscan (indian red) livery, and the DEB sets also only in tuscan (indian red) livery - I'm not interested in the 'candy' era or the 'cityrail' era so they won't be available in those liveries. There is already a 620/720 set in Cityrail livery available elsewhere !!!

Regards, Brian

From the initial planned geographical coverage of this route, it might be a complete replacement/upgrade for Gavin Mclaughlan's "The Coal Road" (version 2) route? - http://home.iprimus.com.au/scuttlesim/index.html
Especially considering that this route would be designed using more contemporary techniques & tools.

* Can Admin. please move this thread from 'General Discussion' to the 'New South Rails Routes' forum??

Merry Xmass all!

Mike.

Well it all depends on what you want to get out of the route - if you are right into 'modern coalies' and think it is a 'direct' replacement for Coal Road V2, the answer is NO.

Firstly, the Coal Road was based on a semi-fictional route with no real attempt to get locations in proper geographical position - NSW-NW is as accurate as we can get it in MSTS - all locations have been plotted from Google Earth, and so, the route is in proper geographical position.

Secondly, NSW-NW is set around 20 years earlier from 1960 to 1980 - if you reallllllllllllllly stretch it, it could be used to run 'modern' heavy diesels, but they would look a bit out of place, as the intent of the route is 'end of steam - early diesel', and the scenery reflects this.

Thirdly, if you are 'into' the modern day balloon loop coal loaders, there are NONE in the route, so, no Mt.Thorley, Camberwell Junction, Drayton Junction, etc. - however, there are a number of collieries detailed in the route as they were sometime around the 1965-75 timeframe, and this includes Ayrfield-Branxton, Newdell Junction to Newdell, Liddell and Durham collieries, Muswellbrook and Muswellbrook No2 collieries, Werris Creek colliery, and in future versions, Preston colliery out of Curlewis and possibly Black Jack colliery out of Gunnedah. The intent here was long 'Garratt' hauled coalies out of Newdell, and lots of 'standard goods or 59 class' hauled coalies out of Branxton and Muswellbrook. This was one of the main reasons that spurred me on to build the D53 and D55 variants of the 'standard goods'.

All scenery has been designed to be pretty representative of the individual locations along the route, and some in particular, such as Quirindi, Werris Creek, Currabubula, etc modelled as well as can be expected in MSTS, and will be instantly recognisable as such !!! Many custom 'signature' buildings have been built specifically to make this route unique.

As the route is so big, it has to be released in several stages - the first stage is expected to be from East Maitland to Armidale inclusive, and Muswellbrook to Merriwa inclusive - all other track is subject to later stages. Additionally, as the route is just under 4GB, it can only be distributed on DVD - exact details to be worked out sometime next year when stage 1 is completed.

Regards, Brian