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Straight From the Box
Hawes Junction, Continued
By Alfred Barten
Scenarios
The scenarios are presented in the menu in pairs of active and passive. Following is a brief summary of each.
Branch Freight (Active and Passive). Make two Hawes-Garsdale round trips. Cattle wagons move in one direction; coal wagons in the other. Passive scenario takes 85 minutes to complete.
Class 37 with a string of cattle wagons.
Collier Commute (Active and Passive). Drive a Class 37 diesel-led local passenger run on a dark, wet night. Passive scenario takes 53 minutes to complete.
Cab view from the Class 37 on a rainy night.
Garsdale Connection (Active and Passive). This is a local passenger run featuring the Fowler 4F and three coaches. It takes place around mid-day in fair weather and takes about 14 minutes to complete.
The fireman casts a backward glance at the conductor (I think), waiting for the signal to proceed.
Mainline (Passive). This passive scenario lets you select different trains to run. There is no limit to the time you can spend with it as you explore the route. Just hop from one train to another.
The Flying Scotsman leads this train.
Pickup Goods (Active and Passive). This is a multi-part freight scenario including dropping empty coal wagons and picking up loaded ones, dropping the loaded wagons at another location and continuing on to a final destination. Passive scenario takes 34 minutes.
Wharton Coal (Active and Passive). This is another multi-part freight activity, more complex than Pickup Goods. Passive scenario takes 49 minutes to complete.
Team Members
If you look in the back of the manual that comes with TRS2006, you�ll see the members of the rail-sim.co.uk development team responsible for Hawes Junction. Many of these names jumped out at me as high profile members of the Trainz community. Some of their work � as individuals and as a group � are freeware at the DLS and some is payware at the rail-sim.co.uk website. Some members have their own websites as well. My recommendation is to begin with the rail-sim (http://www.rail-sim.co.uk/) site and have a look at the group�s projects, members, and links. I�ve listed below the names found in the TRS2006 manual and added the websites from the rail-sim.co.uk website links.
- Mike Banfield (Mike10) � Medway Valley Trainz
- Alex Barnard (Wulfruna)
- David Dallaston (PikkaBird) � PIKKARAIL
- Stuart Downs (Deltic_Kid)
- Steve Dark (Sdark)
- Paul Franklin (Chileanllama)
- Terry Franks (Tafweb) - TrainzOjectz
- Paul Hobbs (paulhobbs) - 44090 Digital Models
- Andrew Howard (AndrewH)
- James Moody (Bloodnok) � V.S.R.
- Don Woodman (Wulf9)
Pricipal contributors were:
- PaulHobbs (rolling stock)
- Mike10 (scenery objects)
- Bloodnok (AWS and scripting)
- AndrewH (route building)
Members' Comments
I asked the group if they'd like to comment on their experience. They responded as follows:
Paul Hobbes. For me the most interesting part of developing Hawes Junction was the scripting of the rolling stock, as we had the possibility to include all sorts of new features - indeed there is probably no limit to the things that can be done using TrainzScript. It should be said, though, that all of this is also possible in TRS2004; in fact all of the development was done in the older version. Working as a team certainly made things easier as we had a couple of scripting experts (Wulf_9 and Bloodnok) on hand, and the scripting aspects such as the working headcode lamps probably took up most of the time. Another aspect of working in a team was that all of the new models had a common theme, instead of just modelling what took our fancy, there had to be a certain amount of thought about what was actually needed to complete the project.
As far as difficulties with the project (from the point of view of the rolling stock) the major problem was Auran breaking our code for the working couplings in the original release of TRS2006 (since fixed with SP1). It
would have been possible to work around this but luckily Auran responded to our pleas. The actual making of the stock didn't present any particular problems, as the techniques used were nothing new.
Andew Howard. Building a 1960s prototypical route of a UK location whilst residing in Australia actually presented fewer problems than I anticipated, mainly because of the wealth of written and photographic material available on the Settle and Carlisle (S&C;) line. Accurate gradient profiles, information on elevation and track plans helped enormously.
The actual goods and passenger traffic potential of the locality surrounding the section of the S&C; depicted in Hawes Junction is limited. In order to develop some worthwhile sessions for inclusion in TRS2006, the northern end of the main line section was altered significantly to accommodate a fictitious station and coal mine at Wharton.
It was a pleasure to work with the content creators within rail-sim.co.uk. The viaducts, tunnels, stations and track added greatly to the atmosphere of Hawes Junction. Having a small freight locomotive like the 4F pottering around with period British vans and trucks in the sessions was a wonderful bonus.
Mike Banfield. Coordinating the team throughout the process of completing the route was a bigger challenge than I anticipated. Adding to that the need to work to a deadline and to liase with Auran to get everything ready definitely resulted in more than a few late nights.
Working on the project as part of the team was certainly different to creating my own content where I can pick and choose projects as I go along and work on each one as I feel like it with no real reason to think about a release date.
One thing is for certain, I know a lot more about the Settle-Carlisle line than I did before I started on this, and my library of train related material has grown considerably.
I am grateful to be working with such a talented bunch of creators and I know that what we have achieved as a team has far exceeded what we could hope to achieve as individuals. I know that I personally feel proud of what we have done so far and am excited about what we will be able to achieve in the future.
The Group. As a group we would like to thank the content creators outside the group who generously allowed us to use their objects, splines and textures in the release.
It may be worth mentioning that our aim is to complete the rest of the Settle-Carlisle line and the project is documented on our website.
Some of the points (switches) can sometimes be hard to select as some of them are close together and a few levers have ended up where they shouldn�t be. This was a result of the compromise between prototypical accuracy and usability. Usually accuracy has won the argument.
Wharton, and its coalmine, is fictitious and is only there to add operational interest for the route.
Available as Demo
Auran has made a limited version of the Hawes Junction route as a free downloadable demo from the Trainz 2006 website. This is a major download of around 600 MB. You can also get it as a go-with in my new ebook This is V-Scale available at the Virtual Railroader website.
If you haven�t tried Hawes Junction, you've been missing an excellent example of what can be created in Trainz. It�s hard not to like this route.
Al
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This article, by special arrangement with Auran, is featured in the 15 October 2006 issue of Trainz News.
Article and screen shots �2006 Alfred Barten. All rights reserved.
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