Streaming Stainmore - Water Nuisance!

Adding The Streams and Rivers

The River Eden Passes Under the Stainmore Line at Kirkby Stephen East

  An important feature in any 

route, are accurately depicted rivers and streams. In recent weeks, Ben has been carefully laying down the streams that crisscross the areas surrounding our route. Here we present a pictorial update on this aspect of the route build. 

  The starting point for this route build is Kirkby Stephen East, a junction station for the Stainmore and Eden Valley routes. Just beyond the station, heading east, the railway passes over the River Eden. At 90 miles, this river stretches north, passing under Hadrian's wall and enters the Solway Firth, near the mouth of the River Esk.

  The line crosses various becks, streams and rivers across the Stainmore route from the River Belah, to the River Greta - we'll try and make sure they're all there!

Ay Gill Beck meanders away alongside and under the route for a considerable distance

Becks feed into each other high up on the moor

Another beck flows from the south, under the railway and into Ay Gill Beck

Now two becks meet and form the River Greta

The River Greta now runs near the line for a distance, the line only moving away from the river near Bowes

That's it for today's report on progress. Thanks for reading!

A few words from Ben about building the route

Route Building Philosophy

To many of us, one of the great things about simulation (of any brand or genre) is the ability to recreate what can’t be experienced any more in real life. The story of the preservation movement is a remarkable one; that in 2013 you could run on the mainline behind a steam locomotive at 90mph is extraordinary, but the recreation of many things – and we all have our favourites – isn’t possible.

SSS’ work to add realism to the steam end of the TS market has been very successful, but there has been a strong tendency for published routes to be set in the present “late privatisation” era which doesn’t suit steam fans. Indeed in many cases it doesn’t suit early diesel, rail blue and sector fans either – but rather than whinge about it, at SSS thought we’d get our hands dirty.

We looked at a number of options, but the qualities we were looking for:

• A route that would cover a wide era relatively unchanged
• A challenging drive and plenty of interest
• Interesting scenery
• Distinguishing features
• Well known, but been done
• Used traction that had not already been built.

Stainmore ticked these boxes very well –  it changed little throughout its century of existence, epic climbs of 1 in 59, giving plenty of double heading and banking of coal, limestone, heavy holiday expresses, stopping local and freight turns. At 1368 ft, it was the highest through summit in England (the terminus at Princetown on Dartmoor beats it at 1427ft) and ranks as one of the most challenging routes in the UK.

Bouch and why Stainmore closed and the S&C survived.

Phil mentioned Thomas Bouch particularly in the context of his bridges. The nervousness of engineers in the design of the trestle viaducts (Belah and Deepdale being very similar to Bouch’s Tay Bridge) had a profound impact on traction – Class 2 motive power in the form of LNER J21 and J25s were the workhorses of the route; only later outside cylinder locos without the great hammer blow of a crank axle lead to the Ivatt and Standard 4 locos

giving a much needed dose of power to the line after WW2

Bouch’s career was later in railway mania, and railway companies were wanting more for less and Bouch, having served under Joseph Locke building the Lancaster & Carlisle – the cheap, twisty and steep option for the WCML over Shap – he was the engineer that offered value for money. Stainmore hugged contours, minimalised earthworks, avoided tunnelling and used minimal metal trestle viaducts instead of solid but time consuming masonry for the greatest spans.

Stainmore may have been cheap but it was always a tough and slow road, frequently blocked by snow and heavy on men, maintenance and coal, with no great advantage in time to running via Newcastle and Carlisle, which is what ultimately sealed its fate in 1962.

The Midland took a more conventional approach on the later Settle & Carlisle – much easier grades and several tunnels giving a faster, less restrictive route that may have cost more to build but proved more attractive to keep running.

Some comparison is interesting - whilst Belah was assembled in just 43 days and had very little maintenance in a century; Ribblehead  (or Batty Moss) took the best part of 4 years to build yet became the maintenance liability that nearly shut the route. 

The S&C is once again a valued route and had a fearsome reputation amongst locomotive crews (Terry Essery's account of firing a 9F to Carlisle is well worth a read) but at 1 in 100 it is a pussycat in comparison to its forgotten neighbour, Stainmore at 1 in 59.

p.s. It is rarely cited that the Midland made forceful attempts to abandon the S&C once they made peace with the LNWR and secured running rights via Ingleton and Low Gill to Carlisle, but parliament ensured the Midland made good on its Act and finish the line.

And to Finish, Some New WIP Images:

Progress Around Kirkby Stephen

Development Work Progresses at Barnard Castle:

Lastly, Bowes Station:

A Word or Two From Phil About Belah

Phil Baines talks us through the process of building the incredible structure that is Belah Viaduct:

The Building of Belah Viaduct - Part 1

Sir Thomas Bouch was a famous railway engineer particularly noted for his lightweight bridge designs, unfortunately he is mainly remembered for the infamous Tay bridge disaster. However, Belah Viaduct is another of his designs and is considered an iconic structure of the Stainmore route, hence was an obvious choice to be built in the early development stages of this new route for TS2014.

The first problem with building a model of the viaduct is that it no longer exists, torn down for scrap in 1963 all that remains are the two abutments, only accessible across muddy fields and with the farmers permission.

Fortunately there are a number of photographs available and Peter Waltons excellent book, "The Stainmore and Eden Valley Railway", contains a number of drawings detailing  the structure.

The viaduct was 347 yards long, 24 feet wide, with 16 spans, and at 196 feet, it was the highest bridge in England when it was built. Consequently it was going to be a large model and some discussion was held between team members about how detailed to make the model. It was estimated a 3D model would run about  150,000 polys, which could be radically reduced by using transparent 2D textures for some elements, such as the handrails. After discussion it was decided that, as such an important element of the route, it should be highly detailed, particularly as the area around the site was open country with very few other assets and, even at 150,000 polys, it would be less than the consist on top of it!

So work began and the starting point was the handrail. These were very attractive cast iron rails as seen in this drawing from Peter Walton's book.

These railings appear on three of the viaducts on the Stainmore route, Belah, Deepdale and Tees Viaduct, so it made obvious sense to create a lofted version of the handrail so it could be easily added to all three bridges. Also. the repetitive nature of the design lends itself to a lofted model.

There were a number of potential methods for creating the handrail model, extruded splines for instance, but the simple geometric design made me choose the following method.

 I started with a simple box which, always remembering to build it 0.36 meters below ground level as the loft it populates will be at railhead height, which is that distance above ground level. I then subdivided the box into the geometric pattern.

Next, I selected the relevant polys and beveled them inwards.

Then it was a simple matter to punch through the highlighted polys and with a little manipulation of the top section to create the wooden handrail and with the addition of a supporting I-beam, I had a section of handrail ready for unwrapping, texturing and shadow baking.

Three  jobs left to do.

Firstly, when I make a lofted item like this I like to extrude and taper one end so that one piece fits inside the other to avoid nasty gaps showing when the loft bends. You can just make these out in the above picture, they are the dark pieces at the right-hand end of the model.

Secondly, I need an end geometry for the loft. This was achieved by extruding the wooden handrail part of the model then using the bend modifier.

Finally, off to the blueprint editor and create an invisible LoftSectionBleprint which is populated with my handrail model as middle geometry and the end geometry as above, then try it in game.

Success!

........to be continued.

Next, Phil will show us how he created the viaduct supports