Work in Progress: Tunnel Branch Junction

As well as the familiar (and surviving!) line from Shildon to Bishop Auckland, there was also a line (the "Tunnel Branch") from the northern portal of Shildon Tunnel to West Auckland at Fieldon Bridge. The Tunnel branch closed with Randolph Colliery near Evenwood on 31st August 1968 (itself 6 years after the Stainmore line itself closed), so in reality I never got to see it and only learnt of it later.

What's particularly interesting to me is that the Tunnel Branch was opened by the S&D to replace the Brusselton Inclines, so it has a real place in history in its own right. It's a real pity it's not better documented - I've not found a single contemporary photo of the branch.

As this is a "work in progress" post, the following screenshots are somewhat incomplete. In particular, you'll see areas of untextured landscape, a lack of trees etc. as I'm trying to give a flavour of this part of the route here (an area which I've not shown before) rather than show the finished article.



The view from Tunnel Branch (or Shildon North) Junction looking north towards Auckland Park and Coundon. The lines on the left form the Tunnel Branch to West Auckland, Butterknowle and Barnard Castle, whilst those on the right lead to Bishop Auckland itself.

Sadly, all that remains here today is a single line to Bishop Auckland, as an be seen in the photo at http://blackhatrailwaypics.fotopic.net/p41265262.html.



The junction where the private sidings at Auckland Park Colliery met the Shildon-Bishop Auckland branch. Although Auckland Park Colliery closed in 1946, the site remained active as a pumping station until 1961.



Looking back up towards Tunnel Branch junction from the Tunnel Branch. The line to Bishop Auckland can be seen coming in from the left.



...and back the other way.




Finally, these two shots show where the Tunnel Branch meets the West Auckland - Bishop Auckland line at Fieldon's Bridge Junction. Full landscaping here is still a little way off, but West Auckland MPD can just be seen in the background behind the large gas tank.

Alone in the Dark? (part 3)

Even more midnight meanderings (but this time with a few trains in them!).



A Gresley A3 shunts coal hoppers at Rough Lea.





A Carlisle-Eastgate cement train passes a Bishop Auckland - Durham service at Hunwick.



Newton Cap viaduct.



A Peak passes Auckland Park on the Bishop Auckland - Shildon line.





Finally a pair of West Auckland shed's class 24s stabled at Coundon on the Bishop Auckland - Spennymoor line.

Alone in the Dark? (part 2)

More midnight meanderings...



Hunwick station approach, viewed from the Hunwick-Newfield branch.



One of several farms in the Hunwick area. This one is right on the edge of the landscaped area - you just can't see the bare baseboards behind it because of the terrain!



Coundongate station approach. The station is just down the hill to the left of the wall.





The pathway which leads from the Bishops Park to Coundon Station footbridge.

Alone in the Dark? (part 1)

I thought I'd take a break from working on landscaping Westerton Village (near Binchester Colliery, on the Spennymoor line) to do some new screenshots. :)

Just for a change this set are at night and mostly feature landscapes rather than the railways themselves. Basically I just went wandering around with the clock set to "midnight"....



The disused former NER station at Todhills, seen from the south west.



The NER Todhills branch originally linked with Newfield Colliery down a rather vicious (1:17) incline. By the 1960s this was a footpath, seen here looking back up the incline towards Todhills.



Newfield village church.



A view from the Hunwick-Newfield branch looking across the fields towards towards Farnley and the River Weir.



Rough Lea Junction. The signalman is awake, obviously!

Map update

When I started this project at the end of last year, I really didn't realise how much time I would spend landscaping (painting textures, placing buildings, laying fences and so on). Placing the track (and even the signalling, tricky though that can be) really is the easy bit.

Having said that, I'm pretty happy with the way things are going so far - and certainly with the way the parts of the route I've spent significant time on have turned out. I hope the screenshots I've posted to date give a good flavour of it.

Here's a couple of maps to illustrate overall progress. The first one (from July this year) shows the area from Bishop Auckland, Spennymoor and Shildon (to the right of the map) up the Weardale line to Stanhope (to the left of the map). The area of green is the bit that's landscaped:



The second map (from mid-November) shows the status of the route at the moment:


In the second map the largely complete nature of the landscaping around the Spennymoor line can be clearly seen. Once that's complete, I'm likely to move down to the area around the Bishop Auckland-Shildon line (and by inference the West Auckland-Shildon branch) next.

Spennymoor line update

I'm still landscaping along the fringes of the Spennymoor line, but making pretty good progress now (just Binchester Colliery, Coundongate Village and Auckland Park to do on this section).

Here's an updated set showing the section between Coundon and Byers Green:














The section south from Coundon is now quite well advanced, as these show:





Finally, this is where the Bishop Auckland - Spennymoor line (left) meets the Bishop Auckland - Shildon line (right):



Although the Spennymoor line was actually single tracked from Bishop Auckland East Junction, I've found that a loop here helps to keep the AI happy (if I find a way around this later, it will obviously be removed).

Taking the 9F for a walk in the park...

An early morning run from Burnhouse Junction to Canney Hill on the (work in progress) Spennymoor - Bishop Auckland line:



Rounding the curve at Burnhouse Junction






Passing through Byers Green







Accomodation bridges in Bishops Park








Coundon Station




Approaching Canney Hill

As you can hopefully see, this line is now coming along rather nicely. :)

Frogging

If Trainz has one very noticeable defect, it's that it is far harder than it should be to include accurate trackwork in a route. Although by and large Trainz makes developing trackwork very easy (trackwork is normally laid using splines and Surveyor automatically creates junctions when track splines meet), it does not include support for animated junctions "out of the box".

Here's an example of basic spline based points:



Although solutions exist, they are version dependent, require scripting and are often quite fiddly to set up. For example, andi06's excellent "Junction Kit" requires that "invisible track" be used to wire up each junction. If that isn't offputting enough, the scripts it uses are (apparently) broken in TRS2009 (the latest version of Trainz). The bottom line is that this really needs to be built into the game engine itself.

Hence it shouldn't be a surprise that quite early on I decided to pass on the junction kit, and just "get used" to the default behaviour. Annoying, but not fatal by any means.

However, this week I discovered a really simple way of making things look just a little more prototypical, albeit without animated junctions themselves. Here's the end result:



The only change here is the use of a pair of additional objects by Frank_Dean for each point, implemented as track objects (so they slide along the rails and take the same height as the track itself). The objects I've used here in this particular crossover are:

• Turnoutfrog-2gray-left-SG


• Turnoutfrog-2gray-right-SG


• Turnoutfrog-3brown-left-SG


• Turnoutfrog-3brown-right-SG

Finally, here's the same view as the first screenshot, with the modified trackwork.



Not a huge change, but a noticeable one.

Spennymoor to Byers Green

The Spennymoor - Bishop Auckland line closed to passengers in 1952 (although occasional miners/football specials ran until 1963), and freight in 1966. Unlike the Bishop Auckland-Durham line it was mostly single track and I imagine had a very traditional branch line flavour. Unfortunately information on this line is quite hard to come by so I've had to make some educated guesses.

This set of screenshots shows the northern end of the line (Spennymoor - Byers Green); once I've made a bit more progress on the scenery on the southern end I'll show some shots on that bit too. I've used the BR Blue era in these shots as a "might have been" but I'm sure it would look just as good with an ex-NER G5 and a short rake of push-pull coaches... ;)



A ballast train traverses the double track section west of Spennymoor (where the portal terminating this part of the line is located) bound for Bishop Auckland.



Approaching Burnhouse Junction, where the NER Todhills branch (which served the original Byers Green station) used to diverge. The line to Bishop Auckland curves to the left.



Approaching the "new" Byers Green station.



Entering the avoiding line at Byers Green. From what I can tell from old maps this section was actually single track throughout, but I've added the avoiding line for operational flexibility.







Waiting for the road at Byers Green. From here to Coundon is again single track.

...and finally, someything a bit arty:



Next up: The line south to Coundon.