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).