Sidmouth Branch Progress #2

Hello again! It's high time I shared some recent developments on the Sidmouth Branch. Sidmouth itself was notably absent in my announcement post, as little progress had been made. 

Since the middle portion has remained broadly unchanged, this post will focus on the progress that I have made at either end.

The area around Sidmouth station has gone from being quite empty to nearly finished.

Although generic assets are currently being used as placeholders, those of you familiar with the area will note how little has changed; the station buildings and much of the goods yard remains in situ, in use as an industrial estate.

The yard was full of private traders, from coal and grain merchants to larger businesses like Miller & Lilley who owned siding space in many other Devon goods yards.

Many new houses were built after the war, much aided by Miller and Lilley who imported and stored construction materials in their own sizeable warehouse.

Sidmouth's rail-served gasworks has also been modelled, as it was before the late 1950s, when the site was purchased by J.P. White, who used it to build VW campervans.

The last thing of note within immediate station surroundings is Bulverton farm, and the public riding stables, it took a few tries to get the orchards looking right, but I am happy with the current iteration.

Much has changed on the northern third of the line, since this was the section I started with when I first learnt how to route build: It has all been ripped up and re-done. Now field boundaries have proper fences and foliage, streams and footpaths have been suitably detailed, and embankments have been re-laid to closer match photographs.

Most notably the road crossings at Gosford and Cadhay have been modelled, which was fun to do, but a little fiddly. There was some quite complicated loft work here.

The things to do next will be to finish adding embankment grass and telegraph poles, rebuild a hundred or so field boundaries between Ottery and Tipton, as well as detailing the towns themselves, then its just a simple matter of assets, signalling, and scenarios.

The more that gets finished, the more there is to do!

I look forward to sharing some more soon!

-Leonard

Tewkesbury Heritage Railway

We have just released our first route of 2026: Tewkesbury Heritage Railway. This short preserved line is a re-imagination of history, running from Tewkesbury to Ashchurch. See the route page for more info!

Stroudley Coaches Progress #2

After a long break over Christmas... I'm back! Today showcasing the different liveries the carriages will come in. Then, I will talk about the fancy scripting I've done on the doors. With that, the D37 First is almost done, paving the way for other diagrams after some initial testing. Hopefully things will be smooth sailing from here, working on the coaches when I get the chance between work and other GAD duties.

Liveries

The plan is to represent the coaches in 6 liveries (or 'conditions'), corresponding roughly to decades of operation. For simplicity all coach diagrams are represented in all liveries, and some other details are left out for the sake of development time.

1. 1870s condition: Varnished mahogany with oil lighting, unflitched solebar, continuous lower footboard. This version is unbraked.

2. 1880s condition: Varnished mahogany with brakes, flitched solebar, conventional stepboard.

3. 1890s condition: Painted mahogany with gas lighting.

4. 1900s condition: Umber and white livery.

5. 1910s condition: Umber livery.

6. 1920s condition: Maunsell green with Southern decals and detailing.

Roof Variation

As I expounded upon last time, the roofs are randomly given different levels of weathering. The chance of getting a cleaner versus dirtier roof is dependent on the livery – earlier and short-lived liveries are assumed to have a higher chance of clean white canvas.

Additionally, for scenario creators' ease, you can set the roofs of the whole train by appending '*' to the railvehicle flag, for example ;RT=1* will give white roofs to the whole train.

Door Features

Overview

This pack introduces a number of special door behaviours which were not present in my last coach pack (the LSWR block sets):

• Door opening and closing is randomly timed to give variety
• Doors open a random amount, changing each time they open
• Droplights will be open by a random amount, depending on season, weather, and time
• More/fewer doors will open depending on the train type (see later)
• Droplights will only drop for early liveries without internal door clasps
• Doors can be set open upon scenario start/without a driver icon using ;DL=1 or ;DR=1 (for left and right, respectively)
• Individual door opening and closing has sounds

Doors Open in Scenario Editor/On Scenario Start

This is going to be useful for scenario creators, as they can have the doors be forced open without setting up any passenger instructions. Unfortunately, AI passengers won't get on and off, but I think it will be a helpful feature nonetheless. The amount of doors open depends on the train type (see later), and it is possible to get an idea of this in the scenario editor (although not the exact doors, due to randomisation of the random seed). It is necessary to specify ;DR=1 or ;DL=1 for each carriage, as otherwise a train could end up with doors opening on both sides along a consist! For gulley platforms, you can have both open. Finally, if you use this on a drivable train, simply hitting 'T' will cause the doors to close after a delay, but note this only works on valid platforms. It will require playing around.

Train Type Functionality

The train type controls how many doors open at stations. It can be set via the railvehicle number using ;TT=x where is from 1 to 5, and 0 is default. Alternatively, if you leave it blank (or default), the train type will be estimated from the consist type (e.g. 'express passenger', 'stopping passenger' etc). The aim for this feature is to have low priority trains simulate fewer passengers, and busy trains have lots of doors opening at every station. Please note: this won't affect the in-game platform characters.

The train types are as follows:

• 0 = default
• 1 = packed train, nearly all doors open
• 2 = busy train, many doors open
• 3 = quiet train, few doors open
• 4 = sparse train, hardly any doors open
• 5 = empty train, no doors open

Video of Doors

This video demonstrates a ;TT=2 door cycle on invisible platforms.

Please forgive the garbage compression quality! Hopefully this is clear – more videos coming soon.

Thanks for reading.