Creation Sharing Marston Vale Line (bedford - Bletchley)

I have no proper idea what I'm doing.
Currently, I have all the track laid (except for portals) and I am doing stations and signals at the moment.

(I've somehow spent 205 hours on this)

 

looks good, cant wait for release!

 

I like a thread that begins "I don't know what I'm doing". That always grabs my interest as neither do I.

Having said that I failed miserably at route building (and I was only going to build a Pier Railway) but, instead, have learnt timetables, paths and Formations.

Your 205 hours look to have been well spent. Keep going and Well done

 

Can absolutely relate to that. - Epic Games says that I spent 511 hours on mine already. Keep up, mate!

Can you say us a little bit more about your plans and the route itself (where is it located, possible rolling stock)? Your track laying seems already pretty decent.

 

There's this google doc which has some timetable stuff and layers.

 

My favourite part of the route so far: The Crossover where the Midland Mainline passes over the Marston Vale Line

 

Wrong livery, but its a start.

 

More Midland Mainline Electrification. Im dreading doing the WCML.

 

I have "borrowed" Bletchley from WCML and converted the route to TSW5.

 

the track will need relaying

 

really hope this gets finished this is so cool

 

Made a start on the station directory, this currently is enough to get the Marston Vale Stations & one thameslink service to three bridges in. I'm then going to need to do the north end of the midland mainline and both ends of the west coast mainline.

 

I have finished most of the OHLE around Bedford and the carriage sidings.

 

I also did a test to check that I had set up the electrification of the track up properly.


(This photo was taken before all of the wires were setup.)

 

Will the WCML South stock layer at Bletchley now that all the appropriate trains have been released?

 

Yes. They were already in the formations list in preparation.

 

Some photos of the current formation situation. These will be modified by the end of the weekend.

 

This is incredibly good and quick progress. really impressed

 

Turns out I never actually got round to finishing the trackwork around Bletchley and since I'm reusing the Bletchley station model from WCML, the track needs relaying...

 

Currently at the mercy of the editor and it's not going well. (Here is Bedford) Due to the editor being weird, it has decided to not pick up any of the DLC I own and because the route uses assets from said DLC, the route has ended up in this state. All I can currently hope is that the editor will reimport the assets when it starts detecting the DLC again and the route would be unaffected.

 

Everything seems to be fine now, fingers crossed it stays that way .
In other news, I have relayed the track at Bletchley to better fit the station model. In addition, the texture glitch present at bletchley's additional platforms for the flyover doesn't carry over to mine like I thought it would.

 

magic

 

What's magic boa?

 

For this week:
Finish Bletchley CS + Add markers
Finish adding markers for Bletchley station and fix electrification issues.
I need to get around to adding portals to the WCML and MML. I also need to figure out how to name them, as the ones I have placed at the moment are just named PORTAL.

 

This whole project looks amazing, keep it up!!

 

I've started to move formations to a separate plugin to be ready for the creation of timetables once I get to that stage. Because most of the formations I made in the TSW4 editor wouldn't load when I reopened it, I've ended up with many copies of formations and they're all in different places so that needs cleaning up.
The current formation layout is now separated by freight company to future-proof the timetable and allow for quick formation switches if we get any more accurate rolling stock.

 

It has in fact happened again... I've found out that its a problem with the asset rediscovery. It loads all the assets from my route and its gameplay folders but doesn't load any other DLC (Which this route heavily relies on) It seems to be a problem after the editor is updated then it randomly fixes itself some time later.

 

I should still be able to do station directory stuff as that doesn't rely on any other DLC but not much else which is a shame.

 

More formation stuff tonight. Mostly adding the Freight stock from the timetable I wrote down. Some of which are seasonal.

Here's the freight stuff I intend to have in the timetable.

 

It turns out I completely forgot to add in the sidings at Stewartby so I'm doing that today.

 

The (Mostly) Completed job!

 

Great work so far

 

I'm missing about 6 sidings and then after that, the Stewartby sidings will be complete and I can move on to other work.

 

Nice development.

 

I have finished the sidings now, all I need to do is finish any missing junctions here and around the map and then it's the painful process of placing & setting up signals!

 

No photos today, I was focusing on getting Bletchley Carriage Sidings done.

 

I attempted to mess with Blender to see what I could do regarding custom assets. I'm sure there are more efficient ways to do this but I have no idea how.

 

Just keep at it and it'll come good one day. An interesting route. Have fun.

 

More map work today/yesterday.
A lot of work needs to be completed in the Bletchley area. Forders sidings just need to be marked out and named, and I'm considering whether doing Bedford Caudwell Walk Depot is worth my time or not.

 

Seeing as this overlaps with the WCMLS, would it not be best to see what level they model the Bletchley area too (with certain sidings etc) and match that?

 

All I would suggest is that if you are going to go to the trouble of creating areas you name all sidings etc so that they can be pathed to (and from) and used in scenarios and free roam.

So many routes have inaccessible areas and next to no paths. Try and avoid that if you can.

Very good work so far

 

I have extended the track west towards EWR and have fully redone platform markers at Bletchley. I need to finish the track at the sidings and set the speed limit + electrification in the sidings and depot. After that its onto signals and station models.

 

an actual physical set of map photos for once! (The trees are entirely temporary and will be redone when I get around to doing scenery)
I've finally finished Bletchley Carriage Sidings track laying. All that is needed there now is setting up siding markers & fixing random speed limit errors where I've used the wrong track rule.

 

This looks great. It's nice seeing how far it has come over the past few months. Can't wait to have a go on it.

 

The bad news is I can't spell. The good news is, I'm almost finished with setting up and naming portals!
I'll post an update a little while after this.

 

I've finally finished all the portals, now apart from that its:
- Signals
- Speed Limits
- Electrification Fixes
- Forders' Sidings being marked out
- Bletchley Sidings being marked out
- Station models (11)
- Scenery

 

I've extended platforms 7 & 8 at Bletchley because they are longer in reality and the DTG model either wasn't done for the same time period or just wasn't done. However, the platforms aren't functional as no passenger services use the platforms yet.

 

I started on the scenery around Bedford a while back and then didn't show a proper photo of it here.

 

I'm finally getting round to doing signals!

I have somehow missed out on an entire junction because I didn't know how to change some track properties.