I noticed today that since GWE was remastered I've spent such an obscene amount of time playing on it, either flying up and down or making up shunt moves at Paddingon and Old Oak, that my profile now tells me it's my favourite route. The experience of driving along a stunningly-built route that you know well is one thing, but the reskins provided by the community give it a whole new dimension and allow you, using your imagination to ignore certain bits of scenery and changes to the track layout, to recreate at least the past 50 years of operations. If I had more space here I would have added in the 101s in BR Blue and NSE liveries that were used up until the introduction of the Thames Turbos, as well as the sleeper service in Intercity Swallow and FGW liveries and the NSE loco-hauled services (we need a 50!). This renewed enjoyment of the route has also made it painfully obvious to me that the 165/166 needs an update so that it can be reliveried, as we don't have any NSE, Thames Trains or First Great Western Link liveries for it. I seem to remember Liam stating this was due to the way it had been designed / UV-mapped... Hopefully one day DTG will be kind enough to produce the unbranded "legacy" liveries so that the community can work its magic! I suppose this post is mainly a thank you to the dozens of people contributing high-quality liveries either to the Creators Club or to Train Sim Community. If you recognise your work, then cheers! JB
Following on from my comments about the lack of reskins for the Turbo, and because I used to love reskinning stuff in Trainz / Rail Simulator / Railworks / TSC when I was a young man... I've decided it's time to get to grips with the PC Editor and try my hand at producing one in Network SouthEast livery. Thanks to the various guides online (cheers Matin_TSP and Mad31Basher!) I've managed to configure my first plugin and have started on retexturing the little blighter. The colours here are temporary and will need adjusting. I can immediately confirm the 166's texture map is an absolute pig to work with, as you can see from the various misalignments and bits of blue and white on the vents, etc. However it's "just" a case of finding out where the various parts are mapped to, which is always interesting. But before I do that I need to see if it's even possible to map the curved parts of the livery at the cab end, as I may find it's mapped in such a way that it can't be done... And that's before I look at removing the GWR logos et and other bits that either need to go or be hidden... Wish me luck! I found this screenshot of the very first model I attempted to build for Trainz back in 2006, using GMAX (remember that?), a photo of the front end of 165019 and a side texture created in Photoshop. If I can find that texture map I might be able to reuse the cab door area as a template, it's pretty much the only thing I got right on that model omg Winamp
