Central Station's 100th Birthday Party

I have to say I was very dissapointed when I walked down to Central Station on Saturday to take part in the 100th aniversary celebrations.

This week has been an important one for rail heritage in New South Wales, with the state government using the 100th aniversary of the opening of Central Station to announce its future rail heritage plans, but the event itself clearly demonstarted to me that Railcorp is more concerned with the future than celebrating a century of transportation at one of Sydney's oldest stations.

The impression I was left with, after spending several hours wandering around the station, looking at the trains on display, was the the whole thing was a combined childrens birthday party and promotional exhibition for EDI Rail, the manufacturer of the Millenium train - one of the newest trains in the fleet.

The even newer Outer Suburban Cars (also known as OSCAR) (pictured) was also on display, but if its manufacturer, the United Group, was present, I really didnt notice them, except perhaps for one small banner which I can recall.

EDI on the other hand had at least two stalls handing out promotional material on platform one, and another in the main hall, and people on the trains answering questions.

There were a couple of guys in futuristic yet cartoonish jetpack styled outfits, acting like robots, there was also face paining, temporary tattoos, and at least 2 brightly coloured girls, making balloon anmals as they wandered up and down the platform entertaining the kiddies.

There was one old rail motor (CPH 18), a 45 class diesel (4520), idling in the escape road between platforms 3 and 4, and two steam trains running shuttle trips to Hurstville and back (3801, 3830). I got the distinct impression that the "Heritage" part of the display was the steam trains arriving and departing from platform 3 every few minutes.

Where was the electric heritage fleet? Where were the red rattlers which graced Central Station with their presence daily for over 75 years? I have no idea, and am at a loss to explain their absence, considering that Railcorp itself owns two complete and working red rattler sets, which I know were ready for the day, because I have spent one weekend a month for the last 7 months cleaning them!! I cant understand why Railcorp did not have them on show beside the Oscar and Millenium trains - there was definately enough room left on platform one for at least one, or perhaps both heritage sets.

As recently as two weeks ago I was told that at least one of them would be at Central on the day - perhaps both. and I was asked to come along to help guide people through them and answer their questions. The next time I go to Redfern Workshops, I will have a few questions of my own to ask - namely, What happened?.

A recent tour by one of the red rattler sets was postponed because Railcorp could not find drivers qualified to opertate their own heritage fleet, and I have previously been told that they apparently think that the public has little interest in these aging trains - a statement proven wrong by the popularity of the W set when it ran shuttles to Olympic Park last year.

I dont have all the answers yet, but I often get the impression that when it comes to heritage rail, Railcorp and the state government are not really trying, and as was shown today, to them, celebrating 100 years of Central Station history means promoting the two newest trains in its fleet (one of which is so new that it has not even started revenue service yet), and putting on a couple of steam trains to keep the heritage crowd quiet.

I'll post more when I find out why the red rattlers never made it to the party.

Progress Update

Here I am, hard at work.... well, not really - I pinched the picture from the Internet since I dont have any screenshots that I can post at the moment.

Im still working on things, but dont have a lot of progreess that I can show right now. Rest assured that Im working on it, and you will see the results sometime soon.

The main thing I have been doing in the last week or so is slowly piecing together all the small bits of script that I have collected, along with some of my own ideas, in order to produce a script that can drive all of the features that I have in mind.

For the moment, Im working on the basics - lights, drivers, doors etc. I will be able to use these functions in all of the traincars that Im currently working on - the 86 class, the Tangara, and even in the side project, which is still coming along slowly, with the animations done, and just a little tweaking of the mesh still to do, before I can finally finish it off with a little scripting.

Scripting doesnt lend itself too well to screenshots, so although I dont have much to show for the last couple of weeks work, I do have some code that is now beginning to take the shape which I had in mind. Bear with me, I'll have things to show you all again soon.

Latest Ramblings

Ive been working with Gmax on and off over the last couple of weeks. I havnt managed to get back in to my obsessive, every day, gmax habit that I was in before, but Im in there at least a couple of times a week recently.

Im about two thirds of the way through my side project, so thats coming along, and Ive done some more on the Tangara in the last few days. I dont have any screen shots, because not much has changed, visually.

Im still working on getting the texture mappings right for the outer body, and have been doing a bit of hand optimising while Im at it. In the last few days I shaved around 50 or 60 polys off of the body. The body itself is around 2300 polys in total, so I think thats a significant saving. It also helps with the texture mapping.

I knew textures would be the hard part. I havnt even started trying to draw in any detail - Im still trying to get the basic shapes mapped out onto the bitmaps. Ive decided to break it down a little. Originally I was trying to map the body to a single 1024 by 1024 bitmap, but Ive now broken that down into two 512 by 512 bitmaps, and will see if that helps. One thing that does help is being able to see how others have done it, so along with all the Auran samples on the Content Creation Art CDs, the side project has also helped in that department.

Im still thinking about the scripting, but that is a while off - I wont be starting on that until I have the control trailer textured so that I can export it to Trainz and test out the scripts. The other reason that it has to be textured now is that once its done, I can begin copying it to create the other cars (9 in total). Since the first one will already be textured, the copies will have most of their textures already in place, and will only need a bit of tweaking, and customisation here and there. It saves me having to go through this frustrating exercise multiple times.

Ive been collecting bits of script for months, and searching the forums for tips and tricks, such as how to tell if you are in driver or surveyor, or how to tell if you're in DCC mode or Cab mode. All of these snippets have been tucked away, and Ive found a few great example scripts which I can use a few pieces from. Many thanks to everyone who releases unencrypted scripts with their freeware - it helps newbies like me learn the tricks and see how they're implemented.

I know there is quite a long way to go. After 9 months, I really wish it was all finished, but theres many more months left to complete all of my currently active projects, and there are many more projects that I want to get started on. Its looking like I'll never get around to some of them - but that is what prioritising is for.

Photo: Rotten Row at Redfern

Im Back!

As I mentioned last time, Ive had a break for a few weeks. This happens all the time, and for me its quite normal. I work on a project for months straight and then just have to walk away from it for a little while. In the case of the Tangara, its been just over 7 months so far, and Ive worked on it fairly constantly over that time.

The good news is that Im back! Ive been forcing myself to get back into Gmax for the last few days, and finally I managed it last night. Tonight was the second night, so I think things should get back to normal from now on.

For the moment, Im working on something else, which is still Trainz related so you will benefit from it, however I dont want to post screen shots since I am working with someone elses models, and will leave it to them to make any announcements when its released. I expect this will take a few weeks, and I will try to do a little on the Tangara and 86 Class as I go, but for the moment I want to focus on this to ensure it gets started. So far, Ive just about completed the work that Im doing to the first model, and should be able to replicate most of that to the next one, so Im at least part way there.

I'll post more soon, and some screenshots of the Tangara and 86 Class, but wanted to at least let everyone know that things are progressing again.

Busy Busy Busy

Wow. Its been a busy couple of weeks, and with everything else thats been going on, I guess Ive needed a bit of a break from Gmax, but a few things have been happening on the sidelines that you might find interesting.

Its not that I actually took a break, its more that so much else has been happening that I just didnt have the brain capacity left to deal with complex shapes in three dimensional space. Things seem to have calmed down a little now and hopefully I will get back into modelling soon.

First a bit of self-promotion: You may have noticed the "Atom" button towards the lower right of the page. If you have an Atom reader or use a web site which lets you add Atom feeds to your personal page, you can get headlines from this blog, and can easily see when Ive added a new article. I meant to mention that weeks ago when I created the button.

So, basically Ive just been doing other things for a while. Real life stuff, and also a bit of goofing around because we all need to unwind occasionally. For example... I discovered YouTube which is a brilliant idea, and a great time waster. You can sit and watch videos for hours. Make sure you check out the videos by Brookers. Her fresh style caught my attention well before I discovered that it had also caught the eye of the NBC network, who promptly hired her. There are a lot of other good videos too - and a ton of crap. For my personal favourite its best to go directly to their home page for the full story, and if you like the Honda Accord "Things Work" commercial, you'll find the full length version on YouTube too. (you know... the domino effect one - you'll recognise it about a minute in).

You remembered to search for a few train related keywords, right? Try Cityrail, Tangara, Zigzag, "NSW train" etc. In case I missed it, theres a cab ride across the harbour bridge too. YouTube looking more interesting now?? If you really want to be impressed try Shinkansen, Nozomi, or FastTech. Doh! Ive created another YouTube addict.

What else. Lets see... I bought MSTS on special for $12.95 and have had a bit of look at that. I needed to see it for myself to see how it is different to Trainz. Both have strengths and weaknesses, but I think I still prefer Trainz.

Work has been busy lately with a few problems that Im still fixing now (even over the weekend). At least I can log in from here and dont have to travel to the office.

I spent Saturday at HET preparing both of the Red Rattler sets for a tour at the end of the month. RailCorp still hasnt decided if they will allow the manual door F1 set to run. If they dont, the other set (W3) has automatic doors and will be our backup plan, so they both have to be ready just in case.

A lot more has been going on, but these are a few things that come to mind right now.

Once I get back into Gmax I have a few things to do. Naturally theres the Tangara and the 86 Class to finish, and a few smaller things to think about, but theres something else as well. I always save the best until last, to make it worthwhile to those who read through all this waffle, so heres what I can tell you...

Ive come to an arrangement with another Trainz content creator to do some work on a couple of his models. I dont want to say too much at this stage because when its complete it will be a welcome surprise to all NSW Trainz fanatics, and its all about the models rather than my small part, so I want the creator to get all the fuss when he finally releases them. Im only mentioning it here to let all of you know that there is something else that I will be spending my time on, so progress on the 86 and the Tangara will be a little slower than usual over the next few weeks.

Im still trying to figure out the texturing for the Tangara, but I have read a lot and looked at some textures on other models to get an idea of how everyone else does it, so its progressing, but just a little slower than I would like. I always said that the texturing would be the hard part. Between complex scripting and texturing, I'll take the scripting any time! I'll keep you up to date on the Tangara, but naturally I cant post updates on the other "secret" project. Im sure you'll appreciate it when its done. Its minor work, so hopefully it should be done within a few weeks.

Before the break, I managed to get a fair bit done on the 86 Class interior which I havnt posted here yet. Theres still more to do but most of the levers and main attachment points are in place and just need a little tweaking. The S set interior will also get some attention soon, as its been a while since I worked on that, and Im still waiting for someone to start a Japanese Trainz group :)

The photo above was taken in the far corner of the yard at Redfern Carriage Workshops a couple of weeks ago.

Hmm, extra long post - too much stuff in my head. Back to normal next week I hope.