Last of the 86 Class Electrics

So much has been happening lately. Tangara Progress is in the third article below.

On Sunday I went to Milsons Point to photograph the special tour train organised by 3801 Limited and the ARHS. It was hauled by an 86 Class electric, and went from Central, to Kiama, to Newcastle, and return.

With the withdrawl of the 86 class, this is now the last working passenger train hauled by these locomotives. The previous "last train" was also a special tour, hauled by 8646 for SETS just after the 86 class was decomissioned (8646 was on loan from Pacific National at the time).

This latest train was hauled by 8644, which surprised me a little. I was expecting to see 8606, owned by SETS, or 8646, now owned by ARTM, but 8644 is one of the four Silverton locomotives that are currently parked at Eveleigh. I have mentioned these, and posted a photo here before. Im guessing that 8644 was the lucky one as it was the last to be parked there, and so was the easiest to get out.

I took a few photos as the train came over the bridge, and also as it went through the station. It was completely full. Despite my interest in the 86 class, I decided not to be on this train since you dont really get much of a view of the locomotive from the passenger cars behind it, but that didnt seem to deter these passengers. Quite a number of them were packed into the small paltform area at the rear of GMS1, the last car of the train. This car is on loan to 3801Ltd, and is obviously very popular (see their site for more details about GMS1),

The photos that I took are still being developed, however my wife came along and so I got her to take a few snaps with her digital camera. I'll add one of those to this post, just as soon as she has finished watching Desperate Housewives on DVD. :)

The Real Redfern Workshops

I mentioned that I joined HET recently. Having been approved and recieved my members card, I wandered off down to the Redfern Workshops to meet the people. It was a quiet day so I basically just met the General Manager and a few other regular people (a couple of directors and members) and they were all really cool.

I had the grand tour, and was surprised at exactly what they have stored down there... I think its one of RailCorp's greatest secrets, but unfortunately with the site under threat of redevelopment, its a secret that is not doing rail fans any service. People should know whats down there, otherwise the assumption is that its just a bunch of empty old buildings, taking up space. Its far from it - In the 15 track, two building workshop facility there is not a single space where another carriage could be parked. The place is completely full of antique trains in varying states of restoration. They even have a couple of Tangara's in there (well... models of Tangaras anyway hehe).

I think its a big problem. Developers see what looks like an empty site and come up with a big plan. The councils and government representatives assume the place is abandoned and are keen to do something to make use of the empty space. Its not empty! My personal opinion is that it should be turned into a rail museam. It certainly has enough exhibits inside!!

Its the home of W3 and F1, the last two working red rattler sets in Sydney. I got to sit in the cabs of both so that they could show me the differences between them. The W set cab is slightly similar to the S set cabs. (it seems SRA carries designs over from one model to the next - indeed, many of the physical features of the Tangara interior can be traced back to the original Tulloch double deck cars)

Theres a few other red rattler carriages - including one that was part of the first train across the Harbour Bridge in 1932, and some of the earlier wooden electric carriages with spoked wheels. They have the first ever Tulloch Double Deck car that was built. Theres a U-boat (the old silver interurban trains before the V sets) and a 900 series rail car, as well as several decomissioned passenger carriages from more recent diesel hauled services on the Broken Hill line, and lots of other stuff as well, including a few maintenence trikes.

Im sure I will be down there a lot, and will try to get a few pictures to post here. My first job when I go back there will be to help restore some office space upstairs and set up a computer system for them. Later I will be working on other restoration projects, and helping to prepare the W and F sets for use occasionally.

Tangara Progress

So... How many handrails are there in a Tangara Control Trailer? I bet you really want to know. The answer is 22. I didnt believe it either - until I built them all.

There are several different types, depending on the location. For each type, I had to create one, and then copy it to the other positions where this type is found. That wasnt so hard. The hard part was doing the center handrail on the stairs - you know... the one that starts on the upper deck and twists and turns its way down to the lower deck. It started out as two different handrails (one from the upper deck, and one from the lower) with the ends cut off, and then I had to create a spline for the twisty bit in the middle which joins them together. Finally I then had to loft the spline to make it the right thickness, and then join the three pieces together. It was a real pain, but it turned out all right.

Ive noticed a few variations on the different Tangara trains that I have been catching recently. I have tried to build a generic impression of what I think of as a Tangara. This includes the "monkey-bars" that are progressively being removed from the vestibules in favour of a safer, simple, pair of vertical poles. I have seen quite a few people wipe themselves out on those older style bars which hang from the ceiling but dont reach the floor. I also noticed that some of the original cars have flat handrails, covered in black plastic tubing on the stairs, but I have stuck with the simple rounded chrome rails that Im so used to.

Ive added some other interior detail, and Im about to re-animate the doors (the final version) before beginning on the exterior detail.

As I predicted, the poly count has shot way up with the addition of the seats and rounded hand rails, but I was careful to reduce the poly count on the rails (I could do more if I wanted to spend the extra time on it - but Im over it). Even so, the total poly count (excluding bogies) still comes in at about 8000 as I had estimated earlier, so Im happy with it. The final detail will see that creep up a little, but I can live with that.

Oh... and you can see the bogies in the picture... I was kidding before when I said I wasnt going to show you. They could do with a little more detail (which I might add) but they're good enough, and currently about 2400 polys each. I blame the poly count on the rounded surfaces of the frame :)

Current poly count: 8400
File version: 235

Right-handed Train Stop released

Last week I had a request for a right-hand version of the train stop for use in the UK, specifically the London Metro and Underground. I hadnt thought about a right-hand version, since ours are on the left, and to be honest, I have no idea where else they might be used.

It took me about an hour to make the nescessary changes, test it, and send it to the download station. It should be approved in a day or so - look for "UK Train Stop" as the asset name.

Tangara Progress

Here is a bit of a close up showing some of the internal detail. Ignore the colours, I havnt textured it yet. I also havnt done the windows or handrails. This week, Ive been working on the bogie.

Thanks to David who gave me the proper wheel measurement, Ive now got the diameter right. I also found a few other dimensions in the OSC spec... tread width, back to back distance, etc.

I made a completely new axle/wheel model and imported it into the Tangara. The bogie required a lot of fiddling about with verticies, which took a lot of time - part of the problem was that Im working from photohraphs and as I discovered new things, I had to move some of the older bits that I had built. It includes the frame, the axle boxes and the axles and wheels. I wanted to get the frame looking right, which is what took most of the time. It also absorbed a lot of polys, so I didnt get around to adding things like brakes and other running gear. I may revise it later as it does look a little bare. Ive built a trailer bogie, and I will decide later if I am going to use that one for the motor car, or build a seperate motor bogie. I may end up just using the same bogie for both, given its already high poly count. At the moment the whole bogie package is about 2400 polys.

In the picture you can see one of the upstairs seats, and the vestibule panel that I did a week or so ago. Not a lot has changed on the interior recently. I want to tweak the seats a bit more at some stage.

Yesterday was the Sydney Goods Yard tour. Not being a morning person I was a little worried that I would not make the 7:50am departure from Central (despite living only 10 mins away). I was right. I went to bed earlier than usual and set my alarm for 6:30am. I woke up at around 5:30am and couldnt sleep. The next thing I knew was when I woke up again at 10:15am. The alarm didnt go off and I have no idea why - it was still set and ready to go when I woke up. I have been known to sleep through it, but my wife would definately have woken up if it had sounded.

Oh well. In not worried about the money that I paid, as far as Im concerned its a donation to a good cause. Im more annoyed with myself for not waking up earlier. I had thought about getting up at 5:30am when I couldnt sleep, but figured I would try to get the extra hour if I could.

It works out better for you, because I spent all of Sunday working on the bogie :)

Polly Count: 6400
File Version: 198

Lots of extra saves to get around a particular Gmax bugs saw the file count shoot way up. 

Dont be evil Google

Last week I found a funny rail related article on a news site and thought readers of this blog might also appreciate it. It was about 5km of disused rail track being stolen, somewhere in Germany. It would have appeared just below the previous post. Yesterday, I realised it was missing.

Have Google censored my blog? What other explanation is there for the missing article. It has clearly been removed, yet I got no notification, or even a courtesy email, despite having registered my email address with this account.

Admitedly I posted the full text of the news article, but it was very short - it would have been hard not to. I fully credited Reuters, and linked to the original article on their web site. I consider this fair use, since it is a tiny part of what Reuters publish on a daily basis. Its not like I scrape every single news story from hundreds of news services using an automated process and then database all of the stories and post them all over my own home page, while at the same time offering my own RSS or ATOM feeds to further distribute the articles, and rewriting the original article links in order to redirect all clicks through my own site for tracking purposes, or anything... Oh wait... that would be Google News.

Let me get this straight... Its ok for Google to aggregate news from all over the place, redistribute it, and track your clicks, but its not ok for me to post ONE article, properly linked and credited?

Google you should listen to your own words: "Dont be evil"!

The worst part is that Google are not accountable for anything. As a Google user, there is no support desk that you can email with a problem, and get a response. (If there is, please let me know because I certainly cant find it). All you have is their help pages, with a list of pre-defined newbie problems, like a FAQ. If your question is a little more technical, you have to click on the link at the bottom, saying "My problem is not listed here". You click on that, and get a form where you can describe the problem, but they never respond. I have sent them specific issues and specific questions about my Google account - some of them more policy related than technical, and nothing... no response. There is no way, that I am aware of, to ask them about my missing article, and get an answer from them.

I used to be Google's biggest fan. They have certainly revolutionised the web by being innovative, but the shine is beginning to come off, and they have grown to become a huge monolithic corporation that is no different from any other large corporate entity... Cold, impersonal, and according to the criteria normally applied to humans, psychopathic.

You're beginning to lose it Google. Pay attention before it too late.

PS: The missing post was MUCH smaller than this one. Personally, I saw more value in the earlier post.

Tangara Progress

Here is the latest screenshot. Ive added the seats on both decks, done a little more detailing in the vestibule, and started on the bogies. You may just notice the wheels peeping out at the rear.

One thing I havnt done is textured any of this, so I may redo the seating to make things easier on myself (ie: texture one seat and replicate it). Its not that hard. Once I had the first row of seats, the rest took about 15 minutes to get into the right places.

The vestibule now has the dividing panels between the seating and the doors. You can see it in the picture (if only I knew how to get blogger to not shrink the image so much when posting with picassa... I may fiddle with that later). I still have to add the glass to the panels, but that will come when I do all of the windows. Since I have been avoiding texturing, and need to texture the glass to make it transparent, I will probably be doing that last.

The wheels that you can see are temporary, and are only there so that I can scale the bogie visually. Im not quite sure of the Tangara's wheel diameter. I do know that an 86 class loco has a wheel diameter of 1250mm, but some quick math and the knowledge that the floor level above the wheels is at 1.2m, tells me that this is way too big for the Tangara. the wheels in the picture have a diameter of 914mm and I will probably be using those in the finished model, since they look about right.

As per the prototype, the bogies are hidden away under the skirt. If you want to see them, you're just going to have to wait until I release it, and set yourself up to have a derailment - thats fair, because thats pretty much the only way I have been able to see them too. If Tangaras didnt derail, I wouldnt have any reference material. I found several photographs on the net of the Concord and Kingsgrove derailments, including a few close up pictures of the bogies as the carriages were being loaded on to low-loaders to be removed by road.

Which reminds me... I may be able to get some specs, such as wheel diameter from the Waterfall Inquiry report. If anyone knows where I can find a copy of the Interim report, please let me know. I have the final report, but it lacks some earlier detail which was in the interim report. Unfortunately the Inquiry web site seems to be gone, and the links on the Cityrail pages lead to a 404 error. Ive been looking for the Interim report for some time.

Other News

I have been having a little bit of success with the development of a new Redfern Workshopz web site. There is still a long way to go, and some modules dont work properly yet, but should be working soon. Ive tried three different versions of the software so far, and currently the latest bleeding edge code from the CVS repository seems to be the only version giving me any joy. I wonder how long that will last, before someone breaks it (as often happens with development code).

As usual, Ive been quiet lately, but Ive been busy. Ive been evaluating CAD (Computer Aided Design) software, and think I have found one that is suitable for my needs. I hope to use it to create detailed drawings of various NSW Rail related things (locomotives, EMUs, Buildings), specifically for 3D modellers (if I can find the time). I know that sources already exist for these kind of drawings, but so far I have found many of them lacking a few critical dimensions. I hope to go into a bit more detail. The drawings would be for sale on the new web site (at a small cost to cover my time) along with any payware models that I might create in the future.

This Sunday, (the 12th) Im catching the special 3801 Limited tour train (diesel hauled) which will be visiting a lot of sidings and goods yards around Sydney. Ive already been through Enfield, but Im looking forward to visiting Rozelle Yard, Lavender Bay (behind Luna Park) and Port Botany Yard. W00t! I just hope I can get up early enough!

The following Sunday, (19th) there is another tour which is being hauled by an 86 class electric locomotive. I wont be catching that one, but I will be out to photograph it. You'll probably find me at Milsons Point station in the middle of the day since the train will be crossing the bridge on its way from Kiama to Newcastle. Later I'll be at Central when it arrives at the end of the tour.

Lets se what kind of trouble the rent-a-cops can give me on that day :)

Current Tangara Stats:
File version: 167
Poly Count: 5100