A quick one about comments

I found a couple of old comments from May that somehow did not get published, so I published them today. I dont know if Blogger sends an email to posters when comments are published or rejected (to those non-anonymous ones whose email address is known), but if it does, that would be why a couple of you might have gotten emails today.

To answer a couple of questions in those comments, yes, Im doing the T set, and the G set and also Melbourne's Tangara test train, the 4D. I think I recall answering that one before. Yes, Im also doing a trailer - in fact there will be 9 carriages all together to cover the variations of the three trains. The other models will be created once the control car model is finalised, to take advantage of it having already been textured and set up for export.

I got a couple of comments on the previous post about Central Station's 100th Birthday, but I decided not to publish one anonymous comment which contained some names and details. I was trying to make the article a little generic, and avoided naming names where possible. To Dave, I'll just say thanks for the comment, and that I try to make my own mind up on things, and often that means listening to several different versions of the same story and then deciding which one sounds more reasonable. I still havnt quite heard all the versions yet, so it may have been premature of me to give my opinion. I think the issue with the drivers may have been more clerical than availability. I dont often see Barry, as we tend to go on different days, but I will have a chat and pass on your regards when I see him next.

I havnt done a lot of work on Trainz models (either the Tangara, the 86 class, or the side project) in the last week or so. Im hoping to spend some time on it tomorrow (I have Mondays off, but I also have some errands to run). The Tangara has become a little bogged down in the texturing stage, but Im hoping to remedy that the next time I can get a few uninterupted hours on it. Ive tried a few experiments, which havnt worked as well as I would have liked, so Im planning to hit it with a bit of force this time, and just do what works in order to get it to a point where I can show a different looking screen shot than what Ive previously posted.

Comments on Comments

There hasnt been much progress on the Tangara this week, but I have been working on a few smaller items, and one or two pieces that will end up in the Tangara later.

Thanks for all the comments on the last post. I wanted to respond to some of them here.

Features

Nathan asked if the cab would be animated. It sure will!. How much is animated wlll depend on how long it all takes, how well I can communicate between the cab script and the exterior one. (That should be easy). Essential things like the driver will obviously go in first, while less-essential items like blinds will be added later, as time and skilz permit. Pretty much everything suggested was already on my list for considereation. (plus a few more ideas too). I'll keep you posted here, as it all progresses.

Alex mentioned the Cityrail Driver by Davido. I have seen it, and his Freightcorp drivers, but I would like to make my own for several reasons. (Some of which will become apparent when you get to see the Tangara). No offence to Davido, his models are excellent, and indeed I have been very impressed with everything so far from Cardiff Workshops, but I have some ideas in mind and making my own driver mesh would allow me some extra flexibility. This is one of the several smaller things that Ive been working on this week.

Payware

Payware is an issue that can polarise people. Some people "get it" and dont mind parting with a few bucks, others expect that everything should be handed to them for free, and most are somewhere in between.

Over recent months, a few people, (ky most recently) have commented at various times that the Tangara should be (or could be) payware. I take that as a very big compliment. Thank you. These comments generally mean that people appreciate the work that has been put in to the model, and I gratefully accept that.

Ive said from day one that the Tangara (and all its variants) will be FREE, and will be uploaded, unencrypted to the DLS to be looked at and learned from, however I am not promising the same for any future models that I might build. Each will be decided on its merits when its started. At present, I currently have no payware items planned.

Here is my take on payware:

Over the last 4 months, since starting on the Tangara, Ive spent quite a bit of time at my computer. Im a geek, so my wife is quite used to that, but recently it has been a lot more time that it used to be, and it has caused some friction on occasion.

Without even considering the number of hours spent working on the Tangara, I do feel that it would be nice to recieve a little appreciation for the time spent away from my family, but at the same time I also understand that its my choice to do that.

Its not about money - Im never going to get rich making 3D models. Its simply about people appreciating the effort that went in to it. Im hoping that Auran might select the Tangara to be included in future versions of Trainz, if its considered good enough, and that is one form of appreciation.

Money is obviously another form, and is merely a token. If I ever do release payware, it wont be more than a few bucks per download - definately under $5 (probably with a couple of dollars to spare) because accumulaing vast amounts of money is not the point. Its simply about saying Thank You.

Having said that, I am working on a Redfern Workshopz website to be released at some time in the future, and one of the required features will be an online store, to allow me to make payware models available, if I choose to do so. This is just one of many features that I require for the new site, and its no more, or no less important than the other required features, such as project management or forums.

Now, if only drupal would play nice.

Letters to and from the Editor

I havnt done much on the Tangara this week, so far (I still have tomorrow as one of my "Weekend" days. I seem to have spent most of my time reading and writing emails or forum posts. Some of that time has also been spent on research, but the model itself hasn't gotten much further. Late nights at work, and familiy commitments saw my free time reduced somewhat.

I was surprised to get so many comments on the last post, and I wanted to respond to some of the points made in them, so that is mainly what this post is about.

It seems that there are indeed a few people checking this site daily, so I will keep that in mind and try to post a couple of times a week, but it wont be as frequent as when I first started.

I had a chance to go through the sounds that I recorded last week for the Tangara model. The sound quality was not as good as I had hoped. Im using a small digital recorder, and it apparently has a cheap microphone, with no option to plug an external one into it. Some of the recordings were reasonable, and Im hoping to clean them up using software later. I'll keep trying whenever Im out and about, and Im fairly sure that I will come up with something workable by the time the model is ready for it.

Not having owned any older versions of Trainz, I cant compare, but there are indeed a lot of features in the latest version for content creators to take advantage of. Most of them have been around for a while and are documented in the TRS2004 Content Creators Guide, but I have found, in my experience that many content creatirs dont take advantage of them. I plan to push the envelope, and use as much as I can. Im always really impressed when I see an item that fully exploits the available features, and Im sure you would be too. Dreddman's QR Watertank is one that recently caught my eye, and it is a good example of what you can achieve with a little extra effort. Be sure to see the final picture on page 3 of that post. Its on the DLS by now.

I actually came across the Melbourne 4D train a few weeks back, while looking for some Tangara specs, and did a little more research on it. It certainly provoked a bit of interest, as I found many old posts about it archived from the aus.rail newsgroups, and even a couple of pictures. Given its similarity to a Tangara G set (on the outside anyway, minus the access panels) I was going to do a standard gauge version of the 4D as bonus. Oh well, I guess thats out of the bag now :)

Ive been talking on the Trainz forums recently about the four 86 Class locos that are currently parked at Eveleigh, so I thought the above picture would be good for this post. It shows 8601, 8609, 8622 and 8644 parked in the siding between the Australian Technology Park buildings (Former Eveleigh workshops) and the Eveleigh end of the Redfern Dive (The track on the right). They're not coupled into a consist, just parked close to one another. I noticed that Google Earth shows three of them (unless I mis-counted), so they have been there a while. I guess 8644 came along later.

These passed to Pacific National when it bought Freight Corp, and were then sold to Silverton in 2003, when Pacific National got rid of its remaining electric fleet, reportedly due to higher electricity charges from the newly formed Rail Infrastructure Corp. Alas there are now no electric locos running in NSW, and these four are presumably awaiting their fate, at the young age of only around 21 Years - about half the working life of the 46 Class electric fleet. Cityrail leased these four back from Silverton for work on the Bondi Turnback. Using electric locos in the tunnels removes the problems of desiel exhaust in the confined space. I bet they wished that they'd kept a few, when they realised that! Once the turnback was completed, having no use for them, and rather than take them all the way back to Broken Hill, Silverton parked them here, where they sit idle, except for a few odd jobs such as special tours.

Cut down in thier prime, like the 85 class before them.