Nice Photo!

Great photo added to the Bishop Auckland Station facebook page. If only I had this image when I was making the station!
:)

6 months since it was signed off

How time flies, it has been 6 months since the route got signed off and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Since then I have been working on the next 12 to 18 month plan, helping new staff and looking at new tech.

It is also coming up to 10 years since i joined the rail sim project and it has played a huge part of my life.
I still play the game every day and route build on a small scale most evenings.
My latest fun thing to do is make small fictional dioramas out of each route pack to see what I can come up with.
I'm not sure I have another route in me, but I do hope to start my Bishop Auckland oil painting set soon.
I turn 44 in January which leaves me 6 years to fulfill my dreams of putting on a show in the Bishop Auckland town hall before I turn 50.

I may well keep my blog going to keep folks that are interested updated with my art.

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Fun fan made

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETi63Y_3nzw&feature=youtu.be

Something I put together while I was closing in on finishing the route.

thought I'd share it for a short time.

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Locomotion Steam Gala

Come and join me at:
Shildon Steam Gala Weekend Sept 2015

View the latest TS2016. See the game and witness Bishop Auckland and surrounding railway area in the 1960's through a Virtual Reality headset.On show from Saturday morning till Sunday evening.

And so it was released

And gosh what a lot of noise.
:)

Overall I'd say the majority of the comments are very positive.
I have seen some chat about advanced speed limits.
We discussed and included so totally by design.

It has been a pleasure to share our project with you all. For a long time I thought that maybe only a select few would only get to see route and in an unfinished state.

I am also really pleased to have the 101, 37, 08 included in the pack. these locos were all built by me over the years so to bring them all together was great.

Ben and Mike rebuilt the 25 and Ricardo rebuilt the 105. It is a really nice pack, wish I had chance to put in my 03 though, but never mind.

These past few days I have enjoyed the scenarios myself, it is nice to stop building and actually just enjoy the passing of the scenery.

If I had my time again I'm not sure I would have built it, it has taken a huge amount of my personal time and I only ever really set out to rebuild Bishop Auckland station and surrounding area.

For many old timers they will see lots of assets that have been used over the years. however if you have seen them before just remember they were built for this route first!

Towards the end I kept many of the assets away from the other routes, and even in the last weekend before released I managed to slip in a further 10 new buildings.
But you have to stop somewhere, art is often never finished you just run out of time or energy, I ran out of both!
I felt a huge amount of responsibility for doing this route justice after such a long time in development and it took a fair amount out of me.

I really am cool with people criticising the route. People have paid for it and can feedback whatever they like. I would have just kept it to myself if I was scared of that.

I know it is a good route and I know it is really good value. I know people put their best into it and I am very proud of it and the team.
And really that is all you can hope for.

Not sure I will ever undergo a new route, but this route does have a fair amount of scope for extensions. Richmond, Hartlepool, Sunderland, Newcastle, York, ECML, Saltburn, Tow Law and Consett to name but a few.

I'm not sure where this blog will go from here. I am just going to enjoy the summer and give myself a rest.

Once again, thank you to all who has been involved read my blog and left me comments here.
This place alone has been as much part of the process as the production!

OK, I am off to drive my 101 to Darlo once more!

Fan made film below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4kaafQz5eU

Gowlands

I just had to put this 'shop' in.

For K.

Market Place Part 1

Nowhere near the track but hey it had to go in! Back in the day this would be all market stalls etc, but I just made it to how it was now-ish or at least the best I could in a few hours. Bosh.

3am Eternal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxscxt88LrQ

This is my cut off time... 6 hours to do all I need to do!
Gonna be tight... will blog my progress tonight.

First up the 4 clocks (with 4 working clocks!)

Little fluffy clouds

I was bored of the 2D clouds so made some new ones.

Close to being finished

So after all these years many miles and many thousands of assets it has all boiled down to this.

This view was the sole reason I started in the first place.

Not long now!

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Time Travel

A few WIP shots

Memories

just a pretty picture

Not part of my route but just playing with styles.

Eastgate

North Road

Darlo

BA test Poster

It's Quicker by Rail

Just playing about exploring ideas for posters.

Shildon

Here are a few location shots, now those that know me know I took some cracking close up stone and brick shots!

Brancepeth

Brancepeth Station coming along nicely, missing clutter as with St John's Chapel and it also still has the temp floating platform in place as we test pick ups, these platforms will be made invisible and placed at the correct level of the model platform.

St Johns Chapel

This Station is very much the same as Wearhead, different layout but the building is almost identical but with the added toilet block at the end.
Platform lights, clock, posters and people still needed to be added, but those get added on a clutter pass.

But back to the Bridges!

Tees Viaduct

Stations I hear you cry...Durham - WIP

Coming along nicely, the Captain has hit the back of the net with this one.
Needs the details and surrounding scenery placed back but I think it looks a tad better than the old Kuju Durham station...

Lands Viaduct WIP

East Thickley Footbridge Shildon

I will get round to the stations....

Bridges everywhere!

Honestly I have not made a route with so many bridges!
Anyway, here is Skerne Bridge, a fairly famous one as bridges go...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway

I have added the extension on the far side too as in my time period there is 5 tracks heading towards North Road.

I rather Bish Bash Boshed this out tonight while sipping a fine wine. However I would like to point out that drinking and poly modelling is not normally advised! :)

Tees Viaduct next?

But what about the Stations I hear you cry!

Eldon footbridge - Shildon Tunnel

Here is a few from my childhood. I use to play around this area, it was great for BMX riding.

This footbridge is still there.

The bridge in reality has the support slightly off centre, but I made mine symmetrical for 2 reasons; 1 to fit the track layout and 2 so that it can be used more generically. There are hundreds of bespoke assets but some just have to be multitasking.

Newton cap viaduct - WIP

Made Skirlaw bridge and now it looks a little but more recognisable!

Interpretation - A stylistic representation of a creative work

So this is a subject I want to cover... And I am keen for a few to understand.

Over the many years I have been working on this project I have gathered a huge amount of resource.
It has been fascinating to see and understand how the network grew, worked and then slowly closed down.
Seeing once wonderful stations and buildings go to ruin is sad, I also struggle to understand why a number of key buildings were not kept, the powers that be seemed very short sighted.

Anyway, I picked my time period, 1950 till the closure of most the lines in 68.
My network is all open and all stations open for travel even if they would have been closed in that time period.
When anomalies get pointed out to me, I more often than not know if the choices I made were artistic or not. Our subject matter is all about detail and for the most part I love it, but for something to move on artistic compromises are made, but it's ok I am at peace with that. :)

To sum it up a little better, This is more of a painting than a photograph. If I thought something spoiled the view, i'd delete it, Bosh!

I know this may be heresy to a small number but I did not make it for those small few. I made this for myself mostly.

What started out as me wanting to make my home town train station 9 years ago ended up in a very complicated and detailed network that is great fun to drive.

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Heighington WIP

Still WIP and missing the main building at the crossing, but give you an idea of the area.
The signals and gantries have not been updated yet but once they are done the whole route will look much more finished.

Middleton-in-Teesdale

Middleton In Teesdale WIP. Looking forward to this area, it is such a lovely place with water towers and turntables.

Barnard Castle

A WIP shot from Captain Chris of Barnard Castle.