Peculiarities Dept.: freight on the West Somerset Railway

[OldProf]

Seeking another passenger-dominated route to savage with freight shunting scenarios, I recently turned to the West Somerset Railway. Modeled as prettified Heritage Railway, this RSC DLC package also comes with half a dozen freight wagons and a slew of compact yard areas. Unfortunately, its designers made it shunting unfriendly. Here's what I mean:

Here's a snapshot of a few of the goods sidings at Minehead. Notice that all of the shed doors are firmly closed.



And another, closer to those sheds, showing that the tracks run right through those closed doors.



And, finally, the view inside the shed, which features those whimsically vanishing walls so beloved of day-trippers:



The entire route is populated by such sealed sheds, which make any serious attempt to shift wagons around the yards in which they squat, close-doored, a ridiculous visual spectacle.

I've thought about abandoning the shunting scenario I'd already begun, but now I'm fairly determined to complete it and post it to Steam Workshop, using task instructions to point out the absurdity of such sloppy, careless route design.

I've also thought of exploring an application of the programming that opens and shuts tunnel curtains and yard gates on the Stevens Pass route to animate those shed doors, but even were I able to do so successfully I'd be the only one to enjoy the result, and I don't write scenarios just for my own enjoyment.

West Somerset's users' manual credits its production to Adam Lucas, Chris Linington, Colin Ross, Derek Siddle, Edwin Thurston, Gray Poyda, Jeff Douglas, and Kevin McGowan. How many route designers does it take to leave goods sheds inaccessible?

[hertsbob]

How is this any different from many, many other routes? If not all of them?

Not saying it's a great situation but it's not exactly unique.

How about you limit your shunting activities to the remaining 400yds of the sidings rather than just moaning that not being able to use the final 20yds makes things 'shunting unfriendly'? And to be fair, there are plenty of other visual spectacles in the sim that are far more ridiculous than this to worry about.

[mrennie]

The "vanishing walls" inside buildings that the developer doesn't mean for you to enter, ever, is perfectly normal - it would be a waste of CPU/GPU resources to render things that you will never look at it (which is why I'm always surprised when I discover things that have been textured on the inside - very wasteful).

[OldProf]

How is this any different from many, many other routes? If not all of them?

Not saying it's a great situation but it's not exactly unique.

How about you limit your shunting activities to the remaining 400yds of the sidings rather than just moaning that not being able to use the final 20yds makes things 'shunting unfriendly'? And to be fair, there are plenty of other visual spectacles in the sim that are far more ridiculous than this to worry about.

"Remaining 400 yards of sidings"? Really? I suppose that means you've measured them? The fact is that the ratio is more like 20 yds (just to borrow your numbers) usable versus 400 yds (a really ridiculous number, but again, I'm just citing you) unusable. I'll grab my FRAPS Brownie and send in some more photos. Seriously, in most yard areas on this route sealed sheds either squat in the midst of sidings or block off large sections of them; yet the tracks are there, extending into or through them. It looks as though the track layout designer and the person who placed the structures never spoke to each other.

To return to one of my original points, why include freight wagons in a route package that features unusable sidings?

[alanch]

To return to one of my original points, why include freight wagons in a route package that features unusable sidings?

Probably so we can recreate the 'demonstration freight trains' that run from A to B on heritage railways in this country - definitely not to recreate real working freight trains.

[OldProf]

More of the same, but this time pairing images from the 2D map with standard views to which I've added dashed lines to show the tracks covered by closed-door sheds without interiors:




And, to be fair, the one possible shunting area without sheds:














Finally, to address alanch's point, you may well be right, and in fact the route package does include one scenario dedicated to a "shunting demonstration" (rendered ridiculous by the crowds of clones that completely ignore the activity), but I see no reason why a scenario writer should not be able to drift back in time to imagine freight operations when the line was still active.

[buzz456]

Off with their heads!

[hertsbob]

Point made and taken.

To be honest every time I come across a shed that needs to have tracks running through it I'm never sure whether to put the tracks in place for this very reason, but what can you do? If it were down to me I'd have done this route as a real railway in the steam era...

[buzz456]

The answer is quite simple though. Go in there and remove the offending sheds. Problem solved.

[Chacal]

Write your scenarios as if the sheds weren't even there.
They affect suspension of disbelief, but not to the point of ruining the scenarios.

Then do as buzz says for your own copy of the route, and in your readme advise the player to do the same.

[arizonachris]

The answer is quite simple though. Go in there and remove the offending sheds. Problem solved.

OK, so if Tom does that, and tells me as the player wanting to run his scenarios "to do the same" as Chacal suggests, I'm just not going to run that scenario. I'm not into editing just to fix something that shouldn't be there in the first place. I see Tom's point and I agree. This is laziness on DTG's part. Those sheds just shouldn't be there, or there should be a way thru them. All those designers, and no one saw this as a problem.

[Ericmopar]

This is interesting.
Some routes like Donner Pass, and Cajon Pass actually have engine and car facilities that you can drive into. with internal texturing. The Donner engine sheds actually have working internal lighting.
I think it's kinda cool, when I do a Roseville based free roam and pick up an engine from inside the shed. If I remember right, there is one of the S.P. SD45 scenarios, in which a person picks up the engine from inside the shed to go get another engine and then pick up your train.
If you think about it, the fact that the Steam shops in Sherman Hill were never done internally with open or working doors is a travesty of justice.
I keep thinking that the engine sheds in Marias Pass seem to be workable as well, but I've never really looked there.

[OldProf]

Thanks to Arizonachris and Ericmopar for your understanding of the issue and support of my position. Someone mentioned earlier the notion that finishing the interiors of these sheds and leaving their doors open would increase the route's polys too much: this is a fairly short route, mostly single track and without any large yard or metropolitan areas, so I doubt that half-a-dozen or so shed interiors would render it unplayable.

In most aspects, the route is beautifully crafted, which makes these unfinished sheds even more puzzling.

[mrennie]

Thanks to Arizonachris and Ericmopar for your understanding of the issue and support of my position. Someone mentioned earlier the notion that finishing the interiors of these sheds and leaving their doors open would increase the route's polys too much: this is a fairly short route, mostly single track and without any large yard or metropolitan areas, so I doubt that half-a-dozen or so shed interiors would render it unplayable.

In most aspects, the route is beautifully crafted, which makes these unfinished sheds even more puzzling.

Good point - when it's only used a few times, if the building is a prominent feature, it's well worth doing in more detail. I actually think the same about the signal boxes (towers) on routes. It really irks me to see those opaque windows that are there to hide the fact that there's nothing inside. It wouldn't be difficult to make a minimalist interior that's convincing enough when seen from the viewpoint of a locomotive cab as you pass the box. The same can be said of things such as as sheds.

[Chacal]

You guys are going to like the RW&A Lakeside route.
Just sayin'.