FLHerne's UK screenshots

[joshdempsey]

First lot - Pinlow Minerals c.1990
The main steel mill station, surrounded by junctions for other lines.

Pinlow Minerals, 28th Aug 1995.png

Nice looking game there FlHerne. Can you remember the names of the tunnel GRF? It looks really nice, so much better than the standard tunnels.

[YNM]

It's the one bundled together with TTRS.

[joshdempsey]

It's the one bundled together with TTRS.

Thank you! They do look an awful lot better than the original...

[FLHerne]

Back after a long hiatus.
The Mytholmroyd conurbation (consisting of Hoodsbay, Blantyre, Chingford, Adisham and Brinnington around the eponymous city) has grown rather substantially around the railway. Congested buses are rather apparent, the heavy-rail line through the centre may be converted to a metro.

Sprawl.png

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[STD]

Very good screenshot from the game .
But pretty light, somehow. Do even a couple of screenshots .

[FLHerne]

Sorry, I was going to post more but the game crashed and corrupted my save.*
*dodgy home-made patchpack, not trunk, of course!

So I started another game...

Spondon Cross railways is (obviously) centred on the city of Spondon, and the station there is by far the busiest on the network so far.
From northwest to southeast:
- North bay, for a branch to the small town of Goxhill.
- Platforms for the north-south mainline from Uckfield to Newcastle, operated by Merchant Navy and Britannia-class locos.
- Another mainline from Plumpton to Birmingham, also in the hands of Bulleid's large Pacifics.
- Suburban and rural services, shared between a mixture of ex-LMS and GWR tanks and brand-new EMUs.

Spondon Cross Railways, 14th Apr 1954.png (114.57 KiB) Viewed 4295 times

Immediately south of Spondon the local lines split, with links to both mainlines.
A stopping service from Birmingham via Bedworth comes off the mainline as an express stays on it across one of the many flyovers. At the same time, a long-distance branch service to Staveley via Trafford Park joins the southern mainline in front of an express (not good!), and an EMU on the short hop to Spondon West leaves the station.

Spondon Cross Railways, 22nd Jan 1954.png (97.88 KiB) Viewed 4295 times

Bedworth is midway between Spondon and Birmingham on the east-west mainline, but also on a local route from Spondon (via Edgware) to South Gyle.
A South-Gyle-Spondon branch train waits in the platform while expresses hurtle through in both directions on the main.

Spondon Cross Railways, 11th Jan 1954.png (100.11 KiB) Viewed 4295 times

[FLHerne]

Map:

Spondon Cross Railways, 31st Oct 1953#1.png (29.74 KiB) Viewed 4287 times

[STD]

Beautiful screenshots .

[FLHerne]

Thanks

The days of the Britannias and MNs may be numbered; 'Deltic' speeds south through Trafford Park Junction at linespeed. It was far too expensive for the directors to consider a production run though, at over £100k.

Spondon Cross Railways, 5th Sep 1956.png (118.55 KiB) Viewed 4124 times

Ivatt tanks, EMUs and Tube stock at Fort Matilda. As the terminus of Spondon's outer-suburban and Bentley's metro services, and an intermediate station on the Staveley branch, it's sort of a hub for the smaller lines.

Spondon Cross Railways, 21st Feb 1957.png (106.57 KiB) Viewed 4124 times

[FLHerne]

The old station at Birmingham Waterside, while ideal for east-west services, wasn't well-placed for access from the south.
Two Bulleid pacifics rest under the big arched trainshed by the harbour, as Britannias swarm under the brick box of Kirby Central Station.

Spondon Cross Railways, 24th May 1956.png

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Great Bentley Woods is the first stop on the south-east mainline to Canterbury, South Gyle and onward to Wareham and Bradford. The new metro service links it to the Uckfield line station and Fort Matilda, while a recently-built cross-country route provides a direct service to Kirby and takes pressure off south Gyle and Spondon.

Spondon Cross Railways, 8th Jun 1956.png (186.77 KiB) Viewed 4104 times

[FLHerne]

More fun with underground trains, this time sharing tracks with the mainline immediately outside Kirby Central.
I do not want to see what the merger of a Britannia and a rake of 1938 tube stock looks like...

Spondon Cross Railways, 10th Jun 1958.png (142.83 KiB) Viewed 3936 times

The line from Hough Green to Ty Glas was a horrible job to build, skirting around, over and through a big range of hills. The 'rabbit-hole' into Ty Glas Tunnels is the largest earthworks project accomplished by the Company so far, and is hated by the loco crew of southbound services.
Shown with trees hidden so the shape of the land is visible.

Spondon Cross Railways, 10th Jun 1958#1.png (101.11 KiB) Viewed 3936 times

Overview of the central area. The route of the first mainline and its branches, on the left of the picture, is rapidly merging into a single huge conurbation.

Spondon Cross Railways, 20th Mar 1958.png

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[STD]

Beautiful screenshots .

[FlameSing]

Yes, very cool! I like this urban shot

[FLHerne]

In the race to modernise the SCR has ended up with no less than three incompatible electrification systems. The two overhead systems are seen here at Newcastle - the new platforms at the north are electrified at 1500V DC and served by EM-series locos built in the mid-50s for the Fairburn and Poole lines, while the mainline south to Uckfield has jut been electrified at 25kV AC with AL1s replacing the Britannias.

Spondon Cross Railways, 28th Oct 1960#1.png (191.78 KiB) Viewed 3784 times

SCR so far has been a predominantly passenger operation, with a few mailvans on quieter routes.
As a new decade dawns, the directors have authorised a trial freight service, moving fish through the harbour at Fairwater. Two brand-new Class 31s struggle to start a long train of loaded fish vans away from the quay - at 1750 tons, these are 4 times the weight of anything else on the railway.

Spondon Cross Railways, 27th Jan 1960.png (108.93 KiB) Viewed 3784 times

At the other end, the fish processing facilities are located next to an older fishing harbour. If anyone's read the earlier posts in this thread, you'll see I like weird yard systems and this one's no different - trains arriving from the west reverse in the north siding to cross the flyover onto the quay, then again in the other one to return to the mainline. EM2s on Newcastle-Hurst Green services pass the whole mess on the fast lines now that the four-tracking is complete.

Spondon Cross Railways, 15th Jan 1961#1.png (112.05 KiB) Viewed 3784 times

[STD]

Well build railway station: passenger and cargo .

[FLHerne]

A new freight line to the North. Compared to the existing passenger mainline further east it's a lot flatter, but has far more curves. Will be used by heavy crude oil and bauxite trains to serve factories around the southern cities.

Spondon Cross Railways, 17th Mar 1961.png

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The oil needs to be delivered to a refinery in Fort Matilda, in the centre of the big urban area. As there's no capacity for long, slow freight trains into the city, it has to be moved by water for the last leg - but there wasn't even anywhere on the small lake by the refinery to run trains to, so a short canal had to be built between Spondon and Hirwaun. A tanker barge squeezes through the gap as a suburban train crosses the bridge ahead of it.

Spondon Cross Railways, 11th Mar 1962.png (155.14 KiB) Viewed 3653 times

[arikover]

This canal is gorgeous!
Concerning the new freight line, I'm guessing the inhabitants were not so pleased to see it built, right ?

Could it be possible to see the area where the trains transfer their cargo to the barges ?

Nice shots !

[FLHerne]

Concerning the new freight line, I'm guessing the inhabitants were not so pleased to see it built, right ?

Could it be possible to see the area where the trains transfer their cargo to the barges?

The new line is a relatively long way from any towns (except past Botley) so no-one really cared much.

And here's the transfer station at the edge of Goxhill, featuring some of Quast65's shiny NewObjects:

Spondon Cross Railways, 8th Mar 1964.png (95.08 KiB) Viewed 3554 times

For a bit more freight, the Longport Bauxite Company built a short industrial line to move their product down to the sea:

Spondon Cross Railways, 21st Sep 1963.png (180.69 KiB) Viewed 3554 times

Fairly big ships move the bauxite up between Hough Green and Fairwater, dodging the fishing boats and ferries.

Spondon Cross Railways, 19th Sep 1963.png (75.9 KiB) Viewed 3554 times

[FLHerne]

Any bigger and they wouldn't fit through the new aqueduct at South Gyle... (which looks silly anyway, TBH):

Spondon Cross Railways, 1st Apr 1964.png (155.48 KiB) Viewed 3551 times

...but the bauxite still has to be transferred to smaller barges to negotiate the narrow and twisty canal at Fort Matilda (they also go through another new canal at Uckfield and the existing one at Hirwaun, on their way to the aluminium plant at West Calder):

Spondon Cross Railways, 25th Sep 1963.png (181.62 KiB) Viewed 3551 times

[STD]

I really like these screenshots. Especially shipping channels and port on oil transportation. Beautiful and realistic shipping links