Almost Spring Watch

Here we are in March and we awoke to snow falling this morning! However, it's been a busy week with the YQA Super Tench completed and sent out for test and more excitingly for some the release of the YQA Parr which can be found on Steam Marketplace.

Alongside this we've decided to create an extra bonus item to include in a future pack and settled into process of starting another wagon we think will be popular.

ZEA Bream

Runner wagons have always been an important part of railway operations. When a load is too long for wagon a runner can be marshalled between that wagon and the next to provide the space for the overhang without the load colliding. As a quirky and useful item we thought it would be fun to include a runner wagon in our forthcoming YAA Brill wagon pack along with some suitably long loads to make use of them.

Following the wholesale transfer of the early BDA conversions to the engineers department a need would have been fairly quickly identified for suitable air braked runner wagons to operate with them. One of the sources of these wagons were the less than successful SAA 2-axle steel wagons which had already found themselves in runner use for revenue traffic along with a considerable number converted for other uses.

The runner conversion itself was relatively straightforward with the folding stanchions and various other surplus components removed to give the required 10cm clearance between the top of the runner wagon and the underside of the overhanging load.

JNA Falcon

It's been refreshing this week to start with a blank canvas and a whole new model to tackle. This is likely to be another one which many people will want to add to their collecting in the shape of a JNA Falcon ballast wagon.

The wagon is still in floating wagon state at the moment as the rest of the major steelwork is added to the body but the intention is clear from the render above. What has become apparent as the modelling progressed is that the construction is much more than a simple box!

Dirty EWS Urchins

Last Thursday we showed you some pictures of the clean, recently converted ZCA Sea Urchins. Today it's the turn of the ones that have been in traffic for a while.

The three pictures above show the varying levels of fading, weathering and battering that have been applied to the EWS liveried ZCA Sea Urchins we have modelled for Train Simulator 2016.However, we haven't produced six different weathered models (3 levels on each of the two different under-frames) for you to have to pick and place.

Instead we've used a little bit of technical magic and created just one weathered version that will randomly choose which level of weathering will be displayed. This should mean you can place a string of wagons that look varied and have no repeating pattern of weathering with ease.

Alongside this we're well aware from pictures that some people like to leave their mark on various railway assets and engineers wagons are no exception. If you take a look at the picture at the bottom of this post you'll see a wagon that has gained a few graffiti 'tags' as well as giving a good contrast between different weathering levels compared to the wagons on either side. The graffiti is automatically and randomly applied to the weathered wagons and can range from nothing through one single 'tag' to a plethora on both sides!

Sparkling EWS Sea Urchins

A few days ago we announced our range of future expansions which we are developing for distribution via Marketplace. Naturally we didn't start working on the expansions at the time of the announcement but have had to wait until everything was in place before we could share anything.

We're starting off the sharing today with some screenshots taken by the works photographer of some freshly repainted EWS liveried ZCA Sea Urchins. Those of you who have been following our products for a while will know that we had already produced a pack of engineers 'Dutch' liveried Sea Urchins converted from VDA vans and this expansion is a development from it.

We have updated the materials used throughout the models with new shaders along with some extensive reworking of the textures and ambient occlusion maps. In addition to this this we have automated some features of the wagons to reduce clutter in the asset list, as requested in the spring survey, by randomly switching between the two different body types as wagons are placed. The wagons now also feature a variety of different load remnants which appear at random during placement.

The wagons have also been equipped with some other new features but they can wait for when we show you the pictures!