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Welcome to the Railsimroutes.net Blog, where I'll be posting progress updates, work-in-progress screenshots, information about the progress I'm making with active projects, as well as anything else I feel is worth mentioning. Hopefully more frequent updates here will make the wait for upcoming releases more bearable! News from 2008, all the way back to 2001, can be found in the News Archive.

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Blog and Progress Updates


Watford Junction to Rugby update, and collaborative project development

Posted by Anthony Bowden on 12th March 2014 at 11:41 pm

Update on Watford Junction to Rugby project

Railsimroutes LogoI’m pleased to say that I resumed development of the Watford Junction to Rugby project recently. Currently I’m working on implementing new .Beacon commands which support the UkTrainSys plugin’s advanced safety system functionality.

 

Signalling along the entire 66.5 mile / 107.1 km route has been updated, with all aspects now comprised of animated objects with ground night lighting.

All Automatic Warning System (AWS) magnets are now comprised of beacons simulating the permanent magnets and electro-magnets of the real life system, and sections are now aligned with track circuit breaks and axle counter head locations.

All Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS) induction loops are now simulated with beacons emulating the real life system in terms of induction loop spacing and frequencies.

There are four OHLE neutral sections modelled on the route, and all of these are now updated with UkTrainSys compatible beacons for the Automatic Power Control (APC) permanent magnets both before and after the neutral section, as well as denoting the start and end of the dead section of contact wire itself.

 

Screenshot
New signals awaiting commissioning (note the out-of-use covers), and modular AWS magnet objects
[Click to enlarge]

Collaborative development

The other significant development, is that the project is now open to third party contributions, to speed up development and bring the release date closer. Ben Leahy is the first developer to contribute to the project by building objects, and I’d be more than happy to hear from you, if you think you’d be able to contribute some more high quality, efficiently coded 3D models for the route, leaving me free to concentrate on the systems and permanent way infrastructure.

Currently there’s a list of objects which need to be created and added to the route. These include:

  • Station buildings from Kings Langley through to Rugby inclusive;
  • A few lineside buildings, such as houses, warehouses and the like, to be positioned at various locations along the route, but especially at Roade, Weedon, and Rugby;
  • A few road overbridges for the Weedon Line, as well as retaining walls at Weedon;
  • Road vehicles for road bridges, and the section of M1 motorway at Watford Gap;
  • Passing train objects.

If you think you can contribute any of the above, please get in touch and we can discuss options, and I’ll draw up an effective collaboration plan. Thanks 🙂

Screenshot
Blisworth pointwork and REBs – can you help by creating a new overbridge object for the site?
[Click to enlarge]

Information IconFor more information about these ongoing projects:


Railsimroutes.net - Watford Junction to Rugby Project banner

Watford Junction to Rugby Project

Railsimroutes.net - UK Train System Cross-platform .NET Plugin banner

UK Train System (UkTrainSys)
Cross-platform .NET Plugin

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12 Responses to “Watford Junction to Rugby update, and collaborative project development”

  1. Glad to see that this is resurrected — I was surprised to see the RSS feed indicator on the taskbar light up for possibly the first time since I bought this PC 16 months ago.

    Is the bug in OpenBVE finally fixed where it won’t run in Windows 8 without admin rights?

    • Anthony_B says:

      It’s good to be able to pick it up again 🙂

      I’m running Windows 8.1 Pro and don’t have to run openBVE as an administrator even in a Standard user account, it resides outside the Program Files folders though. If I run it from within Program Files (x86), then I do get an “Access to the path ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\openBVE\UserData\Settings\options.cfg’ is denied.” dialog.

  2. marcel says:

    I am chuffed to bits to hear the news ..best of luck with it and i look forward to running my trains along this exciting new route ..thank you

  3. Claudio says:

    Hello Anthony,

    I follow this site for many years and I really like your work.

    I am a developer Italian Microsoft (C # and. Net) and Autodesk (3D Studio Max), I know RailWorks and over the years I made a lot of static objects for this simulator.

    OpenBVE I like and I wish I could help in the creation of static objects, do your test and tester line.

    I am available, but unfortunately I’m sorry I do not know anything about the development of items for Open BVE

    I would like to hear from you and help in my spare time, I’d like that.

    regards Claudio

  4. Claudio says:

    Congratulations, makes me glad that this project is shared.

    I will follow with interest this blog

  5. TJ says:

    I thought this project was long since abandoned! Fantastic!

  6. Alex Farlie says:

    Shame you can’t get Sponsorship from London Midland, Westcoast or Network Rail 😉

  7. Hi Anthony! I wanted to download the old BVE 2/4 version of Watford Junction – Milton Keynes Central route, because I wished to run it on my phone in Hmmsim, but the download link on your site gives error 404 (page not found) and then redirects me to Virgin Media’s site. Could you fix the download link? I would be grateful. Thanks in advance! Cheers, Marcell

    • Ayman Ilham says:

      Try putting it into web archive wayback machine, that might work (I remember I once retrieved it that way) although the route is rather glitchy when I ran it on OpenBVE – there were missing textures in a lot of places but otherwise it is playable

  8. Kenny says:

    I’m new to openBVE. Is work still being done on Watford to Rugby Junction & Birmingham Cross-City projects?
    It would be great to get updated material for openBVE.

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