Creating A New Splash Screen

Construction Note 26:

As this project was renamed earlier this year to "Cityrail 2006/2007" I decided it was about time I updated the splashscreen I use for this project. The spashscreen is simply a picture which is shown when you click on the name of the route in either the Drive or Surveyor screens.

If you want to make a splashscreen of your layout, go into Trainz and select the scene you wish to make into a splash screen. You then capture the screen picture by pressing the PrtSc or Print Screen key on your keyboard.

Open up a paint program such as paintshop pro or photoshop and paste the image . You can then add text or modify the picture to your hearts content. Now for the screenshot to work, you need the picture to be resized to 512x512.

Start up Content Manager Plus in TRS2006 and edit your route you want to add the screenshot to. Edit the route with explorer will open up a window containing the files for your route. Save the picture in 512x512 size into this folder.

Also in this folder you will find a file called config.txt. Open it up and add the following lines to the end of the file.

thumbnails {
0 {
image "yourscreenshotfilename.jpg"
width "512"height "512"
}
}

In the lines above, replace yourscreenshotfilename.jpg with the name of your picture.
Save the file. Now go back to Content Manager Plus and commit the changes to the route. This will add the screenshot to your route.

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Working Traffic Lights and a New Range of Cars

Construction Note 25:

One of the things I wanted to do with this project was to make it as realistic as possible. Using cooridinates from the UBD Street directory CD, I was able to plot where rail lines should be, when they curved left or right..... and where points, bridges,sidings and station platforms were located.

This level of detail was not given only to the rail tracks. I applied the same process to adding the roads...... so each road visible from the track has been included with accurate corners, T-Junctions, crossroads and traffic-light controlled intersections.

As you can imagine, going to this much detail is a timely process and is one of the reasons this project has been 5 years in the making.

Each traffic light works and will stop traffic based on a specified period of time. Cars will stop at the red lights and will wait until the light turns green before passing through the intersection.

The picture above is an early development shot of one of many hundred traffic lights included in the Cityrail project. Since this picture, the intersections have been improved and look more realistic.... with problems sorted out along the way.


As is shown in the picture above, the traffic lights in this intersection were placed in the wrong position and are not on the street corner. The texture of the intersection itself is much darker than the streets themselves. These problems have now been resolved and are been fixed as I go through each section of the project.

The second picture is not of my project but is one I found from a tutorial on how to build new cars. This car in the picture looks realistic when compared to the ones that comes standard with TRS2006.

This tutorial will allow me to build a completely new range of cars that you would expect to find on Australian roads. However before I do this I will need to research any issues with adding working headlights to these cars. This will hopefully give me the effect I am after where you will see the headlights of the cars at night as they drive along the roads and freeways. Screenshots of this will be seen here in future posts.

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Changing the Tracks

Construction Note 24:

I discovered a tutorial today which will allow me to change another element to the project. As it was with the tunnels, I was not too happy with the way the track looked. Sure there are a number of different tracks you can download but I haven't really found ones I liked.


Now I have slotted in some time in the next few weeks to design my own track to put down in various sections of the layout. As you will see in these two photos in this post, the ballast used for the tracks are not always the same . The first picture for example is what you see when travelling across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and using the standard ballast just looks terrible.

So this "wooden plank" ballast is the first one I will work on.

Then I will have at least a couple more different ballast textures to put below the rails, including ballasts transitioning from one type to another. For example, if you have tracks which have a dark brown damp look to them without the rock pebbles, you need to have track leading to this which has reduced pebbles. Just a nice transition effect.

With changing the appearance of the ballast and of the rail itself, I am taking into account that with improved appearance there may be a decline in performance. Here is where I am finding a perfect balance so performance loss is limited in the least possible way.

Afterall, why bother working on this project if at the end of the day it runs at a very slow frame rate? Great performance is a key to this project and anything that degrades it will be tossed out of the window.

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Museum Station - Part Two

Construction Note 23:

The beta model of the Museum Station is shown in the following pictures during the day and night.

The background scenery used in these pictures is not the final scenery for this area and is being used only for testing purposes. If I remember this station from the last time I was there many years ago, there is a huge park behind the entrance . But I will need to go back to check that before working on the scenery for this area.


The night time texture for this model might be re-worked down the track but that will depend on how important it is to do this.

After all Museum Station is an underground station and it is most likely that people driving the trains will never see the station. However, I would still like to build every station building in this project ...... if it will be seen from the train driver or not. Of course, if not to be seen, less time will be spent on this model.

I will be probably a lot more happier with this model at night when I have added suitable lighting to the area.... including within the park.

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Museum Station - Part One

Construction Note 22:

Finished the model today for the entrance to Museum Station. As is the theme for most of my models, details are in the texture itself rather than using a high polygon count to achieve a complex model.

The picture included here shows the texture map I created for the model both for the day as well as the night texture. The day picture is realistic as possible with some touchups required in Photoshop to get the effect I want.

Then using the Photoshop color balance technique as mentioned earlier in my blog, I created the night texture for the station. This night texture looks a little different to my earlier examples as this model is different from the rest in that the station is open to customers at night and therefore needs more light around the door access areas.

Therefore to get this image, after changing the color balance , I then copied the doors from the day time texture, resulting in this desired texture.

Some stage this afternoon I will post a picture of the model into my blog so you can see the finished results.

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A Different View of the Opera House Model

Construction Note 21:

This is a multiple coloured version of the gmax model for the Sydney Opera House , showing the different sections making up the model.

I am currently working on creating the texture maps for the model and doing some testing of what the textures look like.

Three different textures will be used here. For the opera sails, the base and the glass windows on each sail.


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Revamp of the Rail Tunnels

Construction Note 20:

One of the things I was a little disappointed about with Trainz was that the rail tunnels which came standard were not exactly what I was looking for. There are so many different ones to choose from but they all lacked the feature that I was looking for. An example of one of the tunnels is shown here on the left.

Maybe it is not that great big a deal but as I have already stated that this project was about realism, this was still something that was niggling away at me. Is niggling a word? Did a quick google and sure enough......niggling has 2 meanings : 1. Petty, especially in a nagging or annoying way; trifling: a pointless dispute over niggling details. or 2. Overly concerned with details; exacting and fussy.

Anyhow.......enough English lessons and back to the blog.

When I stand on the platform at Wynyard or Town Hall stations for example, I look into the tunnel and sadly just do not see the same thing as shown above. The one major thing that is missing is ..... darkness. And for me that is the main thing about rail tunnels..... when you are on the train all you see is pitch black on the other side of the windows except for the occasional light whizzing by.

So that was something I decided to change. I spent a while on this little side project, trying to build a tunnel with darker textures to emulate what I saw in the Real World. But sadly, I found that even using a black texture for the walls, the tunnels were still light as shown above....just a light greyish black. I was completely stumped.


But I am not one to give up easy on something and after weeks of frustration, I was able to build a custom tunnel for the Cityrail network with the exact look I had been hoping for. Here you can see an example of what I am talking about. The lights I added here in the picture were just used for sample purposes only and I will be adding the proper lights in the near future.

As shown in the picture here, I also have to fix the tunnels in that when it is raining outside the tunnel, it also rains inside the tunnel. I have a few ideas on what can be done to fix this and will look at that a little later as a cosmetic change.

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A Little Bit of Opera

Construction Note 19:

This is a model I started last year and I have just started Beta 3 work on it. There are a few more areas of the mesh I want to improve before I am ready to start painting it.

As you can imagine this is a diffacult model to create and there has been a lot of trial and error in this process. This is one model I will be happy to have completed and off of my To-do list.

I decided to put a fair bit of detail into this model. Even though it will be seen at a distance from the Harbour Bridge, it will be visible from Circualr Quay and people may almost want to do a free explore of the surrounding scenery.


Before I complete this final beta, I need to look at the changes I have heard are being made to the Opera House recently and decide if I want to include those changes with the model.

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Removing Unwanted Customers

Construction Note 18:

The time I am spending on creating shops for the Chatswood Interchange is well worth the effort. Not only does it give me a testing board to test some new Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro skills, but it also contributes to model creation down the track. And most of these shops are going to be flagged for use in other areas of the route and some of the textures maps will be reused to create models in a quicker time (possibly 4.8 minutes)


Remember that creating these textures is the time consuming part of this project and creating the model can be quick if left simple. I am not adding details such as roof eaves, windows sills, etc. I am leaving details up to whatever is in the texture.

The model of the Athletes Foot store is a perfect example of the texture modding required. The texture map above shows customers in the shop. I decided with this shop as with most of the others not to use a roller security door at night. Therefore, the wide open door must be closed.

So, with Athletes Foot night texture. Two tasks. Removes the customers and add in the closed doors.

This took about half an hour to complete as I needed to completely retouch the night picture and remove the customers. Then I scrumaged around for a door and painted a suitable one in place.

Not exactly a piece of art but as long as it looks decent from the train line , I am sure noone will complain.


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The First Shops

Construction Note 17:

It is taking me a little more time than I had hoped to get these Interchange shops done. I am looking at doing twenty plus different shops for this model and so far over the last couple of hours I have being able to finish off four of them.

This is mainly due to having to perform extensive photoshop work on most of the shop pictures as shown here. It is pretty hard to find the ideal picture that I am looking for, and with these ones most of them had people walking by, or car reflections in the glass, or even did not exist and needed to be created from scratch. I will not tell you which one of them it is ...... but one of these shops shown in the group of four is an absolute fake and took well over an hour to complete.

I am pretty sure having said that ... that you will spot which one I am talking about.

I have got the modeling of these down to a fine art now..... the process of creating the model , skinning it with a day texture and a night texture and then exporting it to Trainz 2006 taking no more than 15 minutes. The time taken as I said before is putting together the texture map from bits and pieces I have found on the Internet.

Hopefully once I have completed the Interchange, I can increase the speed of completing the models and perhaps look at releasing a few beta models to the download station for others to enjoy.

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Land of the Giants

Construction Note 16:


Had a slight miscalculation error today and ended up with this strange looking shop. Two workers happened across the newly built Body Shop and stood at the entrance having a laugh at the huge planning mistake.

This scene kind of reminded me of the old television show by Irwin Allen "Land of the Giants" where Steve was always trying to get the bumbling Fitzhugh out of trouble. All we need to see is a couple of Giants walking by.

I had only stumbled across this error by mistake where the chatswood Interchange had originally being setup as 3 floors and while creating this shop I somehow thought it was only a single floor. This ended up with the Body Shop somehow being more than 8 stories tall.

Oh well... it was a bit of fun for a saturday. But still need to find why this shop is not showing the night texture properly. Back to the configuration file I go.

"Steve.... I think Valery is in there somewhere looking for a bottle of shampoo"

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When Models Need a Different Night-time Texture

Construction Note 15:

In my last post, I showed how I used Photoshop to apply a darker texture to a building. This texture of course is used by the models after the sun has disappeared over the horizon and each model automatically switches over to "night-mode" which can look completely different to it's "day-mode".

Darkening a building at night is a fairly quick procedure but it is not always appropriate. For instance, while creating the shops to go into the Chatswood Interchange, these shops are inside a Westfield type building whose lights would always keep the shops well lit.

So how do I handle this? Take a look at this picture for the Body Shop. A great texture to be used during the day with the door wide open and inviting customers to step in. But clearly the open doors would be a huge problem for The Body Shop owners if the doors were left open all night. I would be surprised they would have anything in the shop come the morning.


So we all agree that the doors need to be closed..... but only at night. Very tricky.

But that is when Photoshop comes to the rescue. Instead of darkening the texture of the model as described in the last post, leave the color balance of the model as it is. This will effectively show the shop being illuminated by the lights of the Interchange building itself.


Now with your trusty Photoshop, add in a solid pair of security roller doors to the Body Shop and you soon find the problem has being resolved.

This means that after dark the roller doors come down and the owners of the shop can sleep peacefully knowing their stock will be there in the morning.



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A Little Photoshop Here and There

Construction Note 14:

To create the realistic models for the project, I decided to use a variety of tools within Photoshop to help simplify the task. There are a number of other applications around that I could have used for this task, however I find that Photoshop is one of the best if you can afford it.

For example, when creating a building, I need to cater for the fact that the building will look different at night than it will during the day. The building will be darker and lights will either be on or off.....depending on the type of building being designed. But generally 2 textures will be required... one for the day...the second for the night mode.


To create the 2 different textures, of course you need to have a daytime picture of the model. My main priority is the front of the building as I will use Photoshop to modify this texture for the other sides of the building.

That was simple. Use this for the day-texture for the model. But what about the night texture?This is where Photoshop comes in nicely.



What I did when I first started the Cityrail Project was to decide on a specific setting for the night time colors to apply to each model. It is important to maintain the setting for each model or else the night time effect loses it's impact. In Photoshop, the night time texture can be simply acieved by using color balance.

Before using this , it is important to apply this change to shadows only and not to midtones or hightlights. After selecting shadows, simply move the third slider for the yellow-blue settings so that you get a reading of 0,0,+100.

This gives you a result as shown in this last picture and is probably the simplest way to create a night texture.

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The Day Before The Shops Go In

Construction Note 13:

During the upcoming weekend, the shopping levels of the Chatswood Interchange will be added in. This is an important part of this model as it will give the model the look that I have been aiming for.

An important part of any model is how it looks...... and by adding in specific items you can turn a simple looking model into something very pleasing to the eye. The ultimate goal of this project is to make this project as realistic as possible...... while maintaining the best performance possible. This is always a diffacult balance to maintain as too much complex scenery detail can slow down the performance.

Today the red carpet was layed on the first floor, ahead of the shops going in tomorrow. Once this level has being completed, I will add in the second floor shopping level with similar shops. After that, the semi-glass roof will be added to complete the model.

On another note, in the picture above you can see some of the roads south of the Interchange. Apart from the details given to plotting the layout of the raillines, I also used the UBD co-oridinates to plot every road and side streets as well as every traffic light intersection within a given distance of the rail line. And as I will mention in a future post, each traffic light intersection has a working pair of lights so that cars will stop at red lights and wait for the lights to turn green. This adds to the realism as you can see traffic backed up as you make your way through the layout. My thanks to andi06 for this great addition to Trainz.

But more about this later.


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Cranes in Action in Chatswood

Construction Note 12:

In the last 24 hours I got back up to speed with creating objects in gmax and exporting them into Trainz 2006. This was something I feared would be complicated but as is the case with so many things in life.... once you know how to do something the first time around, the rest is easy.

I have just about completed the model of the Chatswood Interchange. I am spending a little more time on this model than I normally do as the train line goes straight through this building. So this model deserves a little more detail than the other models I have created.

This picture shows the new Interchange building from early this morning. I have still to put the interior floors , shops and roof on this model but it is about 64% of the way completed. For the roof I did a quick search for how to make transparent models in gmax. Then started applying this to parts of the roof which will be added on tomorrow.

At the moment the building looks a little rough, but once I have finished touching it up and adding the signs and miscellaneous items, it should look spectacular.

Updated : April 21 . The Interchange as shown above was completely reshaped after this picture was posted to tidy up some of the textures and to make the building a much slimmer structure. I discovered that I had added too much width to the building and there was too much wasted space which would have been of no value to the Interchange. Looking at the newer model I am now more satisfied with the way it looks and it appears more professional.

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Every Building Needs a Fresh Coat of Paint

Construction Note 11:

One of the major features of this project is that the vast majority of the buildings and structures will be built from scratch. Building new houses, shops and flats is no major issue once you come to terms with gmax.... and these buildings are constructed on a suburb by suburb basis. This leads to added realism on this route as driving in different areas will show characteristics unique to a specific area.

With gmax you can create a building with at minimum four walls and a roof. Sometimes you want to get a little more complex which makes the gmax model a little more complicated. But once you have the basic model, you need to get the painters out to slap on a little bit of paint here and there to pretty things up.

Sure I could use the same type of textures for each building, which would make it quick and easy to complete the scenery in this project. But then how boring would it look if all houses had the same red brick look to them? So then multiple textures is the way to go.

But surely I would run out of textures? That is when I put my Rolf Harris hat on. The trick here is to use an existing texture and modify it so it looks completely different... or even slightly different..... that way you can have a huge number of sub-textures based on a single texture file.

For example, the picture above was the original texture I used for one building. When I was looking at the textures to be applied to the 3 level building of the Chatswood Interchange, I came across a problem. The building hasnt been built yet so I will need to invent the look of the building myself.

So I created a customised texture for the Interchange.... a texture which I will use a part of for a number of other buildings on the North Shore.

So...as they say..... every building deserves a fresh coat of paint...

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It All Started with Baseboard Number One

Construction Note 10:

Today I installed some software called MapReader on my laptop and tried to create a map of the Cityrail Project, however it did not like this new version of Trainz. I am sure an update will be coming soon to fix that.

However, I was able to get this screenshot which gives an idea of how large the Cityrail 2006/2007 project is.

I was shocked to see how many baseboards were in use. When creating this layout for Sydney, I started out from Milsons Point going north, adding new baseboards as I looked for the next latitude / longitude of an object ( normally where the track curved or a bridge or station was sitting, or even where there were sidings or junctions).


In this way I only added baseboards in the direction that the track was going....

I remember the feeling when I had layed the track from Hornsby to Central, then worked on the line from Hornsby to Strathfield and then worked on the Strathfield to Central Lines. Just this step taking many many many months in itself.

It was a huge achievement as I plotted the coordinates through Redfern and then saw the baseboard I had created for Central Station so long ago. By using the precise latitude and longitude figures along the way , the lines joined up perfectly and that confirmed just how accurate the Trainz trigonometry station was.

It was then I realised how accurate this project was going to be and I had achieved the first of my many targets for this design.

And then I started work on laying the track for the remaining lines........ Liverpool, Bankstown,Richmond,Campbelltown,Bondi,Waterfall and Cronulla lines and any others I failed to mention here.

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Challenges of a Creator

Construction Note 9:

While I am making progress on the Chatswood side of things , I took a little time out to do some research on Content Creation with TRS2006. It was a little bit alarming to see that so many other creators have been facing uphill battles with adding their content to this new version of Trainz but I am quitely confident that I should be able to work it out. With everything there is the right way and the wrong way.... and you end up having problems generally if you take the wrong way.

I had made some size modifications to the bridge as pictured here and figure I will use this to work out how to add new content to TRS2006. I was able to create a new model and export to the prior version of Trainz within an hour so i am hoping this is the same with TRS2006.

When I was laying the 2 rail lines and the roads on my model of the Harbour Bridge, I found I had not made the bridge wide enough and needed at least another metre to fit everything on it. Hopefully when I add the revision to my project I can mark off the Bridge as completed.


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First Shots of the New Chatswood Interchange

Construction Note 8:

Probably not the best of shots but gives an idea of what I am doing here with the Chatswood Interchange.

The new platform is shown on the right sitting on the 1st level of the Interchange.

I have still to put the 2nd level on it but I am still researching what will be sitting on the floor above the platform.

As far as I can see the top floor is totally occupied by shop space.

I still have to find some information on where the Epping Line platform is connected to the North Shore Line.

It would be undercover so I am suspecting that there is a connection somewhere on the first level.

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Chatswood Station Prior to the New Work

Construction Note 7:


This is a picture taken of Chatswood prior to pulling up the rails in the last hour. This is a shot looking north towards Roseville and shows the existing platform on the left hand side with pedestrian walkway at the end. On the right below ground was where I had thought the Epping Rail Line was situated. This was based on information I was using back in 2004 which appears to have changed since then.

The sunken tracks have now been removed and the section filled in. This area is in fact the location of the new Chatswood Interchange which has the bus stops below and the train lines running through the middle of the Interchange. This kind of makes more sense than the way I had it before.

The rest of today will be constructing the New Interchange building foundation and more work with gmax.

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News Flash : Construction Workers Start Work

Construction Note 6:

April 17,2006. Today is the date that new work begins on my project. And I figure that today I will start work on a part of the project I have been looking forward to for a long time.

As mentioned in my last post, The Epping - Chatswood rail link is still being constructed and is due for completion in 2008. I have already laid the track along the planned route and connected the tracks to the existing network both at Epping Rail station as well as Chatswood.

I visited Chatswood the other week and had a look at the work that is currently underway. I discovered that what I thought was happening at Chatwood Station was not entirely correct ..... so I am ripping up the track at Chatswood and re-laying it based upon the new information I have about this area.

I have included one of the many new pictures I have on this station. And over the next few weeks I will be recreating the new Chatswood railway station exactly as shown in the pictures I found.

I am sure you will agree that this will be an interesting part of my Trainz route if I can pull off scenery that looks anything close to this picture.

The challenge is here and it is time to fire up gmax and start building some of the Chatswood models for this part of the project.

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The Cityrail 2006/2007 Rail Network Map

Construction Note 5:

Since I have already received a few emails asking me what areas my Project covers, I thought it would be an idea to show people a map of the actual layout in Trainz. I used software called TrainzMap from Vistamere to create this network map while this route was being developed under TRS2004.

However, since upgrading to the new Trainz version of TRS2006 I have been unable to generate an updated map showing the latest changes. I am aware that Vistamere are working on an upgrade to their software and I will produce an updated map once that software is available for use.

If you click on the map, you will notice that there are a number of red lines on the map. Around the area of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, these lines indicate the actual Sydney Harbour foreshore that I plotted.

Other lines such as those under Wynard and Townhall show where the rail tunnels are located. You will see that the red line above Chatswood in the North shows the Epping - Chatswood line which will be in service mid 2008. This rail link in my project will be open for business this year a good 16 months before the actual line is officially opened.

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How the Cityrail 2006/2007 Project Started

Construction Note 4:

Trainz lovers have one thing in common. Naturally they love trains. And with the Trainz software they can design tracks , layouts and whatever they desire with comparitive ease.

Designers will be either one of two categories. Either they are those who love to make up a brand new layout not based on any real world or they will be a designer who decides to recreate the real world with as much accuracy as is possible and design the models himself......

I put my self in the latter and decided a long time ago to recreate the entire rail network for Sydney. The hard part was where to start..... and for me I started with laying down all the track (includings stations and sidings) for the areas from Waterfall in the South to Hornsby in the North and from Bondi Junction all the way over to Emu Plains. When I finished I was amazed to find I had over 8 months layed out over 600 km of rail (if you put each piece of rail end to end)precisely mirroring the actual rail network in Sydney.

How did I get the accuracy? First off I used the CD provided by UBD to plot the latitude and longitude of each curve, station,siding,etc and marking it with a trig station. This allowed me to get the basic track down. For the details of what track was in what location, I used another CD from the Australian Railway Historical Society which has 4265 maps and diagrams of detailed tracks and signal locations covering all of NSW.

By combining these I was able to get the details I was hoping for in the track layout. Of course doing this degree of accuaracy is not for everyone and for me personally has taken the better part of a few years to complete to this stage. (Originally this project was done in Microsoft Train Simulator and then re-done in Trainz).

One thing I have noticed is that some people in forums who have seen my work have been amazed by the work put into it but then are a little disappointed because they suddenly feel that this is something they could never do. I have on several occasions sent a private email to a few people that Trainz is not about trying to be as good as someone else. I think Trainz is a great tool to let your imagination go wild and build any layout that comes to your mind. As long as you have fun and enjoy the experience that is all that matters.

Anyhow, after the track was layed, I built the waterway around the harbour using the CD from the UBD which I found was essential in making sure the placements of the Milsons Point and Circular Quay stations was spot on. Happy with the results, the hard part had arrived which was to start building the gmax models to add to the route.

And so the journey begins.

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Re-installed Gmax Ver 1.2

Construction Note 3:

The last time I had created a model was back in October ...... and since then I had a faulty hard drive on my laptop and needed to replace the drive . I have not been in a position since then , until now that is , to start work on new models so I had not thought about reinstalling Gmax until today.

I have been using gmax version 1.2 to create my models and today I suddenly remembered that last year there was talk that Discreet were no longer going to provide gmax as free software. I then wondered if I was going to be able to use gmax any more.

I then remembered that I had downloaded 2 registry fixes along with the gmax application and saved these files to CD. I ferreted out the CD and installed the application and then ran the fixes with no problem at all.

Then tested Gmax by opening it and found it to be working . Hooray.

I ran a final test of gmax by opening up my model of the Sydney Opera House as shown here. This model took ages to create and is still not in a finished state yet. This I will need to finish in the next few months as I hate having models left unfinished.

After installing Gmax, I wondered over to the Turbo Squid site and saw Gmax was still being offered. I was surpised to see this as I was sure this product would have long since disappeared. However, looks like it survived and is still available for Model Designers.

Now that I have Gmax installed, I sit here and scratch my chin and ask myself that important question. How do I use this thing again?

I will leave that to figure out tomorrow.

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theblogger@dateck.au.com

The Day I Nearly Lost the Sydney Harbour Bridge Model

Construction Note 2:

Disaster strikes when you least expect it and this happened to me late last year with this project. At some stage I had corrupted the layout and needed to revert back to a backup of my folders. I was horrified to find that this corruption had being backed up as well on my DVD backups as well. At that stage I almost cried because I thought I had lost 5 years of work.

Luckily I found an old backup on a spare pc and was able to rescue the 600 km of track I had laid down. It took me the last 5 months to redo the scenery I had lost on the layout... including doing some research on improving on the work I had done last year.

I then went about recovering the models I had created from various backups. I then had a second scare as I couldn't find my model of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This had taken a while to build and was something I did not want to rebuild. Luckily I managed to find the model .... and have added it to my main collection of models I have created for the project.

For those people who have not seen this picture yet, here is a picture I took of the Harbour Bridge after completing the first stage of the model in Gmax. It was early days of the bridge development when I took this picture and I know I will need to adjust the gmax model a little more to get the effect I want.

I do know someone else had been working on a model of the Sydney Harbour Bridge but I have not seen any updates from him for a while. I hope he is still working on it as it looks like he has done a lot of detailed work on it and it would be great to see his finished model.

As you can imagine, I have changed my procedure of doing backups to avoid any further issues like I had in the last 6 months. I had made the mistake of backing up my work after doing design work and had not gone into driver mode which is where the error had occoured. By the time I found it , my backups had been corrupted beyond use. Now my policy is to open up the cityrail layout in driver mode to make sure it works before i run a backup. With this new policy, and new permanent backups every month, I should be safe from long term loss on this layout.

Clicking on the picture above will open up a larger picture of the bridge. You will notice the blue markers beneath the bridge. These I have used throughout the layout to mark the exact locations of rail curves, stations and bridges. I also used the markers along with the UBD CD to plot the exact shape of the Sydney Harbour. This makes the view very realistic while driving over the Harbour Bridge in the layout and I am more than happy with the weeks I spent on building the harbour.

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An Introduction to the Cityrail Sydney Project

Construction Note 1:

Before I start......... a quick introduction to my new blog.

Cityrail 2006/2007 is a project I have been working on for over 5 years which will bring Sydney's suburban rail system to your desktop. Originally I had designed this simulation with Microsoft Train Simulator but moved it across to Trainz due to the lack of further updates by Microsoft.

This project is for those of you with an interest in trains. Have you ever dreamed of being a train driver in Sydney and wanted to drive a passenger service across the Harbour bridge. Or do you simply wish to take the Emu Plains service? Either way you can do this with my project.

Some may ask how accurate it is. Well, in laying over 600 kilometres of track in the project, I used a CD version of the UBD street directory to plot the latitude and longitude of each rail way station, road bridge, rail bridge, tunnels etc to give a 98% accuracy on the rail network. I give myself 2% inaccuaracy in case I got something wrong somewhere.

Some of you may remember seeing screenshots from my route last year on some forums. For those wondering where I went I am back and you can check my blog daily to see how my work is progressing on the route. If any of you want to leave comments, questions or suggestions please feel free to post a comment to this blog.

This blog will be updated daily as I continue my work on this project. Hope you all enjoy seeing the inside blog of a Trainz route developer.

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theblogger@dateck.au.com