Southern Railways "Schools" V class [WIP]

[bombardiere]

Woot! I am so happy. This is one of my favourite locos. I don't know why, but it just is.

So yes, I want to play with it.

My initial reaction was that the tender was longer earlier type. That the standard tender for Schools Class is more compact. I have tried to google picture it, but I can't be sure. Preserved "Repton" has a bigger tender, but my guess is that it is later BR standard type tender and not a Southern one.

My favourite livery is Southern Maunsell Olive Green with white lining, by the way. Anyway, the lettering should be bit more yellowish. Yours is perhaps too pale. And I see that you have included loco shed letter code in the tender. I think it is correct, but I have a vague feeling that it was dropped around time that the Schools were introduced.

[Gumboots]

Ok cool. Any and all of that can be tweaked easily enough, once we know what to tweak it to.

One thing I do want to have though is black wheels. The preserved Schools locos have wheels painted to match the rest of the livery (whatever that may be) but according to Wiki the standard when the class was in mainline service was black wheels, with either the Maunsell olive green or the Bulleid malachite.

The reason I want to use black wheels in RT3 is that it will be the only practical way of doing different skins for the loco. Skins only get applied to body files and trucks. They don't get applied to wheels, so if the wheels are painted to match one skin they will look wrong with all the others. OTOH, black wheels will match all skins equally well, so no problem. Although if you only wanted Maunsell olive and wanted the wheels to match, obviously there's no reason why that couldn't be done.

And yes, the Schools class is one of my favourites too. There's just something cool and fun and lovable about them.

[bombardiere]

Black wheels? I have to confess that I have not paid much attention to that.

I have couple of books and one had very clear picture taken during BR years and it had painted wheels. So painting the wheels was done atleast during post war British Railways period.

I have also a book about Maunsell locomotives and it had a few colour pictures. I scan two pictures so you can make your own mind. Low quality. sorry.

The first one is Repton in 1962. I don't think those are painted wheels, but could be as well dirty or worn, so hard to tell.

The second top is Malachite Green Southern. Post war in 1948. In the book it looked like black, but in this scan it could be dark green.

So take your pick. But I think that these photos prove that, even if wheels were painted, in regular service those got dirty and dark looking. So black / dark grey is totally ok.

Anyway your logic about black being better for different skins is good, so I would say that go for black wheels.

[Gumboots]

Ok. I just thought of checking old cigarette cards from the period. These are usually pretty accurate, and one shows olive green wheels.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Leatherhead-Sc ... 0951553782

But we're stuck with an RT3 bug for skins. You can get coloured wheels to work with skins, but the only way you can get them to work is by saving and reloading the game. That's a PITA every time you want to select another skin.

There's a thread about it here - Duke skin + a little help requested

Although it would be easy to make the skins as half a dozen separate locomotives. It'd chew up more loco slots, but apart from that I can't see any problems with it. The game should perform just as well.

About the tender: I know Cheltenham's tender has SE&CR cast onto the axle boxes, so I'm sure that one is not an ex-BR tender. It'd have to be original SR, since they took over all the SE&CR stuff and that presumably included a lot of casting patterns. It appears to be the same tender that was on the drawings I used.

[bombardiere]

I went to see what modelmakers think about it. I know that Dapol has N gauge Schools and Hornby OO model.

Dapol's Olive Green and Malachite has painted wheels and Hornby has only BR versions at the moment and all these have black wheels. I know that model makers get these things wrong often, but I think this is a good indicator. UK steam engines regularly had painted wheels. Even black engines had wheels painted.

(I am going to buy Dapol's model later, but Olive Green is out of stock and anyway I need to control my railway model purchases. Too many locos and no functional layout to operate with, so i have been on a diet past several years. )

But we're stuck with an RT3 bug for skins.

I know this yeah. I have had BR Express Blue Class A1 with pale green wheels. But I don't think this is worth to do separate locomotives for each livery. Unless you want to do a special loco for a scenario.

I think that Schools had five basic liveries. SR Olive Green with while lining, Malachite Green, SR wartime black (no lining), BR Black (with lining ) and BR Brunswick Green. So if you go with dark grey wheels with a slight green tint, I think it will fit to all typical colours.

Anyway, i don't expect you to do skins. One Schools is more than enough.

About the tender: I know Cheltenham's tender has SE&CR cast onto the axle boxes, so I'm sure that one is not an ex-BR tender. It'd have to be original SR, since they took over all the SE&CR stuff and that presumably included a lot of casting patterns. It appears to be the same tender that was on the drawings I used.

I am no expert here so I have to be careful. But I have this feeling that the tender you have made is based on earlier model and this would fit to what you write. But this is non important in the context of RRT3. Old, new, BR tender, I just simply do not care. All would be "prototypical" It looks like it is a Schools and that is enough for me,

P.S. I have feeling that I went into rivet counting, but I had to do a google about the tenders. It looks to me that most Schools used the same basic tender. No major variations. But I found pair of photos of preserver Repton. The one taken in the US show SR tender, but when it came back to UK it had a different tender. Again this nothing important for RRT3.

http://www.semgonline.com/steam/v_class4.html

[Gumboots]

It looks like it is a Schools and that is enough for me.

This is my attitude too. The idea is to just give it the right feel, without going mental trying to make RT3's limited format do things it can't do.

Re liveries: I don't think they look so good in black, and I know when BR painted them black (with red lining, yes) they got so many complaints that they had to change them back to green.

I like them in olive or malachite, so those are definites. Apparently there were two different shades of olive, with one favoured at Ashford and the other favoured at Eastleigh. The Eastleigh green was darker, but nobody seems to agree on what shade either of them were so it's anyone's guess.

The BR Brunswick Green I can take or leave, but it wouldn't be hard to do. It's just another shade of green and a different colour for the lining, along with adding "30" in front of the engine number and throwing a ferret on a unicycle. What I really want is a St. Trinian's skin.



And maybe a St. Custard's as well (post about skins here). Skins are handy, because they let me use colour coding for different routes and regions in the game. I like this.

[bombardiere]

Oh did not realise that you have already sorted liveries.

Apparently there were two different shades of olive, with one favoured at Ashford and the other favoured at Eastleigh. The Eastleigh green was darker, but nobody seems to agree on what shade either of them were so it's anyone's guess.

Yes I have heard about this, but it is very much open to interpretation. I would go for darkish green and be happy about it. However it is most likely there is kind of natural variation. Paint patches may vary and repaints in different times can produce different shades.

What I really want is a St. Trinian's skin.

Image

St. Trinian. Oh Yeah! While I did live in the UK many many years ago, I saw couple those old black and white movies. I think I jumped between the channels and first time I was like. Oh my God. What is this. Finnish TV showed two modern re-makes last winter, but these did not have the charm of the originals.

[Gumboots]

I haven't seen the re-make of St. Trin's, but I heard it wasn't all that good.

Anyway I find skins are easy. They take hardly any files to run them, and usually I'll have the base colour layer separate from all the styles/highlights/grunge/etc, so making skins is usually little more than duplicating a base layer and swapping the colour overlay on it.

By the way, although they're not big on detail I do like the colour balance in the old loco skins you made.* They work well for general feel.

I had a thought about the tender. I think the problem is the weird way RT3 does perspective from some angles. Here's a orthographic profile shot of the actual model, along with an SR drawing (pre-BR era).

Actually, looking at that wireframe I should tweak the tender a little bit. The coal board isn't quite right, and there are probably a couple of other details that could be better. Generally it's on the mark for proportions though.

*If you ever want to fix the drivetrains or other details on your old locos, I'm happy to help out with that.

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I found something about livery and shades of green. This is an old colour photograph from the mid-1930's.

There has probably been some distortion of colours, unless the sky really was that colour in mid-1930's London (which is scary, but possible). I'd also expect a more intense red on the buffer beam. Still, it gives the general idea, and it's noteworthy that this is apparently the "new light green". At a guess I'd say this is probably what people refer to as "Ashford olive", with the "old dark green" being the "Eastleigh olive".

Eastleigh being an old LSWR town, I think "Eastleigh olive" was probably the old LSWR dark "Holly green" livery being carried over into the first years of SR. Apparently this happened, at least in some places, and it makes a certain amount of sense that the Eastleigh works would feel like sticking to their old livery until they were told different. They probably had a stash of LSWR paint to use up anyway.

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I was thinking about the appeal of the Schools class. They're a well-proportioned locomotive, but I think some of the appeal is that the large drivers and short boiler give them just a little bit of a cartoon feel, so people naturally feel good about them. They just tend to make people happy because you can't take them too seriously, even though they were very capable units.

Which reminded me of something else I've always wanted to do for sheer idiot fun: a GER Humpty T19R.

These just crack me up. I can't look at them without laughng, but they did work for secondary express in the early 20th century. It wouldn't be hard to make one, and you could find a slot for them for light UK express in RT3, but other things have to be done first.

[bombardiere]

I think the problem is the weird way RT3 does perspective from some angles.

Not only the RRT3, but is is my eyes too. I now know that most Schools had same tender, but when I google pictures the angle make it look like there were several different lenghts. So it so no "problem", but more perhaps an optical illusion.

I think your tender looks good. I know that you will "fix" the stepping ladder in skin, so the current 3D box (plane) makes it look longer than it really is.

*If you ever want to fix the drivetrains or other details on your old locos, I'm happy to help out with that.

Thank you for your offer, but I think it is no. I feel that your route to make new ones is better. My locomotive are bastard mutations of RRT3 ones, so I feel that it is not worth of time to work on those.

If I have time this weekend, I might try to something myself. I have not forgot Black 5, but this discussion did remain another Southern favourite of mine. A1 Terrier. As 0-6-0 tank with inside cylinder, it is about as simple as a locomotive can ever get.

There has probably been some distortion of colours, unless the sky really was that colour in mid-1930's London (which is scary, but possible). I'd also expect a more intense red on the buffer beam. Still, it gives the general idea, and it's noteworthy that this is apparently the "new light green". At a guess I'd say this is probably what people refer to as "Ashford olive", with the "old dark green" being the "Eastleigh olive".

The company logo and numbering is Bulleid Sunshine, so it would indicate that this really is a Malachite Green. So I would say that the colours are distorted. It says that it is supposed to be a colour photograph, but to my eye it is more of re-coloured photograph. They did that in 20's - 30's UK magazines.

London is known as "Big Smoke", but as you said, that colour sky is bit scary.

I would not worry too much about the exact shade. Just pick a darkish green colour which pleases your eye. I have done enough modelling to know that the beauty lies on beholders eyes. I have witness enough argument on what is the "correct" shade that I know that there is no one right shade / colour.

Your olive green is perhaps bit darker than I am used to see on model trains. But models do get lighter colour for scale effect. And when I googled yesterday, I found 3D models dark as yours. May be darker. So I think that yours is a good colour. I own only one Southern Olive Green train model. A Terrier. But I will dig it up tomorrow and see how it compares to your shade. I personally think that this kind of accuracy is more than enough for this game. Only reason why I talk so much about the details is how fond I am on Southern and Schools. I really like how Southern yellow fit to green base, so that why I would like to see lettering you are using in a richer shade.

These just crack me up. I can't look at them without laughng, but they did work for secondary express in the early 20th century. It wouldn't be hard to make one, and you could find a slot for them for light UK express in RT3, but other things have to be done first.

Yeah, high boiler and short length make it looks like someone would squashed it. It would be a fine addition to the game. I would like it. I have always eyed for LNWR Precedent as for late 19th Century UK express loco.

[Gumboots]

The company logo and numbering is Bulleid Sunshine, so it would indicate that this really is a Malachite Green. So I would say that the colours are distorted.

There's no way that green is Bulleid malachite. It's definitely an olive of some sort. If anything, the lettering may have yellowed a bit with age.

The colour for a Terrier is another quagmire. I've seen "Stroudley's Improved Engine Green" done as everything from bright yellow to faded babypoo brown. If you want to do a Terrier that's fine by me. It's not a loco that interests me much, so it'd be good to have someone else do something that I wouldn't do anyway.

If I was going to do a small tank of that period I'd be seriously tempted to do an LT&SR Atlantic tank. Those were classy little units, and LT&SR had some great liveries too.

[Gumboots]

Hey Bomber.

I'll behave myself now, and go back to some of the other unfinished projects.

[bombardiere]

Oh dear. You are so quick. I did not even open RRT3 or 3D software whole weekend. One of my workmates was leaving, so we had an afterwork party. First too much fun. and then next morning not so much fun.

There's no way that green is Bulleid malachite. It's definitely an olive of some sort. If anything, the lettering may have yellowed a bit with age

However I am still convinced that the picture is for Bulleid Malachite. My arguments are the lettering and position of the loco number. Both are Bulleid style.

See the lettering on the tender. It is different lettering than Maunsell was using. That look like Bulleid lettering type.

Here is a comparison.

Typical Maunsell

https://fox-transfers.co.uk/transfers/s ... -lettering

And pre-war Bulleid

https://fox-transfers.co.uk/transfers/s ... -1936-1941

Also the loco number is on the cab. Maunsell had it on the tender. That is why I believe that the photo is Malachite Green engine. Even though the colour is so dark. So I think the dark green look is either a colour distortion or this is a re-coloured photo.

[Gumboots]

You may be right about the malachite, but I'm still not sure. I have seen plenty of shots of models of the Schools class that have tender lettering in yellow, while still being painted in some shade of Maunsell olive, so some people obviously think there is some basis for that combination. Anyway, it doesn't matter much. Anyone who particularly wants something will be able to grab the PSD and tweak it to suit their liking, or even just change the lettering directly on the DDS.

I'm currently thinking I should maybe try and clear the locomotive backlog a bit, by doing what I've done with the Schools: finish sorting the mesh out, get them running, and leave final UV mapping and detailed skinning for later. It may provide a bit of an incentive to do further work on them, and I could probably churn out a bunch of them to that basic stage pretty quickly. There are at least a dozen sitting around that are close to usable (Gresley A1/A3, Peppercorn A1, Gresley V2, Gresley P2, Black 5, DX Goods, Royal Hudson revamp, a couple of Garratts, etc, etc, etc).

[bombardiere]

I'm currently thinking I should maybe try and clear the locomotive backlog a bit, by doing what I've done with the Schools: finish sorting the mesh out, get them running, and leave final UV mapping and detailed skinning for later. It may provide a bit of an incentive to do further work on them, and I could probably churn out a bunch of them to that basic stage pretty quickly. There are at least a dozen sitting around that are close to usable (Gresley A1/A3, Peppercorn A1, Gresley V2, Gresley P2, Black 5, DX Goods, Royal Hudson revamp, a couple of Garratts, etc, etc, etc).

You get a plus from me for that one. I love to play with those even if are bit unfinished. I can happily play scenario even if that loco is bit raw and anyway in comparison to my models, even your raw version is a huge improvement.

Your work has inspired me to play again. It is fun to play old scenarios with new engines. Thank you.

You may be right about the malachite, but I'm still not sure. I have seen plenty of shots of models of the Schools class that have tender lettering in yellow, while still being painted in some shade of Maunsell olive, so some people obviously think there is some basis for that combination. Anyway, it doesn't matter much. Anyone who particularly wants something will be able to grab the PSD and tweak it to suit their liking, or even just change the lettering directly on the DDS.

Oh. All Southern passenger and loco lettering are Yellow. Both Maunsell and Bulleid. I am not sure about the exact shade and they may have different shades. Sorry, I was referring to letter font. That tender has Bulleid type of font. That is why I believe it being Malachite. It would very fit to caption "New light green livery." But of course it can be a test mix and match livery.

Anyway, you are right and it doesn't matter much. I hope you understand that I am discussing this in academic curiosity. If I want some special livery or combination, I can do that myself. You take your view on what you see is fitting and I will be happy with it.

[Gumboots]

Oh. All Southern passenger and loco lettering are Yellow. Both Maunsell and Bulleid.

I've seen models with white lettering too. But those are only with Maunsell olive, not with malachite. I don't know where the model builder got white lettering from, but I assume they had some basis for it. Maybe Maunsell experimented a bit too. I know that immediately after grouping the SR pax livery was the old LSWR sage green, and Maunsell didn't bring in his olive immediately. They could have tried all sorts of things I suppose.

And yeah, academic interest. It's kinda nice to have a couple of liveries that are accurate, if we can get them, just for a sense of history, but I'm not going to go nuts about it.

[Gumboots]

Ran some quick tests at the weekend with skinning this thing. Since I had the other skins roughed out I figured why not chuck them on the running beta and see how they look. Might as well.

The dgVoodoo graphics fix has made a big difference to what is going to be possible. Back when I first tested an exported model (first one ever for Blender to RT3) the darker green was so dark it was basically unusable. With dgVoodoo handling the game's graphics now, the same dark livery comes alive and looks like it should. It's now not just usable, but is one of the best.

This got me testing the other ones, and they have promise too. The dark purple-red St. Trin's was originally suffering from the same problem, so I lightened it up some. Looking at it now, I could go back to the darker version and still have it work well.

The other one which is now looking dramatically better is the LB&SCR Stroudley livery, which totally went to crap before dgVoodoo. Still needs some tweaking, but the boiler striping is now perfect and the gradients on the boiler seem pretty good too.

I seem to be going through one of my more motivated spells at the moment, so will see if I can get the running beta upgraded to a better standard. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's better to get things running even if they aren't perfect, as long as the mesh and UV mapping is set up so that tweaking the texture to a better standard later is possible. That way people can play with them and have some fun, and if anyone (like me) gets inspired to do a few improvements they can be done without it being a major drama from scratch.

[Gumboots]

Allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll righty then.

I have had another crack at this mongrel of a thing. I was determined to knock it off and not be defeated. It's now at the stage where, for the first time ever, all of it fits on the texture, in a rational arrangement, at the correct scales and everything. This is even with me deciding to get fancy and have the correct counterweights on the driving and coupled wheels, which meant chewing up more space for wheels (coz they're different).

It has proper vector/alpha work in most places it needs it. Still needs a little bit of tweaking for UV packing, but that's just to make some details of skinning it a bit easier. Obviously the skins still need some detailing too. The bottom line is it will all work. Not only that, but it is going to come in at a lower poly count than the rough beta.

I'm kinda chuffed about it. Beats me why I didn't just do it this way to start with.

The main brainwave I had was to do non-critical components at 20px/RT3 unit, which is the same scale as the Pennsy H3 skin, and decent enough for a lot of things, but to do more critical components at 24px/RT3 unit to get better clarity on some of this beastie's horrendous fancy detailing. Which it has lots of. Complicated little critters, the Schools class. I seem to remember some beginner saying he was going to do one because they were nice and simple.

[Gumboots]

Made some more progress. UV mapping has been rationalised (more or less repacked the whole thing) and some extra skinning details have been added. Cab window is currently gruesome, but the lining is turning out quite well. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's almost not worth working in raster at all, and it might be better to do everything in vector format.

Anyway the whole thing is coming along nicely. I feel like I'm on the home stretch now.

[Gumboots]

Made a serious start on the tender skinning. It's looking a lot better already.

A bit more ratonalising has been done on the locomotive too. Saved a few more polys without making it look rougher. This thing is forcing me to think outside my usual box, which is good. I'm learning more all the time. I'll probably cut the poly count a little more by the time it's done. It's looking like it will end up around 100 lower than the existing beta, somewhere in the low 1800's. Anyway, things seem to be going smoothly now.

[Gumboots]

Just getting this thing finalised for mesh, and a slight problem occurred to me.

UK locos of the period didn't have headlights as such. The running lamps they used at night were only to indicate to trackside crew what sort of train was coming. They didn't provide any headlight beam for the driver, so if I do put a running lamp on the front of this thing it would only have a small glow light anyway.

The catch is that the running lamps weren't used between sunrise and sunset. That's when the head code (as it was called) was done by those white discs you see on old UK locos. These replaced the running lamps during daylight hours. This means that for RT3 purposes it can't be correct all the time. It has to have either the daylight head code (white discs) or the night head code (running lamps). It can't have both, so I have to choose between them. Well ok, it could have both, but then it would be wrong all the time instead of wrong some of the time, which doesn't seem to be an improvement.

At the moment I'm thinking it should have the white discs. There are more daylight hours than night hours, and the discs can be done with a much lower poly count, and all RT3 locos have lights at the front so using the disc head codes would be something different. If anyone has a different opinion, speak now or forever hold your codpiece.