Appen
Recently released, "Appen" is a fictitious route set in West Yorkshire (or should I say the West Riding) in the 1950 - 60's. "Appen" represents an industrial town located between Leeds and Bradford served by the London Midland with services from the North Eastern region of British Railways.
This is, perhaps, an unusual type of Trainz route because it does not portray many route miles and is not designed for driving from a loco cab, but is meant for operation rather like a model railway.
The model only uses a small part of 2 Trainz "baseboards", in fact it's deliberately limited to the practical constraints of railway modelling for example the physical size of the baseboard, scaled to "OO" the size of the route would be 3ft 6in x 43ft (a full Trainz baseboard would scale to 31ft x 31ft in "OO").
This approach has the distinct advantage of limiting the construction time needed to complete the route - a big help when many of the assets used on the route are scratch built for the route by me.
The photos below are from some time ago and the layout has been further developed and refined since they were taken.
The model only uses a small part of 2 Trainz "baseboards", in fact it's deliberately limited to the practical constraints of railway modelling for example the physical size of the baseboard, scaled to "OO" the size of the route would be 3ft 6in x 43ft (a full Trainz baseboard would scale to 31ft x 31ft in "OO").
This approach has the distinct advantage of limiting the construction time needed to complete the route - a big help when many of the assets used on the route are scratch built for the route by me.
The photos below are from some time ago and the layout has been further developed and refined since they were taken.
The passenger station at Appen
The container yard and loco servicing area. The track in the container yard is inset and does not show up at this distance.
Appen docks, again with inset track which does not show.
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You can see from the aerial views above that the route is a terminus station and fiddle yard (AKA hidden sidings or staging yard) which in the third picture is hidden by the dockyard walling and hillside. In Trainz you can have a conventional fiddle yard or an automated "portal", Appen uses both, allowing the yard to be operated manually or automated with a timetable.
An updated copy of the route can be purchased here: http://store.trainzportal.com/?aff=35
An updated copy of the route can be purchased here: http://store.trainzportal.com/?aff=35
