Well once upon a time I accompanied my father to a celebration of the Eastleigh Works for the Eastleigh 100 celebration. We had a great day, clambered over and photographed some classic Southern locomotives and in the process got chatting about an oddly shaped 0-6-0 freight locomotive (showing there as a live steam model) which my father remembered seeing regularly in the Portsmouth area back when he was a young boy.
My love of hard working freight locomotives kept this one in my head for a few days after the event so I started to research them and become even more enamoured with the class with it's austerity design and "old school" wheel layout.
As you may have guessed the locomotive in question was the Bulleid Q1 and eventually my research led me to build a model of it for Railsimulator which had turned into Railworks by the time I released it.
It was ok for the time and my skills and I'm flattered that a lot of people still seem to enjoy it. However still being enamoured by the Q1's I've obtained a lot more materials and reference since then and I can say without shame that it is in fact a very poor guess at a Q1.
The body shape is wrong - very wrong as I'll show below.
It was built in the day when polys were precious so it's very basically detailed.
The textures were average at the time, but don't hold up with the new shaders and the TSX graphics engine.
The steam and smoke effects were a copy of the defaults from the locos included with Railsimulator.
The internal motion was faked with 2 pistons just pumping back and forth.
The physics and simulation were a straight copy of the Black 5, as were the sounds.. and the cab!
The wheel slip, a MAJOR factor of driving an 0-6-0 weighing 52 tons wasn't accurate due to failings in the simulation engine.
I was happy at the time and for my first effort at a loco build. But I think the time has come to do this mighty locomotive justice.
So the first task is to correct the body shape. Just looking at these 2 images you can see that the old boiler casing (yellow/orange lines) is nowhere close to the correct curves in the diagram (marked in red, blue and green).
Worse than that, the cab is a good half a metre too thin giving the windows an odd elongated effect and changing the entire profile.
And the knock on effect of that was that the tender, who's sides mimic the curve of the cab sides, is all wrong as well!
So the first job is a full rebuild of loco and tender, not to mention detailing everything to current standards - rivet counters rejoice! I don't expect to retain more than 10% of the original, if any to be honest.
Obviously there are a lot of new effects to add - new particles effects for steam and smoke, steam chest simulation and working cylinder cocks.
Also for this build I am totally rebuilding the wheel slip physics in script. Yup, no longer will you get shonky effects with wheel slip based on whether the loco is coupled before/after the scenario starts. Wheel slip will be dynamic based on the actual consist mass and length, gradients and conditions using real world equations.
Sanding will become the essential part of driving the Q1 that it was in real life, and in Advanced Mode the sand will be limited to a realistic amount so you can't just turn it on for the whole journey.
I've been working on the wheel slip on and off for a few months just using the old model as I knew it would be an essential part of replicating the Q1 realistically so I needed to crack that before I started on the model rebuild. It's taken a lot of testing and adjusting so far to get it to slip properly but I'm pleased with the results and there is more tweaking and improving to come.
Also on the todo list is a custom sound set based on C1/33001 which ran at the Bluebell railway until 2004, fully modelled Stephenson's gear which can be seen quite clearly due to the open frame design, a working steam reverser for those who drive from the cab, and a system to create the numerous combinations of "improvements" made to these locos over their lives including hydrostatic or single/dual mechanical lubricators, windows(!), side protectors and AWS.
As you would expect for a payware model, a full cab will be included with as many controls working as possible. I am blessed to be in contact with an ex-driver of these locomotives when they worked the Southern region under BR and he is a goldmine of detail on the practical driving practice, not just what the books say it ought to have been like.
I'm also looking to add a new method for the player to check the fire level in an attempt to make it possible to drive with even less reliance on the HUD for those who like it "real".
I normally save feature lists until near the time of a new release as they inevitably change in the creative process, but I'm 99% sure on all of those that I've listed above. I'm also hopeful that more features will be added to enhance the experience.
I also need to give some thought to appropriate stock, which will also be looked at for it's braking properties.
As well as having the power classification of 5 (the same as a Black 5) which the Q1 struggled to apply to the rail due to it's 0-6-0 configuration and light weight design, it also had very weak brakes and was known to be quite a handful pulling unbraked stock. During it's testing in 1943 a 900 ton train at 45mph took over 3 miles to stop! An S15 could stop in 1 3/4 miles in comparison.
Going to be fun to drive, isn't it? ;-)
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