Locomotion in motion picture

Good news with which to kick off 2008: the route is continuing, despite silence on the blog for nearly two months. Responsibilities of life (that's family and work) have prevented me from reporting very much, but now and again I've had an opportunity to add a little bit here and there to the route.

Notable among the projects completed or on which progress has been made:

• the rebuilding of Appleford station following a site visit on a wet and windy Saturday morning.
• the rebuilding of Oxford station from platform level up. I've used Google Earth to scale the buildings correctly, and have also improved textures and added features to bring the model into line with more recently-built stations, to give a level of consistency.
• realignment of trackwork at Oxford station to enable signals to be placed correctly.
• addition of an assortment of other custom objects. Well over 150 custom objects have been created so far, from entire stations to bridges and speed restriction signs.
  

Just to prove that the route is very much alive and kicking, I've been playing around with Fraps tonight to create a 'movie' showing off parts of the route. It seems to be fashionable at the moment to create videos of your sim activities - I've seen some very impressive ones and, if done well, they are useful for providing demos of routes and rolling stock. I'm not sure that this video is particularly impressive but it's not designed as a work of art - more a means of demonstrating a few parts of the route and showing how it mirrors the real-life route. Click on the link immediately below to see the finished piece. Feedback welcome, of course - but do bear in mind that the route is still very much work in progress.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/O7MsQ0_u7U4nvLeTGNHsqw