Wessex Electric Nutter's Site

Railworks Work

Other Sims Work

Work In Progress Blog

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Author: wessexen

Another test! With Instagram.

This is to just link my instagram account to my site… oh wait!

This actually might take some explaining. I’ve been producing my website for a month at the moment, so my mum came up with an idea “I want to put more on Instagram for Irish Red and White Setters”.

Here’s a better suggestion, how about a full on WordPress blog and site? Well, I started it and it doesn’t have to be WordPress, it can be anything. The only thing stopping you is either

A) Skills

B) Experience

C) Plug-ins unless you want to get your hands dirty.

So, here is my trial. Oh as I am using “JetPack”, highly recommended plugin by the way, I had to turn my account into a “professional” account. On the other hand, at least I can link posts to this website now. (Another good thing with JetPack is the editing feature that allows you to update your site from your phone or tablet through an App offline, there’s something rather nice to have)

Even more importantly, I forgot to mention why I suggested it. Well, Instagram is good but a bit limited with what you can do. WordPress is a better platform for conveying thoughts, my original posts prove that and the fact I talk about development for my objects, how I did it and what I’m doing at the time. Here is an example of that:

LEV 3/R3 Railbus

Embedding using plugins is easy, just download the plugin and link away. However, my hosting provider, which is thankfully rather cheap, only costs me £20 a year to host and I get some nice “Softalicous” plugins which I have used extensively on this site, plus it comes with Pagelayer Pro which I haven’t used yet. Considering the site was only meant to be used to convey my personal blog, I grew it into more than that for this reason. I like talking about life and challenges but not mental health, my ultimate aim is to inspire others to come up with weird, unique and wacky ideas.
Now with WordPress, I can do that by showing how things work in the background, but I got more mad ideas coming up if I have the time. A game based on Java or JavaScript? Now if you don’t know, I’m actually 39 and I thought of an idea, why not recreate a game from my past I used to play a lot on the BBC Micro Computer (non UK audience’s may not know what I am talking about) and let everyone else play with it while giving it a different twist? How about Airlift – depending on time?

19/07/2025
”I’m fed up with being cooked everyday, let’s have some snow!”

He isn’t far wrong!

Now if you read my about me page, you’d realise where I live. If you looked at the weather for the past 3 months of where I live, you can see that another problem doesn’t bode well (that is being a redhead, here is a post of the problems).

Life as a redhead

I got a message from my dad while at work, it said with what the title states and to be honest, right now? I rather have snow! It is a tinderbox here. It really is!

I took these photos earlier in the month, somewhere around the 5th July 2025 while on a dog walk, that the place is just looking horrifically parched. I’ve seen it before, but never to the extent of this. We have had some rainfall, but the rainfall has been miniscule for what is actually needed within the area. An article by the BBC (Seen here – opens a new window) shows how dry it is across the UK. Bearing in mind, for me locally, its not that unusual to have dry spells as the weather system is driven by the Isle of Wight and Selsey Bill.
We are thankfully surrounded to the south by sea water, but even then, with Chichester Harbour being full of (undrinkable) water, it has been unusually dry, and the risk of wildfires continue. So far, there hasn’t been any locally, however, Portsmouth Water (our local water supplier) has asked the locals to think carefully about their water usage.

The River Lavant is qutie dry, not unusual for this time of year as what you see on the surface flows during the winter, but the River Lavant is known to flow underground as the south downs is mostly made of chalk, but what is concerning is local levels.

Its also having an effect on everything locally, -those wanting to go to the beach which means anytiime it gets warm, no one can move as West Wittering beach becomes immensely popular – so popular, it constantly runs out of parking spaces. Thats not the problem, its the lack of transport to get there which clogs up the A286, which means you really can’t go anywhere as the whole of Chichester suffers as a result. If you do get any public transport, the trains suffer with delays as there is problem with the heat on the lines causing all sorts of issues. Buses? Well, they get stuck in the same traffic as everyone else gets stuck in.

As for me? I have to keep out of the sun, my skin can’t cope with it as the UV index at times in the UK has been hitting 8.

But snow? I would love snow right now., I’ll spend all day taking photos, despite how disruptive it is – this is back in 2010 when we had some seriously heavy snow fall. We haven’t had any snow like that since 2013, if we have, its measured in millimeters, not 15cm or more!

18/07/2025
Bugs (Trainz work this time)

This is why I never consider anything finished.

So latest thing is, I uploaded my EPB unit to my site which if you looked, you’d notice its a pretty old model. In preparing it for Trainz 2019+, which required a lot of changes (I mean a lot!) and plenty of dependency and bug fixing, I noticed a big problem with the cab that I completely forgot about, I took this screenshot in TS2010 as I didn’t think ahead… again! It was build for the JET engine anyway. It works in the E2 engine as well, which suprised me.

The biggest glaringly obvious problem is the brake handle and the power handle, both rotate the wrong way. A few hours of tweaking and it works properly. 4 notch controller doing a 180 degree spin and the brake handle now rotates 90 degrees. At this point, it still has 4 notches and the real thing has between lap and apply, an infinitive amount of notches on the brakes, its EP self lapping. Driving it on “Auto-brake” in Trainz is honest to god – hell (at least to me)! Unpredictable and either you slam on the brakes too much or too little. So I added a ton of notches, the brake handle hated it, test, test, test. Still hates it until I realise I got a tag wrong. If I remove the word “lap”, it functions like a normal EP brake handle.

Then clean up the rest of the controls, some work ok now, some don’t, the AWS button doesn’t work yet properly, but its on the list and I plan to make that a push button anyway.

Then it was the turn of the DTS in the Class 416. The way I done it is that 415 DMBS does both units (in reality, there is little difference between the 2.). Getting them to function like Driving Trailers wasn’t hard, it was easy infact, one tag.

Then the physics, I used TEE (Trainz Engine Editor) which I still have a copy somewhere, installed it, dumbed down the power as 500hp per DMBS and it STILL shoots off like a rocket. But its more playable. Its tempting to then mess with the body, I figured out how to show blanks and tail lamps in TS2019 plus, just model a red square and redo the headcode box. If you look at the flying brick, I’ve employed this method for the tail lamp which paves the way for mesh attachments.

At least the Class 416 DTSO (Semi Compartment) has its passenger view back, but I really need to remove the Monkey Bars, which I don’t think they were fitted to BR Designed units, or at least not 3 of them as some may of been fitted for the Oxted Tunnel (that was 2 of them).

18/07/2025
Rediscovering work… (Updated 16/07/25)
…. to publish on this site!

Here comes another blog about WIP stuff, I’ve been trying to look for objects I’ve not touched but would like to publish for everyone to enjoy and this is one of them in its current form. Actually, I was messing with it on the train this morning but a power cut saw to that – knocked out both of my desktops and one had 3DSM open as I use a thin client. Thank you Scottish and Southern Energy Networks (SSEN), maybe it might be time to invest in a UPS? If you’d like to help, please click the “donate button”.

Anyway, looks like this, I was planning to texture it today just quickly, so players have something to paint. That didn’t go well either – train delay which meant I couldn’t switch the desktops on afterwards. That’s another issue for another blog that I have to be careful what I talk about. Sorry.
Forgotten, but to be honest, I don’t think this item has much interest in it, the only thing I know is that this Westinghouse People Mover, first installed in 1971 was installed at one airport – Tampa Bay Airport in the USA. That was it, only 2 cars known unless you know more? Please add a message below. These are the only 2 known cars of their type and seem to be the first ones after the Pittsburgh Skybus Project – that’s another model for another blog, but the SkyBus looks very different. For a start, a doorway on one side, no end windows and just a vehicle that you could only see out the sides with 1960’s computer tech. Rumor has it, it wasn’t even computerised, it was actually manually driven on a circuit. One vehicle still survives too. Still, enjoy this small model. Best worked in shuttle mode.

(Also, unlike other models, this one is actually quite light on the system resources, 4,000 polys in total – or there abouts.)

Want to play with it? Download here (needs the Westinghouse C-100 from this page )

EDIT (16/07/2025): Rather than make a new post, I thought I’ll add to this one. If you want to play with it (possibly moans about missing track – so you may need to change that), you can play with the underground station. I’m reluctant to release the track at the moment as I am not sure of the licencing conditions of the concrete texture and I have to go out somewhere to find a suitable texture – good luck to me. As for the station:

Its high poly, its also pre-rendered with the textures, so they are baked on the station itself – reskinning maybe hard, but you are welcome to try and show me what you have come up with.
Download here
14/07/2025
The site looks like its getting bigger

All through looking through my hard drive. I know a lot of people have been looking for my content for years and isn’t available anywhere anymore – this is what this site was suppose to address, but while clearing out my hard drive and putting what is left as there is a lot of duplicates on said NAS/Hard drive, I came across this folder from a previous site:

I had to edit some of the files out, but yes, that is a LOT I need to put up, in addition to what’s up already. This will take a long time to sort, so don’t expect anything to be instant (sorry). To add it and document everything, probably takes around 30 minutes an object – plus I need to validate and check it works on modern Trainz (TS2019+) which some items won’t. Pack it, etc.

I also found a reskin file for the Class 141, so that will be uploaded ASAP, so if anyone wants a fiddle, be my guest. It will be the second source item on the site (finally). Then there is the issue of space. I may run out. If that happens, I’ll start hotlinking everything off the site or talk nicely to the owner, but I got 5GB and still got some way to go. For those interested, the size so far of what’s in that folder is:

Ok, not as bad as I thought, but getting that way!

Look out for more to add of older releases in the future. For reference, if I remember correctly, this was put onto a self hosted server. Yes, I had one of those in days gone by, Internet Information System 6.0 tied to an IP address and on 24/7, I could do it all over again as I have the equipment. Its just the time and knowhow as I would use Linux these days, with a VPN server for more fun. A good way to use up your capacity. The connection is fast enough, around 2.5GB/s fibre, but then its limited to the port of the computer – which is 1GB/s as it is an old Lenovo.

Going off subject slightly, for those messing with PCs and have a network to yourself, I seriously recommend having a play around, but just for gods’ sakes! Isolate your computer! Its how you learn. Also remember, a new hole in the network is a new hole that introduces security risks.

09/07/2025
Going through my back and forward catalouge

When I produced this site, I never thought I’ll be going through my past and present catalogue of Trainz content nor the extent of how much I made, I mean just look!

The worst bit is that is scratching the surface. There is a lot more I haven’t added and there is more in the files directory that I need to catalogue and post on the page. If you think that is bad, my Trainz install is someting else of a lot of self made stuff.

Shows you that even though I am quiet most of the time, in the background, I am actually working away.

07/07/2025
It’s show time!

So I’ve worked on this site long enough and I thought I’ll start publishing it. That was the hard part. Another plugin added to allow me to move over from the sub folder to the main site. First attempt didn’t work, so I had to erase it and start again. This time it did! And just exactly how I wanted it.

It has taken me EIGHT years to get to this point, from concept to final product. I had several tries, and a lot were unsuccessful.

I tried “Artisteer”, I went from WordPress to Joomla with no success for the templates, I tried other template builders and other web authoring tools (Dreamweaver, WYSIWYG, NetObjects) and all this in my spare time. I couldn’t even open up my old site in NOF and it was the same version.

All it took was a new site with an accidental discovery, I could do what I always wanted to do, create a template using WordPress and that was 3 weeks ago from memory. A static to a dynamic page. It took me a long time to get here but I f inally done it.

It is based on WordPress’s Twenty Twenty Five theme with a lot of customisations, so you will see some WordPress-like stuff in here and the side bar will disappear on some pages as templates – I’ll fix that in due course. As I was creating this one, I found another experimental WordPress site I started in 2016 that I forgot about, so I amalgamated all the posts over to this site which is why there is a gap between 2018 and 2023. Actually, this site was started because my mum suggested it with my mental health issues, to start blogging all over again and talk about it – anything previous to those doesn’t exist as it was on Joomla (which got deleted), I do have a “Live Jornual” out on the web somewhere which was from 2003 to 2008 when I got too busy.

Still, feedback is welcome and here is a screenshot of the current site together with the old WIP site and the test page from 2017. I hope it will look more like it in the future. Also somewhere, I have an open office drawing somewhere and that is the original concept.

Comments? Please let me know. I’ll update my CV in due course with the web addresses and the rest of the pages.

06/07/2025
More site development – the side bar

And I worked from home today, spending quite a bit of time on it.

This must have been the most frustrating aspects of creating a WordPress site, but I cracked it finally. The good news is once I create it as a template part, that’s it, it all automatically updates when it refers to that template part…. That was the easy bit!

The hard bit? I did some settings changes and I wanted a load of images to represent stops on a route map, so I created a load of images (the LinkedIn, Facebook logo and donate button come from their respective owners and added to the site that way, reduced to fit the side bar).

Previous for a few days, I created a navigation bar with just links to pages, seen in the below screenshot, it may disappear by the time you look at the page.

(Lost the image)

But… that’s where the fun changes, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the images to accept a link, until I looked at the top bar where I made a UI change in the settings… oh…!
Now it works. Next task, to get it to change colour when you hover, it will look slightly weird but I’ll try and keep the affect down, the plan is to go orange.

It took me YEARS to work out how WordPress works and now I am learning it in less than 7 days. As for the links to the LinkedIn and Facebook profile, I have customised it in that I used a HTML modification and good job I remembered good old <a href=””> </a> tags! <img src=””> is another one, <p></p>, <list><li></list>, I think I got the basic ones covered.
The most ironic part is, how WordPress is driven, its basically a giant database with some PHP coding to pull and push data, so a simple query of “SELECT aboutme FROM pages” in the background. I think I got the syntax right for SQL, someone comment if I am right or wrong.

But anyway, all the links and HTML files are actually stored in a database and then spat out and shown on your display. The images aren’t, they are just linked to an area on the site.

If you are wondering “can I do this in another database like Access?” In theory, you could, but it won’t be web capable and in fact, most computers couldn’t access your site. However, if you wrote a VB program, you could output the data to a VB file and have it display locally.

(Oh as for the file I used, here is the raw unedited file I used to create the bar with. Its mostly all standardised and I turned on the layers and and when required).

EDIT: Oh the buttons, if you want the PSD files, you can down them by clicking this text.

30/06/2025
Donate button appearance
Something you may of noticed that’s been added to the sidebar is a donate button. I’ll be clear first, it is completely optional. I’ve tried to put it in an unintrusive space, so you don’t get bombarded with it being put in your face and this will be the only place I will “promote it”. I’m not going to push it in everyone’s face as I am not like that. I’m not driven solely by money. I got targets, I got desires, agreed, but money is the root of all evil so I’m trying to not get corrupted by money and its problems.

You can find it here:
(Donate an amount to me – OPTIONAL)

The reasoning behind it is simple. I’ve had a few comment on my work and its quality despite being unfinished and the time I have. I don’t take commissioned projects on for similar reasons (dysfunctional family, stress and other work commitments), but if you want, you can keep me going. I don’t care if it is £0.01 (1 pence) or £100.00, I’m grateful for anything. I also do everything in my spare time. As in, on the train from home to work and back. Even then I have a WiFi battle!

To give you an idea of my likes and expenses and one is going to quite wild, as of 29/06/2025:
- A 2 Litre bottle of Tesco’s Coke zero – £0.49 (49p)
- Regular sized Latte for the morning commute with discount – £3.30 approx
- Tescos meal deal – £3.60 (3 items, sandwich, side and drink)
- Lyca Mobile 5GB plan – £5
- Online storage – OpenDrive – $9.99 a month or around £8. Its unlimited though. Not sure of the security aspect, I’ll be honest, the program looks older than the hills and doesn’t have versioning, but it works. There are other options, TeraBox which is based in China and I’m a bit questionable about it as you have to upload/download through their app. OpenDrive does have a WebDAV option though. OneDrive is preferred though but its limited to 1TB and the upgrade goes to 2TB. A lot of my work collectively is already near the 2TB limit.
- Waitrose shopping SBC – £10 a time
- Keeping this site going – £20 (thank god!) a year. If you want to have your own site hosted by my friends, please talk to www.cadence.net.uk (Cadence Networks). I’ve been with them for years and despite what I have said in a previous blog post, I’ve have had no issues with them at all. Just I’m unfortunate with the issues I’ve suffered has been all external and they have had to act. No, they aren’t sponsoring me to say this, its all genuine.
- Renewal of the domain – £31.61 for 2 years ☹ It was cheap at one point.
- Keeping my wessexelectricnut mailbox going (As I write this, doesn’t work with the site for enquiries, so its on my burgess.world inbox) for a year – £60, although admittedly, it’s a Zimbra Hosted box with a briefcase that reports it has “unlimited storage”, until I broke it recently. Don’t ask – turns out 11GB of meshes was too much for it to handle.
- Cheap laptop – £150 (believe it or not, a lot of my work is made on laptops with Intel HD based graphics processors)
- Used Toughbook – £500 – £1,500 (acceptable for use).
- Expensive laptop – £2,000
- Ultimate desire, Panasonic Toughbook FZ-40 with 5G modem – £4,200
In the immediate term, I’m trying to get enough money together to get my own house with a mortgage, at 39, its not easy. My dad is trying to tempt me in staying at home but at times, I’ll admit, its becoming increasingly difficult as I do a day job (Train Planning), then have to do a ton of tasks when I get home related to him and the dogs.
Getting to work, travel is fortunately cheap, I drive and park at my nearest station, that is because the travelling time by train caused conflict between my dad and me because to him, the evening wait for 45 minutes between trains to my local station is unacceptably long when Southern changed their timetable. He also has a vendetta against Southern. So £25 of petrol in my 29 year old Renault Clio (yes, the one that has the bonnet that flips the opposite direction to most cars – think Clio Williams. Actually, how many bonnets are hinged at the bumper than the scuttle these days?) is thankfully frugal on petrol – despite the hammering down the A27.

Parking is thankfully free as I work for the Train Operating Company, Rail travel is free for the local TOC but since the transfer from First to DFTO, everywhere else is now chargeable at Priv rate (75%, no more free travel for 10 boxes a year on Avanti, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, Lumo or other First Group TOCs ☹ and no Friends and Family discounts on them too! And no, other DFTO companies, we don’t get free travel at all on them).

The only other big issue is one of my friends likes lots of holidays, but he has a different job and he gets a hell of a lot more than me. I don’t have any secondary employment, so its just my main source of income. Cost control on holiday can be difficult and he can be a bad influence, where I look at reducing my costs (and my weight), he goes out and orders quite a lot of food – which is actually quite costly these days.

So, there you have it, that’s the reasoning behind the sudden appearance of the “donate button”. As I said, its up to you. I’m not forcing you to pay and I don’t want anyone to struggle financially, if you can afford a penny or a quid or whatever your local currency is as I am British, I’m grateful for anything.
29/06/2025
Finding an old site.

I thought with WordPress, this would be my only site, turns out I forgotten one! Oops. I had a wordpress.com account with a blog that I was planning to turn into a full site and mess with WordPress, then transfer things over, its not the first time I’ve done that, I created a few internal WordPress sites (they didn’t work – surprise surprise) and get used to new features and create the site I’d like to see. I’m closer now than I have ever been.

So, to complete everything including posts from 2016 (when I was actually Train Presentation), I’ve exported them and included them into this blog. You can see how slowly or quickly things have developed. However, as I write this, I am in the process of shutting down the site – this one provides the purpose. Also there is a long gap between posts. I gave up for a while but then my mum suggested as my mental health keeps collapsing (and inspired by someone who I now blocked who is a social media influencer with her ADHD problems) to actually create my own blog and you will find a few reoccurring theme with my life problems, women and not talked about but still an issue – jobs.

From memory, I started that one as my site (not the first time, I’ll get on to that) got blocked. It got blocked because my account got compromised when it ran Joomla and someone kept sending spam emails from my account. This was in 2013. So I tried to get it unblocked unsuccessfully until around 2018, I managed it by submitting a ticket. It all stayed relatively stable, it was mainly used as a file dump, but I had a WIP site built with Netobjects Fusion from about 2019 while I try to mess with Content Management Systems with no success. I also uploaded a few tools and things people will be interested in… until…

It got blocked again in 2024, you’ll never believe the reason – and I was off to a Wetherspoons in Petersfield, so it was the last thing on my mind when that flashed up.

Yep, a file that has been on the site for 6 – 7 years, apparently having Malware. Don’t panic, I got the original source somewhere, it was written in Visual BASIC 6 – but what I have also done, is scanned it with online scanners and it came out clear. When I move the WIP stuff to here, you will find a program file missing, I’m sorry, see above. I’m not risking my site again! I am not blaming my hosting provider either, they explained it was a third party that contacted them to tell them about it.

So “webmasters” on your personal sites, just watch out! Seriously, some people will try anything to knock your site off.

29/06/2025