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I shall have to add Victoria Park in Ilkeston to the Friargate Line and it has many features that I'd expect from a park that was established at the end of the Victorian period, such as a bandstand and a children's playground. I can't find anything like those on UKTS and wondered whether anyone could point me at something suitable. The bandstand is a lovely thing and I'd guess that the playground equipment would have been the kind of thing I played on in my childhood and, to an extent, things my children played on in their childhoods, too. I loved what we called a "top hat" roundabout and you couldn't get my girls off one of those rocking horses. What a shame most of these have been scrapped.

Keith

Brings back memories from my youth too, I believe the roundabouts were referred to as "Tea Pot Lids" and the top hat as a "May Pole" up t' north where I grew up.

Modern day health and safety would probably have kittens over some of that vintage playground equipment - "We need more cotton wool..."

Sadly not aware of anything existing scenery wise in RW-TS, the only place I've seen anything like may have been in Trainz.

As Brian Yeomans pointed out to me yesterday, even if we had the equipment we have no child figures in TS for any time period. They'd always have been in a minority but for the Friargate Line and other lines set on the forties and fifties it's more of a loss because kids would have used the train to get to and from school, as well as young lads in short trousers sitting by the lineside spotting for hours on end (as I did!)

Those roundabouts were another favourite of my daughters and I worked up a few sweats running round and round pulling one. It was never fast enough!

Keith

Bobby's Helmet was what we called them in Derbyshire.

Witch's Hat in some places.




The boy standing on the right looks like he is having to wear an older brothers cast off shoes, he can't have feet that large.

I seem to remember both myself and a lot of the other lads in later years at primary school had quite large shoe size from a relatively young age, but I don't think we were very tall, so we perhaps looked a bit like that... otherwise it seems rather cruel to haven given a child massively oversized shoes with the inevitably resulting foot sores.

I think we grew into our feet soon enough afterwards though!

On the subjects of playgrounds: the ones I played at were mostly less exciting than those shown in the photos, but at least there would normally be a static climable train to eat picnics in the carriage and pretend to drive the engine, zip wires, climbing frames, and if you were lucky, a turntable with very little resistance to get dizzy on. Happy days. I thought I had seen some playground assets for TS, but then I remembered it was actually an asset included with Trainz 06 unfortunately.

Kind regards,
Chris

There is a children's play area across the road from where I live, the equipment provided is modern and well designed, but I would say nowhere near as much fun as the heavily engineered apparatus we enjoyed in the 50's 60's.

There are some items on UKTS http://members.uktrainsim.com/filelib-info.php?form_fileid=18897, and a few more of a similar nature, by Niall Wallace. A bit garish though.

They could be quite high-poly. They (or their forerunners!) were pioneer in the early days of Rail Simulator when people were amazed by the things you could do in the new system. Considerations about frame rates on routes made from many such objects came a bit later.