Templot Club Archive 2007-2020
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posted: 4 Nov 2007 20:54 from: Martin Wynne
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Dear all, Since the Templot group started in 2000 we have amassed no less than 9,650 messages -- and counting  . I thought it would be interesting to have an occasional topic in which we revisit some older topics from the Yahoo archives, and perhaps bring them up to date with changes in the latest versions of Templot.But this bit of Templot history, first posted here on May 7th 2002, goes back a lot further: WEST MERCIAN EM GROUP NEWSLETTER, SEP 1980 " Our last meeting, held at Broadwas Village Hall on 7th Sep 1980, was one of the liveliest we have had. Ten members were present and among matters discussed were ..... [snipped] .... ....A most interesting development was then described by Martin Wynne. Neville Fairbairn had asked Martin for help in setting out a turnout from a curved road. From this request Martin had gone on to devise a system for enabling any turnout to be drawn out on 1mm graph paper by even the most inexperienced. Given the radius of the main line, the crossing angle and switch type, Martin can supply the X and Y co-ordinates of the rail running face at every chair position. From this data it is easy to construct a turnout template, indeed Martin did it in about twenty minutes, explaining as he went. Thus the days of track plans being juggled to suit the templates available from commercial sources are over - pointwork can now be made to suit the site as was done in full-size practice. Needless to say the figures for the various offsets are produced by a micro-computer, using a program written by Martin. This service will be available soon from 85A Models. This must be one of the most interesting developments in modelling in recent years." Kind words there from the late Roy Miller. What would Roy have made of Templot today? But twenty solid minutes poring over 1mm graph paper! With my eyes now 27 years older I can understand why there were so few takers at the time.  I was set thinking about the origins of Templot in the 1980s by this message on RMweb today: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11090 regards, Martin. |
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posted: 5 Nov 2007 12:02 from: Jim Guthrie
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Martin Wynne wrote: Kind words there from the late Roy Miller. What would Roy have made of Templot today? But twenty solid minutes poring over 1mm graph paper! With my eyes now 27 years older I can understand why there were so few takers at the time.Martin, I started doing track designing on computer in the 80s using an early version of Autosketch and and an HP plotter. The one main problem with that version of Autosketch was that it wouldn't rotate in anything less that 1 degree increments, which wasn't much of an asset for track design. So to get round this, I would do a drawing in horizontal orientation, then copy all the co-ordinates into a program in Excel which could then 'rotate' them all by the appropriate amount, Then I had to copy all the co-oordinates back into Autosketch. It sounds as though you might have been doing something a bit similar with your graph paper, and I can sympathise :-) Jim. |
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posted: 5 Nov 2007 15:47 from: Martin Wynne
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Jim Guthrie wrote: Then I had to copy all the co-oordinates back into Autosketch. It sounds as though you might have been doing something a bit similar with your graph paper, and I can sympathise.Hi Jim, When I started the Templot web site I wrote a few notes about the history of Templot. They are still on the site at: http://www.templot.com/martweb/templot_history.htm I didn't have anything like Autosketch at the time. In fact I didn't have any bought-in software at all apart from programming tools. When I wanted to do something I wrote my own program to do it. That included writing my own word processor -- for the Hunslet instruction sheets I even designed the font from scratch! regards, Martin. |
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posted: 30 Nov 2007 23:13 from: Martin Wynne
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I wrote: When I started the Templot web site I wrote a few notes about the history of Templot. They are still on the site at: http://www.templot.com/martweb/templot_history.htmI've been doing some housekeeping on the Templot web site today, and for the first time in a few years I looked again at this page: http://www.templot.com/martweb/templot_old.htm which I wrote in January 1999 about 9 months before Templot was first released. It certainly takes me back. It's strange how some things are still exactly the same, and others are completely different. But the colours! I can't imagine why I thought it needed to be so big and bright.  Interesting to see screenshots at just 640x480 res -- is anyone still struggling on such a small screen?The question I can't decide is whether to leave this page up, or give it a decent burial? It hardly represents Templot as it now is. On the other hand it makes an interesting read. Perhaps the web site should have a "Down Memory Lane" section?  Martin. |
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