The Kingdom of Philtopia

So it’s been 2 years 2 months since the last Doomsday update but alas it is finally here! What inspired me to start working on it again was a 3 month burst of games between myself Aeolous and Ganborro.

Here is the Changelog:

New in 1.5.0:

Gameplay:

Raid functionality - The raid is a MUD style dungeon where you must travel 
through an unseen map to get a reward at the goal, along the way you may 
encounter players, traps or monsters

Commands:
Raid - join or leave a raid
go - travel in a raid
fight - fight players in the raid

Added player statistic recording for Structures bombed, civilians lost,
raids won, raid pks achieved

Website:

-Added global airforce and raid statistics to "stats" page
-Added a last command button that appears after you have typed a command
-Added a Game Config display on the DDAY website

Bugfixes:

-Fixed spelling error on asteroid time alert
-Fixed launch command so it doesn't default to firing at an asteroid
-fixed favour function to not cause error during HK

The idea between the raid/quest functionality is to give players something to do during the downtime with the potential of bolstering their kingdom with a reward if they should make it to the end. Hopefully this improves early player turnaround and helps hold onto players longer!

Come play via the Doomsday web client

So as you saw late last week I picked up some Chessie System Cabooses in N scale and played around a bit with it. Well that continued on over the weekend as well.

N Layout
I picked up a 2×2 board from home depot on Friday and layed out some sectional track on it. The fit is tight but it is a basic oval with a straight (or turnout) at the end of each quarter turn with a siding through the middle and 2 spurs.

The thought occurred to me to try out N as I have had a troubling time over the years getting anything going in HO so I bought a board and went for it.

Old equipment
I already had a decent amount of N equipment that was given to me 9 years ago by my father in law. Every so often I would try it out but nothing concrete ever came from it. As it turns out most of this equipment is from a 1970 Bachmann set. The locomotives, power pack and electric switch motors all appear to still function as well, not bad for being 44 years old!

Plans
The sectional track worked as far as getting a basic layout idea going but I think I am going to use flex track for the curves around the layout. The reason being that with N even the tiniest offset on the track to the wheel flange leads to derailment and Flex will mitigate this. I also plan to take the track up and put down a cork road bead. I will trace the track as it is now, place down the road bed on a glue bed and spike the tracks down to it.

Anyways as I progress through my tiny project expect more updates.

So I was checking out a new hobby shop in Beamsville Just Train Crazy and first impressions being everything I of course came across some Chessie gear. The only problem is that it was in N scale and other than some old gear that was given to me I don’t model N

The items were 3 caboose, 1 bay window , 1 standard colour Chessie cupola and 1 in blue green Safety scheme. 3 caboose , all Chessie, all unique so I had no choice but to get them.

Comparisons
Atlas:

Both cupola style were Atlas brand and when looking up their real world counterparts I was pleased to see these were excellent replicas. The only inaccuracy is the safety caboose used yellow font but as you can see from the photo below the prototype used a dark blue font that was difficult to read so in the case of N being tiny I can see why a brighter font was used.

Athearn:

The bay window was Athearn and it was a very beautiful replica however if you find the caboose matching it they are completely different. I found this odd in today’s day as usually any major manufacture at least gets it mostly right. I did some digging on the Chessie Photo archive and found the closest numbered caboose they had and the model matches it almost identically so in this case I am going to say it is a good replica with just an incorrect numbering.

Seriously Considering N

These very high detailed cabooses has me seriously considering N. I have always collected HO but finding space for something permanent is a challenge plus I can get my HO fix with the GNMRE so N may fit the bill at home.