What is a Black 5 ?
What is the Black 5 project ?
What are the minimum system specifications to run Black 5 ?
How much will Black 5 cost ?
When will Black 5 be ready ?
Can I customise the Black 5 program ?
Can I add my own rolling stock to Black 5 ?
What formats does the program use ?


What is a Black 5 ?

The Black 5 (or Class 5 Mixed Traffic) was designed by Sir William Stanier when he was Chief Mechanical Engineer for the London Midland and Scottish (LMS) railway.

The 5-MT was first introduced in September of 1934 but the example used in this simulation is one of the 241 engines built at Crewe and dates from 1938.

The engines were normally identified by :-
a) a straight footplate without driving wheel splashers.
b) tapered boiler and flat topped firebox.
c) outside cylinders and valve gear.
d) curved-in top to tender sides.

There were a number of experimental engine types which variously had double exhaust pipes, steel fireboxes and roller bearings . With the exception of engines with various types of valve gear ( particularly those with Caprotti valve-gear) they all looked remarkably similar.

With their 6ft driving wheels and boiler pressure of 225 lb.sq. in. they had a tractive effort of 25,455 lb. which combined with the 9 tons of coal and 4,000 gallons of water made them very suitable for mixed traffic work in all areas.

This 125 ton, two cylinder engine, was used extensively on all parts of the London Midland region and particularly on the former LMS lines in Scotland.
It was because of their versatility they were also found to a lesser extent in a few areas on all the other regions.

What is the Black 5 project ?

The Black 5 project is aiming to produce an accurate simulation of driving the above 1938 class five mixed traffic steam locomotive, right through from choosing your rolling stock to operating the footplate controls.

All aspects of the locomotives control and function will be accurately modelled, over a fully 3D landscape complete with period scenery.


What are the minimum system specifications to run Black 5 ?

We have yet to complete a full spread of trials, hopefully the demo, due to be out in a few weeks time, will provide us with some crucial feedback on framerates and so on, and will give us a good idea of a realistic minimum specification.

At present, with un-optimised code we are getting in the order of 50fps-75fps on our development machine a PIII with 128Mb RAM and a 32Mb graphics card.

With this in mind an educated guess on a realistic minimum specification would be :-
- Pentium II Processor
- 64Mb memory
- 50Mb harddrive space
- Direct3D compatible graphics card with at least 8Mb of RAM
- Standard soundcard
- At least Microsoft DirectX 7.0 installed


How much will Black 5 cost ?

Black 5 is Freeware and as such will be completely free of charge.
Where is the catch ? you may well ask !

To be honest, we are hoping to use the Black 5 project as a 'stepping stone' onto other work. If we can also enjoy ourselves developing a program that will be available to everybody in the rail community then even better!

If Black 5 proves to be a success then there is always the possibilty of a small charge for downloadable additions, like routes and rolling stock, although (see question below) since you can modify and create your own items we're unsure whether this will happen.


When will Black 5 be ready ?

If the current rate of progress is maintained then Black 5 should be completey finished by late summer 2001.
A fully working demo is due to be released in a few weeks time.

Can I customise the Black 5 program ?

The full version of the Black 5 program will come with a 3D graphical route generator, which will have the following features :-

-Place, rotate and scale any of the objects from the (customisable) object library.
-Define your own track paths and junctions, etc.
-Specify the landscape elevation at any point for gradients and so on.
-Create your own game scenarios.

The demo version will not come with the editor, but all of the relevant information is stored in easy to edit text files (as with some existing rail sim programs), so there would be nothing to stop you creating additional routes with the demo, although it will not be as 'user friendly'.


Can I add my own rolling stock to Black 5 ?

The information for the rolling stock is stored in a standard text format file (see question above). This file holds information like :-

- Type and starting position of rolling stock for different scenarios.
- Specify whether item is user or computer controlled (for AI trains).
- Properties for that item (i.e. weight, if a locomotive then power, traction, etc).
- Which 3D model to use for that item.

This is an over simplification, but you can see that again, with a little editing, there is nothing to stop you creating a library of your own rolling stock and locomotives.

At present there are no plans for a rolling stock editor, since we have been concentrating on the one locomotive, but if it seems there is a demand then there is no reason to rule out developing one.


What formats does the program use ?

The program uses standard bitmaps for all of its textures, stored in a separate sub directory, so easy to edit if you so wanted.
All of the models are in Microsofts DirectX (.X) format, so models created in any of the popular packages, such as 3DStudio can be imported with ease.
Also the sound effects are stored as standard .WAV files, again in a separate directory.

Wherever possible we have tried to make the package as easy to customise as we can, since the program is Freeware we have nothing to hide, and we look forward to seeing what other people can create with our platform!