Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway – BR (S) / BR (W) Coming on 17th November 2025 for £24.99 on the new GAD Store https://www.golden-age-developments.co.uk/somerset--dorset.html Two previews of what to expect on the page
The route in the video is barely recognisable with the original Railworks offering, and looks much better. I'm looking forward to it.
There is a comment on their payment page !!! PLEASE READ !!! Due to some issues with our store, the route is temporarily hosted by Caledonia Works (for the first 24-48 hours or so) Caledonia Works will share your order info with us so we can add your order to our database Once our store is 100% working, we will migrate all orders from Caledonia Works If you would rather buy direct from us, please wait until our store is fixed ASAP (estimated 18th November) We are VERY sorry about this – we wanted to honour our release date even though our store went kaput!
I know I sound like a stuck record on this, but would be much easier if they published through Steam?
. . . ublished through Steam . . . ublished through Steam . . . ublished through Steam . . . Easier for you Vern, but a whole load of extra work for them, and not necessarily enough extra sales to compensate. BTW, how many of us even know what a stuck record sounds like? You'd have to be over 40 to have had any real chance of experiencing one!
The route looks great, attention to detail is lovely. Is anyone else having issues with it not thinking you've got the academy stuff installed though? I have, TS Tools thinks I have, but when I try and run a scenario, I get errors around the 4F not being there, however I do have the RailVehiclesSD folder and contents in my installation. Will re-install if its just me, but thought I'd check
Well, yes and no as it turns out. I had all the folders there, and the AP file, but when I looked in RailVehicles, there was only the freight folder. I extracted all the AP archive into the folders and yep, everything works fine. Thanks for the hint!
Hmm, this is a v74.8 one that I use as discussed elsewhere on the forum. Dunno about this one, but as soon as I extracted the AP files, all was good. Might install this in the "current" Steam version and see if it's any different.
Bought it, and it is a really lovely route. It comes with a complete roster of appropriate S&D repaints from the required DLC Clearly shows the thousands of hours that went into it. This level of detail is unattainable for commercial developers working on a budget and fixed release term. I also bought this first installment of a more complete S&D, to encourage this dedicated team of developers to continue and release the follow up parts. Golden Age always has been a treasure trove of period UK locomotives, rolling stock and routes. This group under the guise of Golden Age also shows TSC is far from dead.
GAD have actually made a route with scenarios that don't have absurdly long payware requirements? I'll give them credit for that.
There is something wrong with your steam setup if the game cannot see the *.ap files I run v72.3 and have no problems with those files
I have to say I am disappointed that the section on signalling was clearly written by someone with poor knowledge of the topic, e.g. calling stop signals "home signals" universally. This makes me concerned that the quality of the signalling in the route itself (I have not yet bought it) will be poor.
You’ve had 2 opportunities now to be constructive and actually offer information to help correct it. Instead all you’ve done so far is… *checks notes* Insult the writer’s intelligence. Ran from the discord before any explanation could be given. Insult the writer’s intelligence again. Make sweeping statements disparaging the route builder’s abilities, as if one small section in a very large manual correlates to the quality of an entire route. Do all of that without even having the decency to put your own money down to try it first.
Go on the GAD website and look at the videos Just saying something is wrong with the route because you spotted 1 error is not good
I also think it's highly offensive to state that the author has no idea how British signalling practice works because of a simple mistake over nomenclature. The AndiS scripts the routes use are highly complex and does require a good understanding on how the signalling works. It's a shame that some people feel the need to have this kind of entitled and toxic attitude over a simple error that doesn't even effect how the product works within the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_block_signalling Is the system I believe to be in use on the S&D in that era. I've explored the whole route by now, and didn't notice anything wrong with the signaling. Obviously without shunting moves or signaled switching moves against the flow of traffic, i.e. not deviating from the set up paths in the QD scenarios. I do not know Eldomtom's residence, and what flavour of English is common there, but I can hardly imagine the creators of this route and its documentation not being fluent in UK English, or even good ol' England's English. The referenced Wikipedia article clearly mentions starter, stop, home and distant signals and I trust the developers more than this poster over matters regarding semaphore signaling during the era modeled. Going by their Discord, a lot of research went into the DLC and documentation was specifically acquired and studied to make the DLC look as realistic and as nice as possible.
Trust me you won't be disappointed. It is in my opinion possibly the finest crafted route of that era. The included Assets are just to die for.
Unfortunately however, the station assets are all in one piece, making re-use in your own route impossible. Over on the GAD Discord there was a discussion, with the devs reasoning their assets are so specific, there is no need for any re-use. Several other devs did the same in the past, so it is up to you to buy and play the route as it is, or leave it. There are lots of platforms, sidings, spurs, industries to keep scenario writes very busy.
I have directly stated Because I was banned. I have never insulted anyone's intelligence. The issue with the manual, which is clearly obvious if you compare it with that Wikipedia article, is that the writer of the manual treats "home signal" as a synonym for "stop signal" and never uses the phrases "stop signal" or "starter signal".
You said Is a polite way of saying they don't know what they are talking about - which is an insult. So they used the wrong description of some of the signals. Home, Starter or Section Signal it means the same thing. I have seen errors in a lot of manuals but that does not mean the DLC is bad - wait until you see some reviews.
Does not matter if you call it a Home, Starter, Section or IB Signal the instruction to the driver is the same - STOP. And in the game such signals are not differentiated so does it matter?
Not strictly relevant to a steam-era simulation but I believe that out on the real railway, the term ‘home signal’ has recently (in the last couple of years) been redefined to refer to all stop signals in a semaphore-signalled layout. So whereas previously a sequence of signals through a block station might have been: ‘Distant / Outer Home / Inner Home / Starter / Advanced Starter’ It would today be described as: ‘Distant / Home 1 / Home 2 / Home 3 / Home 4’ Perhaps the writer of the S&D signalling works professionally in the rail industry and is just using their ingrained real-world terminology. Provided the signalling functions realistically for the purposes of the game, it makes no difference surely. (The usual acid-test for me is whether the behaviour of the distant can be correctly tailored to the condition of ALL the home/starting signals, not just the outermost.)
Well then, please share your expert opinion with the GAD developing team. They might consider expanding the manual with more information about period semaphore signalling on the S&D?
If they really want to improve it there are more qualified people than me. But considering their extreme hostility on the topic I don't think they do.
