Hello All, Is the Scottish line Fort William to Mallaig likely to be added to Train Sim World in the future. I enjoyed playing it in Train Simulator in the past and would love to see it added to the Train Sim World. Any response to my query would be much appreciated. Regards to all.
Considering the length of the route, it's not impossible, but I think the main obstacle is the lack of services.
Would be a day 1 purchase for me, ive enjoyed it in tsc and can only imagine how good it would look in tsw
It has been suggested quite a few times. Of course, it would be most interesting in the loco hauled period, either Class 27 or 37 eras or during the transition. There was still a bit of freight back then too, around Fort William to Corpach etc. As regards service levels, I guess this could be a bit of an issue but DTG at some point need to bite the bullet and do more secondary lower traffic routes. The appeal here is the iconic scenery. Timetable can be buffed out with a couple of Railtours, maybe an additional fish train and seasonal variations. Over the years, the average service level has been four trains a day in each direction, but with a journey time of nearly two hours that still amounts to 16 hours gameplay before you need to repeat the service. And again, it's about driving the route. Some of the electric bus stop routes might tout their 1000+ service timetables, but many of those are just rinse and repeat. You would still have the local movements in the Fort William area to pad things out and you could include part of the line south, to Spean Bridge for a bit more interest.
The number of services of any route is irrelevant. What's the difference between this route with low service levels and ab all stops service when both take roughly the same time to complete anyway. Drive the Class 700 back to back on SEHS and you can get around an hour and half worth of gameplay from just two serviced. Surely this route would be similar in that regard.
Personally, a bare timetable on a single track route doesn't bother me much as I often spawn custom consists. Anything WHL (or Far North, Kyle line, etc) would be Day One for me. But a large number of services generally means more choice, variety. You can drive early in the morning, in the morning, around noon, etc. And more services often also mean different rolling stock, different stopping patterns, different game durations (without resorting to save game)... I don't think developers are taking this lightly.
Honestly, it doesn't look that bad when you consider the prospects for basic 156 services, plus the summer steam services, toss in some basic jobs around the smelter for a 66 prepping the Blyth run, and frankly you are already looking at something approaching Cane Creek.
At the same time though, there are routes such as London Commuter where, apart from a few rush hour Gatwick Express services, throughout the day each stopping pattern is the exact same, the only difference being the time of day and a few varied consists. So really it doesn't matter as long as the available services are varied. I'd happily take six varied services over 600 that are pretty much copy and paste.
Yes it can be getting boring pretty quick for certain routes, sadly there's plenty of these, Goblin, NLL, Watford DC, Bakerloo line... Although there are some surprises sometimes, as this late Bakerloo service where you skip some stations on the way back to Queen's Park.
One thing that might mix things up would be to use it as a test bed for implementing request stops, so that runs would not be exactly alike.
Given this route would have a sparse timetable, request stops would certainly enhance the gameplay factor especially given they'd be a first for TSW.
