West Coast Main Line: Trent Valley From All Aboard Studios

They did have all layers active, but they used an early service, notably one that avoided the busiest station (Crewe) & MKC. I’m definitely not pinning any hopes of not seeing the texture issue on the back of that stream.

FYI the 390’s memory footprint was reduced by around 15%, not half.

 

Thanks to Jan for asking and Dan for answering my questions about Kilsby Tunnel and the Northampton Loop.

Kilsby Tunnel (previously mentioned lighting issues aside) sounds like it will be hellfire and worth a visit on foot.

And while disappointing, nevertheless the situation as regards Northampton is understood. I didn’t realise the current timetable has so few trains through to the Trent Valley, though of course we could still have driven the outer suburban services from MKC to Rugby. It is what it is and you could argue the OG WCMLS should have gone to Northampton, instead of stopping short at MKC. As a now retired route builder in the old sims, I know how easy it is to yield the temptation to lay a few more miles of track. It’s filling in the detail and scenery that takes the time.

Odds on this being in my HD by the end of next week, now shortened to 12/1.

 

They drove a train out of there on the stream so I hope it's included

 

oh i thought i heard them say it went from ~120mb to 60. misheard then.

didn't see the whole stream but shocking that they missed out crewe because that's where all the problems on B2C occurred

 

The very short route trailer has a look at Kilsby Tunnel including a view from the vent shaft,


Now I didn't watch much of the stream, mainly because I was falling asleep after a long day up in the friendly skies, but while I was largely happy with what I saw I did notice that Crewe in particular was very quiet (it was the end of the 350 run, there was a 150 waiting to depart, a 323 parked up in P1 and a Pendo did race through non-stop after a couple of minutes), there didn't seem to be any static vehicles especially outside LNWR which would easily have a 153 and a Gronk outside of it during the day and it was hard to tell from the cab view but it looked like LSL's site was empty too.

With regard to the timetable being quiet, let's not forget that a large amount of the freight traffic is missing simply because we don't have the loco's for the job...

 

It didn't seem too bad to me. There are 10 Avanti services per hour during the daytime. 3 turn off at Rugby to Birmingham, another 2 at Colwich to Manchester via Stoke. That leaves the Glasgow, Chester, Manchester via Crewe and 2 Liverpool services. Finally, at Stafford one of the Birmingham services rejoins as it continues towards Glasgow/Edinburgh/Blackpool.
The services aren't evenly spaced either. I've stood at Rugeley Trent Valley and there can be long gaps.
And finally, I couldn't finish this post without mentioning maths and the fact that relative velocities will affect the amount of traffic you see, but that's not a calculation I'm doing during my lunch break .

 

I only watched a bit of the stream but it actually seemed quite good. The sounds of the 350/4 were great, however they said they won't be ported onto the other variants. This unfortunately creates a situation where one variant of the same train is significantly better than the others which irks me a bit.

 

I watched the livestream for about an hour, even though I’m not really interested in UK routes.

What struck me, though, was that there was very little AI traffic, and I’ve never seen so few passengers on any other route as on this one.

 

I’m not really understanding all the issues regarding the double objective.

I first became aware of it on Riviera Line and Birmingham to Crewe, to prevent the immersion breaking close doors on a red, for example overtaken trains at Dawlish Warren have the feature.

If it’s a workaround to prevent that which is undoubtedly immersion breaking I’m all for it. You shouldn’t have to close doors earlier anyway, really and with signal delays in the game no services in reality would ever depart at “00 seconds” on the dot as well.

 

Good stream last night.
Enjoyed it.
Wasn't sure about how busy the route was from the stream, it'd make sense they left room for their new freight loco.
The 350 was the highlight,it sounds very good indeed.
Day one for me;I'm still enjoying the previous AABS dlc .
Hopefully fix the texture problem inside and out on the 805,it's very noticeable on external cab view.

 

This is what concerns me with this route. It’s the West Coast Main Line and it should be busy. However, if it was busy it would blur I suspect.

As for the 350/4 sounds not being ported to the other variants, don’t AABS own the 350/2? So why wouldn’t they be able to port them?

 

I think what they said was there were no plans to, not a flat no.

It almost seems to be a rule of TSW that no plans is a guarantee something will happen!

 

Just watched the stream and very impressed. The fact that it’s running on Series X at mostly 60fps with no apparent blurries and with the full timetable means this is most likely day 1 for me.

 

I watched the stream, the part on PC and a bit of the part on Xbox. All the time I had the feeling, just another boring mainline route with not much going, no amazing scenery or landmarks. But ok, if there where landmarks or an amazing scenery, you don't see it anyway from the Class 350 small cab window.

What I actually want to say, I really want to see something else then mainlines over and over again, maybe the Thames Valley Branches is more my cup of tea. There are also to much German routes mainlines and not much scenic branchlines.

 

They used the 390, which didn't really suffer blurry textures on any route tbf.

The class 350 on console will be the blurry mess

 

Dan mentioned he couldn’t see the team doing another long route of this calibre again, that’s fine since AABS connect all their routes up into a network. I wish more third party developers did this, stuck to one area of the railway and expanded upon it.

I’m hoping Firefly’s next route will be a continuation of their first.

When it comes to the WCML, AABS probably have one more route left in them and that being the MK to Birmingham new street section.
I’ve read feedback on here about them not extending up to Liverpool or Carlisle, so that looks like it’s off the cards.

 

I'm sure he said something along the lines of no more WCML. But I might be misremembering.

 

You are correct, I caught that one too. Though of course that doesn't rule out an offshoot from the current AABS network and it also depends what you define as WCML, as technically Rugby to Birmingham is the "Grand" etc...

As regards the frequency of AI traffic, it was explained on the first 350 run the Trent Valley is not that busy, as trains which started to depart Euston, Manchester and Liverpool etc. around 0600 have not reached the area yet.

 

But of course if they did a run around midday there would be plenty!

 

Oh I didn’t catch that. I guess it’s not a massive deal breaker getting the remaining part.

If the WCML is done they might focus on routes starting on the WCML and diverging onto another. Crewe to Derby I wouldn’t mind seeing as a starter.
The East Midlands is crying out to be further explored.

 

I think the main point of this long route will be to give the fast trains a place to stretch their legs at long last. Personally as well as the 807 I’m looking forward to driving the 390 on a decent run more than the 350 which is getting a tad boring now.
It’s so frustrating on WCMLS to be restrained by such a short run on the Pendo. Now we’ll be able to sprint and lean to our hearts content.

 

They have done a lot of effort to be safe with the blurry textures.
You can basically conclude that for years there has been far too little attention given to optimization, and they more or less admit that themselves in a roundabout way. Not literally, but it’s so obvious. Producing a game isn’t just “build it and throw it on sale”; it takes hours and hours of work on performance, and that has just been messed up for years. But now they’re getting the consequences of that, and they’re realizing that half‑finished routes simply aren’t an option anymore. It’s clear they need to put in much more effort.

I also hope this will lead to more and better quality. We as users are really fed up with routes being thrown onto the market half-finished. Look at the Class 90 they had a serious clash with practically most users, and rightfully so, because that was a tragic release. And then the “sorry, it should have been different” apology message… painful.

The same actually applies to the texture issues! That also comes from years of paying far too little attention to quality, and now they basically have to do twice as much work, work that will never pay off. They’re paying a high price for it now, with a large group of users who have been complaining for years about the state of the game. DTG clearly doesn’t find the forum very friendly, but they themselves play a big part in that. Complaints can sometimes go quite far, I agree, but in my opinion they could have prevented a lot of it by delivering better quality.

I’m not saying it’s acceptable to be rude or insulting, but the vast majority of people are reasonably civil and simply critical.

 

Tbh I can see All Aboard Studios doing either an Birmingham New Street local network routes or Snow Hill line as they are local lads to the area. As a guard for WMR would be lovely to see the local routes in the game

 

I thought the answer Re: Northampton was interesting and made me realise that I (we?) have been thinking about this upside down. Whilst I was seeing this as an extension to runs out of Euston beyond MKC, AABS have been doing this as a route out of Crewe. Looking at it from that direction, them not including Northampton makes sense, as, like they mentioned, there aren’t really that many services that go that way.

Let’s hope that someone is toiling away on an MKC to BNS via Northampton with a 730 to complete the network and then everyone can move on to looking at the rest of the country

I will be really interested to see how well the route hopping holds these two routes together and was a bit disappointed that (unless I missed it - didn’t see the whole thing) there was no route hopping shown in the stream. As I mentioned in the Q&A thread, if the AI decides to set off in the service you have arrived in whilst you are route hopping it will be less than ideal!

 

And for that very reason this wont be a day one purchase for me. It either gets fixed in a patch or a modder brings out something.
Cant really put my finger on it but wasn't really that impressed with the route in all honesty - maybe too much WCML?!

 

I'd say WCML was the "cowbell" of TSW, but that's already the Class 66.
=-)

 

Maybe because it's always the same old stuff in the same old way.
A stream that goes on for a long time with a driver in the cab.
It feels familiar.
Okay, that's what you'd expect in a train game.
However, in my opinion, there are many other things that could be implemented a little better.
For example, focusing more on train operations, having more variety in rolling stock.
TSW seems obsessed with schedules and layering at all costs.
Two excellent things.
But there's more.
For example, the "GAS" tanks in Skyhook, which will be released soon, become incredibly complicated due to the layering and pairing with this or that locomotive.
I'd like to see add-ons (also) start being purchasable like in the Virtual Railroads store, with slightly less rigid constraints.

 

One thing this brings home and possibly slightly OT for this discussion, but the possibility of route hopping from Euston to Carlisle was directly mentioned on stream. However it needs to be completely seamless, not like it is now. Arrive at MKC and a screen pops up, would you like to continue this service to Crewe? Click yes and you get a momentary loading screen then spawn straight into the cab of the next working. Obviously things will get a little more complex at Crewe with the era shift, but surely not beyond the ability of the system to offer you the next suitable departure towards Preston (or vv to MKC if coming from the north).

IMHO that type of linking is an essential required improvement, now we are getting many adjoining routes with the same service effectively in two portions.

 

Yeah it would be nice if you could load a full service from the main menu, select the routes you’ll be needing & the train, service etc & it could compile the whole thing there before you load in, hopefully achieving a saving in the load times when switching route. Of course it’s likely a technical impossibility, especially with how unstable the game already is, never mind the lack of technical knowledge within DTG. Then of course the memory required to do it all would be a massive hurdle that I doubt could be overcome.

 

In the last survey I made a suggestion that I feel could be a very simple way to go some way towards ‘solving’ this. If we could create our own journey mode activity that spanned different routes, we could set up all the services we wished to link and then potentially play through them like you would a journey chapter.

Obviously this wouldn’t be as good as some sort of seamless transition but I feel like it is the best we can ask for without a whole load of technical development. (Assuming that journeys spanning routes isn’t a big deal!)

 

For those wondering about the AI services, I've just gone through the 350 (as far as Stafford) and the 807 runs again. With the help of OpenTrainTimes I've worked out what AI services you should see when and the traffic levels appear correct. There may be one service from Liverpool missing on the 350 run and two services (one from Liverpool and one from Chester) on the 807 run, but those may have passed when Matt trying to use the speed set. I hope that helps.

 

For those who didn't watch the entire stream I've noted some highlights of the route:
-They've left some layers in the TT for the Class 70
-The Class 350/4 has new audio courtesy of SamT
-The 807 has a working speed set (still nothing on the 805)
-Route has been in development since June/July 2025
-AABS stated they are done with the WCML for now and no other route will be as long as this one.
-The route was originally Crewe to Rugby but thankfully was extended to Milton Keynes to join up with the WCML S route.
-The Northampton Loop was considered but scrapped due to being too much work, they also thought it would be too similar to Birmingham To Crewe as a standalone add on.
-AABS were given access to some Xbox dev kits to help with testing (a first for a third party)
-The route has two timetables, the full WTT from November 2025 and a reduced one. Both Timetables are able to be used regardless of platform however it is recommended to use the reduced one for Series S or low end PC's
-Every service in the timetable menu includes calling points
-Neutral Zones are simulated and will work with any train that also has the functionality enabled
-A dispatcher scenario is included

Full Playable service count: 470 (402 for reduced)

Class 807: 28 services
Class 150/2 TFW: 2 services
Class 153 TFW: 3 services
Class 158 EMT: 4 services
Class 323 NT: 7 services
Class 350/1: 80 services
Class 350/2: 17 services
Class 350/3: 40 services
Class 350/4: 38 services
Class 37/7 EPX: 2 services
Class 390: 87 services
Class 805: 39 services
Class 66: Unknown but different 66's have different services (DRS,Cargo Lines etc)
Class 220: 2 services

 

If they are done with the WCML then so be it but it would be a shame not to at least get a rolling stock gameplay pack for the 730 since there are quite a few DLC that this could be utilised on!