Having a look at the map of TSW Routes (and considering the upcoming ones), it got me wondering - how much of the seeming boom in UK content (and the depth of it) is down to Third-Parties seemingly picking 'hubs' / regions and expanding upon them. Just Trains have been working from Preston for years, and have now moved up into Cumbria, All Aboard Studios have been working on the middle of the WCML with Birmingham now seeming to be their hub, and Firefly seem to be doing similar in the Southeast. Rivet had, for a while anyway, done similar with Edinburgh and that has paid off with the recent timetable updates and layering. What has resulted is 'clusters' of routes. The Modern WCML from London to Crewe, the branch from Stafford to Crewe, the upcoming Shrewsbury line and of course the elder Cross-City Line; The 80's WCML from Crewe - Carlisle with the Blackpool and upcoming Whitehaven lines, plus Spirit of Steam if you go back a bit; And Firefly's developments of course add to SEHS, with potential to connect to the Southern routes. Compare the average UK route to, say, TSW3. Birmingham CC launched with basically one unit and a handful of pretty shallow layers. Edinburgh - Glasgow was practically the same. While these routes later were enhanced with loco add-ons, they still pale in comparison with newly released routes. Take AAS' routes. They have effectively completed the modern Avanti WC and LNR fleets, and when you throw in the WMR 323, 170 + XC 170 and 221 the area has more than enough to enable a full, varied timetable. With the upcoming TfW 158 for the Shrewsbury route, all that remains is some WMR stock, really. Whereas German routes developed a great level of layering quite early on (due to inter-operability), the regional divisions of the UK made that harder, and the shift from scattered DTG routes to satisfy demands from across the UK, to clustered, focused developments, in my opinion, have made the UK experience infinitely better and I'd like to see more of it. Hopefully, with the Leeds route, plus the existence of Cross-Country, LNER, TFW and East/West Midlands stock, we'll begin to see more in the Northeast of England / Yorkshire. And that's not to mention the route-hopping for long journeys. It could soon be possible to drive from Skipton - Leeds - Doncaster - P'boro - London - Ashford with only one new route (Leeds - Doncaster) needed. I'm glad the German routes are doing this for ICE's sake. Longer services, as proven by the WCML, benefit from more trackage and the growing main line through Germany will enhance the experience. Similarly, the NEC region, enhanced by Boston and latterly New Jersey, have seen similar - as has Los Angeles/SoCal, which has enhanced those regions significantly Anyway, I digress. I just wanted to write this down and see if I'm not alone with this, or if people would rather that developers did, in fact, diversify their routes to cover more regions in the UK.
More areas definitely need to be covered in the future. The TSW third party scene has quadrupled over the years, and is booming, TSW has become much larger today thanks to them. We now have Brass Can Studios, returning Cornwall back to TSW, after the pretty dull and nasty WCL from Rivet. However, more work needs to be done... Areas like Scotland need to have more routes, we need a third party for that. Areas like the East of England, dont even have a proper route yet! After nearly 10 years of this game existing. I hope more Areas come with TSW7.
One area in tsw we not seen yet is East Anglia always wanted a route there but set in like 2000 to 2006 with Anglia and One Blue era where 90s and MK3 replacing 86s and MK2 and 156 replacing 150s and Dorset another place not seen in train sim and More Summerset
Off the top of my head, Newcastle, Norwich, Bristol, Inverness, all need to be route hubs in the game.
