This is not a complaint or criticism as there’s plenty of those just curiosity. Is the scenery outside stations supposed to be true to life? I ask because both West Drayton and Hayes & Harlington is certainly not. I you go on the bridge at Hayes & Harlington the view is nothing like real life and at West Drayton there is a bus turning point immediately outside the station and there is no sign of that.
Spot on observations. To the south of platform 1 at Hayes and Harlington is a car park with a small industrial estate made up of older style buildings of lower profile (I used to work in one of those). To the north side of platform 5 is a fairly different layout. Also the platform 4 stairs and ticket office are not modelled or the platform 1 stairs to street level. At West Drayton the bus turning point to its North side is much lower than modelled and there is no access to the subway and ticket office. It is a fair effort but not 100% accurate. Also the street running north past Southall station ticket office is shown as tree lined when in reality it is much more urban in layout. Only noticeable as a local I guess and has no effect on game play.
No agreed it had no effect on gameplay just curiosity. If you stand on Hayes bridge you should be able to see the start of the High Street but in fact you see a greenery area.
These are usually things you only notice as a local. For example Essen HBF on the HRR route looks ingame like a village than a gib city because most of the skyline is missing. There are probably many instances on stations among all routes where a local would say "well that looked different/this is missing here". But to chime in on the no critizism aspect, personally I think it is fine. You usually have the most important landmarks and the stations themselves. There is only so much that they can do (for time, research or memory capacity I suppose) and in the end it does not annoy me, so ultimately it is fine. I mean if you are able to recognize a station by its surroundings and the platforms, then a good bit of immersion should have been achieved by that point
