I cannot believe I have to make this suggestion. A long, long time ago, an absolute joke of a DLC was produced called Glasgow Airport Rail Link. Now, let's be fair, I am at some point going to play it and try out the scenarios for it, and I will probably enjoy them given I basically got the route for free as the Class 380 is included, and the train is otherwise the same price by itself. So, free route. Can't complain. But this was necessary because the DLC is very small and very - well - not immersive. The route starts at Glasgow Central and goes to Paisley Gilmour Street, detours to St. James, then the planned airport link is added here as the terminus branching off from St. James. Note that this link was never built. Further, the route is not even on the uMap of all Train Simulator routes for some unknown reason while routes like Western Lines of Scotland cross the map on tracks that are no longer there.. So it's time, I think, to do something about this forgotten part of Scotland. It's time to once again go to Paisley Gilmour Street. But this time, let's take some other possible paths to do it: 1. The Inverclyde Line is a local line which continues along the local line. This route goes north and branches after Port Glasgow. Wemyss Bay serves as the terminus of this branch, while Gourock serves as the terminus on the "main" local line. Four trains serve this route, including the 380 and 320 which we have, but also the Class 318 and Class 385. 2. The Ayrshire Coast Line, as you can imagine, goes to the town of Ayr; for a fun fact, continuing past Ayr gets to Stranraer, which terminates wholly all trains in that direction (Western Lines of Scotland ends there too). However, I'll stop at Ayr. This is a 46 minute drive from Glasgow Central. Slightly short compared to others, but still the ideal terminating point for the DLC and in fact the termination of the route in question. The Class 380 exclusively serves this journey with another train stepping in to cover the full route on the remainder of the line (see below).. 3. The Paisley Canal Line. Today, this picturesque route is served by the Class 318, 320, and 380. The route ends at the Paisley Canal, but at one time continued to Paisley West (via a different Paisley Canal station) and Elderslie. We can even include there as a "what if" scenario. The path continued from there to Ayr on the same line that exists today, with this line being a bit of a merge, making it an alternate path. Instead, it now serves as a terminus. 4. The Glasgow South Western Line. Starting at Glasgow Central, this goes ALL the way to Stranraer. Note however that services along the entire line are minimized, and many stations after Ayr are closed, so the line after Ayr might be better depicted as a dated 1960s line if at all, connecting to Western Lines of Scotland via route merges. It's important to use the same origin point as Keith's route since there is a patch of track shared between the two routes. This full network uses the Class 156 Super Sprinter. My proposal is to merge the Paisley Canal line and the Ayrshire Coast Line into one DLC. This would give some interesting options for scenarios, and also allow for diversions in case of emergencies (for instance, emergency rail works causing a detour of your Gilmour service to the Canal station and thing are a mess today, be ready to wait for red signals). This would also allow us to forget the Airport Rail Link route and have a proper route in the area. A revamped Class 380 can accompany the route, but it's also a good excuse to add in the 318 for the Canal, and the 320 will get some Workshop use there at the very least. I'll let the developer decide whether it makes sense to include the local line through St. James. As for the Airport Rail Link route? Keep it attached as an add-on to the original 380, which can remain in the store, but remove the route item itself. Or even better, keep the asset pack from the route in this pack so that any dependencies on the route are not broken, then add new assets in a separate pack for the reconstruction. EVEN BETTER, you could even use the original DLC as a starting point, leave that track alone, and just add new graphics and then extend the line. By doing this, the old scenarios might very well continue to work on this version. It also means you can keep the Rail Link as a "what if" scenario. It also might not hurt to give a discount to existing Rail Link owners on the new route, too, for at least the first month.
I always see a lot of requests for this (including my own) and it's a local line so I can get behind this.
I have suggested this on the train sim world 2 post as the ayrshire line is just the right size of routes they make for it. But it am totally behind this aswell i have both ts2021 and tsw 2. It shouldnt be too hard fior them to implement they have the correct locos and already have the lines rinning from glasgow central. So all they would need now is the track amd stations inbetween. Not saying making routes is east not at all just saying that some of the work is started for them sure they would have loads of refrence meterial. I am all for funding towards this put my money where my mouth is lol. Am an ayrshire boy born and bred would be great to see this route. Great hread hope it get the attention it deserves
On this subject, someone is working on this over at ATS right now. A version of the initial segment tied to the GARL is posted. The large asset list for the small addition worries me into thinking this is a new route builder, but hopefully he gets the guidance to make it a really good freeware map besides that. I hope he doesn't just add more and more maps for foliage and uses things like the VP Grass Pack.
