Seems a lot of players are really excited about Tehachapi Pass but I am thinking that it might only be for US customers as BNSF driving there? Or we non americans will get unmarked BNSF locos as in many other routes?
It will be available worldwide, but for those outside the US, your locomotives will look like this, missing the BNSF logos.
Anyway, for those in the know BNSF repaints will become available through different TS forums for you to download.
More to the point, many of us with extensive experience of Run 8 and their version of Tehachapi will be looking closely at this before electing to purchase. Visually I'm sure it will be an improvement on their (Run 8) rendition, but the proof will be very much in the physics. If you're not struggling all the way up from Caliente to the Summit at 14 - 15 MPH in Notch 8 on a heavy train, then it won't be very convincing. The other feature offered by Run 8 is the ability to fire up the industry option, so you can receive incoming traffic, break these down into locals then go out and drop off/pick up cars at the various (and many) spurs. Run 8 also offers pretty much a huge chunk of the SoCal rail network and part of Arizona, if you buy their supplementary routes which merge with the existing ones. Personally I would actually have preferred to see this route get a TSW(2) release.
True it might be pushing it with the current (TSW) tech, but it is around the same length as Clinchfield, I believe.
What about train length though? TSW so far maxes out at 50 in most cases, with a single instance of 60 I believe. Now I've not counted how many cars are in trains on Tehachapi, but just eyeballing it and using my knowledge from other US freight routes I don't think 50 or 60's good enough for a route like this, you'd need something between 100 to 150 to really do it justice.
I agree that train length is one thing that would be an issue if Tehachapi was to be brought over. For 1, one of the challengers as stated above is handling a long and heavy train both up and down the pass, the 2nd is the scenic part of watching long trains snake their way up Caliente, Bealville, and around the Tehachapi loop, which is lost if the train is too short. (You need about 4000ft or 1219m to cross over at the loop) Which at the longest allowed freight car length (89ft) you would need about 45 cars. Or at one of the shorter car lengths (50ft) You would need about 80 cars.
It will take a year or two for DTG to begin lowering the price past 15-20% on sales, but you vote with your wallet. Also it will only be incomplete out of the box, and branding patches will be easily and readily available for international customers to receive branded stock off of Steam. I don't understand the mentality on missing out on what seems to be a good looking route and promising stock for a branding issue that is out of their control and can easily be fixed by independent members of the community...
It is because trainsimplayer2020 likes to have a moan every time this problem occurs. DTG are using a method of giving people outside the US the BNSF trains and routes they want When I purchased the Racecourse line it did not have either BNSF or Metra branding but a Free patch solved that problem Peter