Still left wondering if /how/when we might be lucky enough to finally get the branch lines off of the GWE between London Paddington and Reading which are as follows... 1. Old Oak Common to Northolt Junction briefly used as a parliamentary train route by Chiltern Railways. 2. West Ealing to Greenford used by GWR and a few Chiltern Railways parliamentary trains. 3. Southall to Brentford Waste Terminal used for binliner train services, could be reworked for pre WW2 trains to Brentford and the Docks. 4. Hayes to Heathrow which is currently highly unlikely for licensing reasons. 5. West Drayton to Thorney Mill and Colnbrook used by stone and oil trains respectively, could be reworked for pre 1962/1965 services to Uxbridge Vine Street and Staines West respectively. 6. Slough to Windsor and Eton Central used by GWR shuttle services, could be reworked to earlier larger station at Windsor with multiple platforms. 7. Maidenhead to Bourne End and Marlow used by GWR on Marlow Donkey services, could be reworked pre 1970 to continue from Bourne End to High Wycombe. 8. Twyford to Henley on Thames used by GWR services, could be reworked to earlier larger station at Henley with multiple platforms. 9. Reading to Basingstoke used by GWR and other services. The extra variety that can be created with the inclusion of the above would be phenomenal. It might also be enough reason to build the Class 165/1 units used by GWR alongside the Class 166 units.
Why not put in the service frequency and pattern? For me the reason NOT to have these lines in is that they're all end to end all stoppers, ie shuttles. Very little gameplay expansion other than "well, they're on the GWE so should be there" This is true of EVERY train so isn't really a valid reason for their inclusion
I very much agree with the OP. These branches would add value and a bit of variety to mindlessly bombing up and down between Paddington and Reading. As I've mentioned before both Henley and Bourne End have (in the time period set) through peak workings to/from London with the Bourne End to Marlow section switching over to Donkey working during that period. There are also the various ECS moves to/from Reading Depot. ARuscoe At the end of the day, any route in any train sim has the potential to become tedious, but if you are of that mindset what are you even doing here? And what would you regard as constitutes interesting, within the constraints of TSW given our previous discussion about freight and the impracticality of including something like hump shunting in TSW? Even games like Fallout 4 or Mass Effect get repetitive in the end, when missions and tasks play out to the same script.
This requires Class 66 GWML London Paddington to reading to use JNA Stone Waggons and TEA Tanker Wagons.
There are local stoppers in timetable mode so it's not all "mindless bombing" (and I hate a green light special as much as the next person) I think the point is that there have been many requests for the branches from GWE, but they don't bring anything new in terms of game play, rolling stock (the 165 and 166 are hardly dissimilar) and there are plenty of other places that could be done which WOULD bring more stock and areas of play. I've been watching a lot of "railways of manchester" and Don Coffey vids on you tube and some of the northern routes would be a good thing to have, especially if DTG did what I would consider "default trains from the 90s" such as the sprinter and pacer classes which could easily be reused almost anywhere... So I am NOT saying that the branches would be a total waste of time, but that there are many other areas which would (for me) bring more to the table in terms of development outside of the current scope of operations (and be a nice move outside of Network SouthEast)
I agree about the northern routes. Anything around Buxton would be great, both the passenger route down to Stockport or the freight routes through Tunstead etc.
Would love a route in the Buxton area as it was a place where we would stay in a caravan in the summer and we always went around by train. Also there are many opportunities in this area for freight operations from one of the many quarries.
I am just going by what I have seen continuously in the area for many years and not referring to any specific line.
Oh OK. The reason that there is no freight goes through the station is because its a terminus (I think that's the right word) and a lot of freight starts at the quarries in the surrounding areas and go to places all over the country.
Just checked : Middlewood (the other end of the branch) - one freight available per day Monday to Thursday. Hazel Grove (first station on the mainline) - four paths per day and an engineering train Edale and Chinley seems to be where the action is, although Chinley seems to have a bypass?
Bit of a deeper dig, there's loads going on around Edale, towards Sheffield and Chesterfield! Might be a good shout for a freight network as a fair few "loco runs around here" and groundframes etc
