Some recent screenshots of my own work-in-progress. This part of the forum seemed a more appropriate place to post. The route is a merge of the North Wales Coastal and Hope Valley Lines, connecting Crewe to Manchester via Wilmslow and Manchester Airport. Ultimately I'd like it to extend south to Shrewsbury and connect to Newport via the Welsh Marches Line, but one thing at a time....! All the track is laid, and the railway infrastructure works flawlessly so far. Now begins the tedious task of placing 35 miles worth of textures and assets. I've decided that rather than choosing the sensible option and starting at the beginning, to instead start somewhere in the middle at my previous hometown (village) of Holmes Chapel. I'm really pleased with how the station's looking, especially the signs. The car park and station building still need a little work - not 100% happy with the textures. I'm really chuffed that I can make my own assets now. Transparent windows still elude me though, which is frustrating. More updates soon. 20250312193947_1 by thethirdrail posted Mar 12, 2025 at 8:12 PM 20250312194009_1 by thethirdrail posted Mar 12, 2025 at 8:12 PM 20250312194029_1 by thethirdrail posted Mar 12, 2025 at 8:12 PM 20250312194047_1 by thethirdrail posted Mar 12, 2025 at 8:12 PM 20250312194055_1 by thethirdrail posted Mar 12, 2025 at 8:12 PM
A new asset for my route The Crewe to Manchester Line wouldn't be complete without it's tallest and arguably most iconic landmark. At 76m wide an 89m tall, The Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank dominates the local landscape, and can be seen clearly from the terminal at Manchester Airport, almost 9 miles away. When I started building the line, I resigned myself to the fact that it would never have this in it, or anything close to resembling it. Then I came across 3DCrafter a few weeks ago, and following a short but excellent tutorial by Warwick Rail on the Steam Community website, I managed to create some lovely looking signs. Designing something this large and complex however, is well beyond my capabilities. Luckily, my 18 year old son is pretty handy with Blender, and made this for me in a little over a day! LRT by thethirdrail posted Mar 15, 2025 at 12:24 AM Then it was just a case of exporting it to 3Dcrafter, adding suitable textures, and I had my landmark! The model is apparently too big to import as one into 3DCrafter and when I tried it just threw a wobbly, so it needed to be split into 3 parts. LRT2 by thethirdrail posted Mar 15, 2025 at 12:24 AM I'm really please with how it turned out. Lovell Telescope by thethirdrail posted Mar 15, 2025 at 12:01 AM Thank you Jack! (and yes, I did pay him for his hard work)
This is another route I would love to drive in TSC. There are some missing gaps in the North West when it comes to routes. So it's nice that we are seeing some nice new additions getting made to fill in the gaps. I take my hat off to you with the route building as I don't know how it all works.
Thank you both for your comments Yes it's the rebranded Avanti/TfW version of the route which, incidentally, I noticed is currently on offer at £2.49! Your question actually gives me a nice neat segue into an overdue route description... The Route The line runs from Crewe Station to Manchester Piccadilly, and is technically a spur of the West Coast Mainline. At Wilmslow, the Styal Line branches off west with an additional spur to Manchester Airport, before re-joining the mainline at Slade Green Jn, north of Levenshulme. Several other lines, including the Hope Valley Line, join at various points. Merging these particular routes, rather than my original plan of simply extending one of them, came with an added bonus, which is the fact that I don't have to build either the Manchester or Crewe station areas, saving me weeks of time-consuming work. What you can expect: · Detailed stations and lineside infrastructure · Lots of custom assets · Accurately place and correctly numbered signals · Properly rendered junctions and crossovers · Accurate speed limits · Properly smoothed gradients · Accurately placed OHLE · Up-to-date scenarios with accurate AI · Plenty of sensibly placed portals to aid with scenario creation Train Operators The route is used primarily by Northern Trains, Avanti West Coast and Transport for Wales, with Cross Country, TransPennine Express and freight service providing additional operations, which should provide scope for some varied scenarios. On any given weekday, the number of trains passing the mid-way point of Wilmslow exceeds 200. Whilst the train movements are dominated by Northern’s stopping services, a lot of the mainline runs at 100-110 mph allowing the Pendolinos to stretch their legs for a good portion of the route. Prerequisites I've tried to limit these to readily available steam DLC, and my own custom assets. You will need the following installed: Route Screenshot 6 by thethirdrail posted Mar 1, 2025 at 10:29 PM There will be numerous custom assets of mine including signs, bridges and station buildings, and of course the Lovell Telescope as described above. During the merging process, I also imported the Welsh Marches Line, with a view to connecting Crewe and Shrewsbury at a later date. However, no assets from this route are used in the current iteration, so it’s not a prerequisite. Caveats Merging routes, as I’ve discovered, comes with its own set of pitfalls. When the software imports the tiles from the source route into the target route, the geographical placement isn’t always spot on and as far as I can tell there is no way around this, because the cloner is importing a specified number of entire tiles and every scenery asset on that tile. As such, Crewe station is offset from real life by about 50 meters or so, necessitating a slight route detour to ensure the track meets up with the Google maps overlay. However, I’ve attempted to make this as subtle as possible so unless you know the route well or can be bothered to look at the Google maps overlay, you are unlikely to notice in my opinion. The other issue is that the routes use different track rules, so there are 2 points at which the track textures change abruptly. Again, there is no way around this and it’s just something I have to put up with. Whilst I will make every effort to make the route as detailed and immersive as possible, route building is a time-consuming process especially when it comes to scenery; laying the track is the easy bit! I don’t have as much time to dedicate to this as I’d ideally like, what with family life, work and so on. As such, the route will be very much a ‘driver’s eye view’ in terms of trackside scenery, so don’t expect the scenery to stretch miles beyond the track. I’m trying to strike a balance between a good level of detail, and actually getting it done! Cheers!
Actually i was referring to the NWC revamped line released a few days ago, but you have already answered the question https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/m...1-routes/i5942-north-wales-coast-revamped-v10
Ah I 've got you. No there'd be no point as the NWC revamped only covers Holyhead to Chester at present; none of that part of the route was imported into my route, as trains from the NWC don't continue up the C-M line and importing that much scenery would have made the route saving time more unbearable than it already is. In fact, I've already started to delete parts of the Hope Valley route to reduce the saving time which is now slightly less than two minutes if I'm saving changes to the track infrastructure You can add a hundred trees and it will save almost instantly, but stick one signal on the line and it's time to go make a cuppa while you wait for it to save. That's the nature of the editor unfortunately!
Some new screenshots from a little way outside Crewe. It's very time consuming, but I'm getting quicker. Scrolling through hundreds of asset to find what fits is tedious, and the fact that anything you add to the editor's "quicklists" is removed when you reload the game (faceplant) renders the lists completely redundant. Who signed off on that feature exactly? If it was implemented properly it would make the whole process so much quicker and easier! View attachment 187084 View attachment 187085 View attachment 187086
I am also looking forward to this long overdue missing section of the WCML coming to TS Classic. I am thinking that I should maybe add my Modern Manchester-Hadfield-Glossop to the mix as well, since I have had it lying about for ages. There also needs to be a 'Northern' repaint of the class 323 as well, which seems to be missing from the class 323 improvement pack thats available from VP. Even better still, Armstrong Powerhouse needs to really do a class 323 Enhancement Pack.
Its a good Idea to delete stuff that is not relevant. But, please pretty please, dont delete the rest of the electric suburban manchester routes. Those are full of potential, and they would be very a very welcome addition to TS Classic.
This route looks great! I’m currently also building my own route (though I don’t have as much talent in modelling as you and your son!) from Swansea through to Milford Haven, Fishguard Harbour and Pembroke Dock. The extension to Shrewsbury would be great as we can’t finally do the Manchester - Pembrokeshire route in its entirety! It’s a shame it’s up to us small, solo developers to do these projects for free instead of DTG actually contributing to the community and building highly requested routes. Anyway, enough ranting, brilliant job so far! The route is look really good and I’d love to have the same level of skill set as you do.
