Hello, today I am going to be suggesting the Cornish Mainline, a 78 mile long route running from the Furthest West Town of Penzance, to Britains ocean city of Plymouth. A considerable chunk of this route is already in Train Sim World, with rivet games’ West Cornwall Local route, which is set in BR era, however, this route definitely had its flaws, with it ending at a questionable location. This Suggestion is Suggesting the Full Route, set in present day, —————————————————————————————————————————— What Are the Locos Included in this Route? BR Class 800 “IET” (GWR) The BR Class 800 is the staple of GWR traction, these trains run a majority of the services on the Cornish Mainline to places such as London, Exeter and Plymouth. BR Class 43 “HST” Castle Set (Sliding Doors) The Good old HST makes a return for this route, doing stopping services along the route, these trains were converted to Castle Sets and used to make up Regional services in the West Country, however, these are soon to go. —————————————————————————————————————————— What Are The Stations Along the Route? STATIONS; PENZANCE, ST ERTH, HAYLE, CAMBORNE, REDRUTH, TRURO, ST AUSTELL, PAR, LOSTWITHIEL, BODMIN PARKWAY, LISKEARD, MENHENIOT, ST GERMANS, SALTASH, ST BUDEAUX FERRY ROAD, KEYHAM, DOCKYARD, DEVONPORT AND PLYMOUTH. DEPOTS; PENZANCE LONG ROCK DEPOT PLYMOUTH LAIRA T.R.S.M DEPOT —————————————————————————————————————————— What Makes This Route so Unique? The Cornish Mainline has a variety of tight turns, and steep ever changing gradients, which adds a lot of challenge for the Player. The Cornish Mainline also has a lot of Heritage Value, for example the semaphore signals at St Erth, which is a rare feature at Train Stations Nowadays in the UK. What are the Services? PENZANCE - LONDON PADDINGTON (9/10 CAR IET) (SEMIFAST) LONDON PADDINGTON - PENZANCE (9/10 CAR IET) (SEMIFAST) PENZANCE - EXETER ST DAVIDS (5 CAR IET) (STOPPING) EXETER ST DAVIDS - PENZANCE (5 CAR IET) (STOPPING) PENZANCE - PLYMOUTH (CASTLE SET HST) (STOPPING) PLYMOUTH - PENZANCE (CASTLE SET HST) (STOPPING) —————————————————————————————————————————— PRICE: Due to the Complex Countryside Scenery, Extensive Route Milage and a service length runtime of 2 Hours, this route would be priced at the standard, £29.99 Thank you all for Reading this Suggestion
Lovely route, but it'd definitely need the class 158, as they run some of the Penzance to Plymouth services, and maybe the 150 as well.
1) Too long for a TSW route 2) Penzance-St Austell has already been done and they won't remake a line that already exists. Now St Austell to Plymouth (or Truro, whichever makes the more insteresting stop crossover) would be a respectable 50 miles, it would add onto an existing route, it would feature some new territory and from there you could connect on down the line to say Exeter (and from there people can drool over the Riviera line to the south) So on that basis I can see it working. However, you still need to flesh it out a bit more with what landmarks and what new would run on it and how. He already have the 43 and 800 in game, so would it just be existing rolling stock?
1. Why is it too long ECML is 80 miles and this is 78 miles 2. What about the island line and LIRR they’ve been remade.
80 miles with only 5 stations and very non-demanding scenery. Island Line was not remade it was resold with the same scenery, the only change being the addition of the 484. Also, this route is 8 miles long… LIRR commuter was remade yes but in the same era as the tsw 2 route. Without the need for extensive scenery alterations. Moreover its extension was just a further 14 miles, not 34 (practically double the base 44 mile WCL route). And development would’ve likely been made easier given the area around Penn Station had already been made with TOD4 in NYT for TSW 3. I’d much rather see the route redone in its current era and see a modern GWR route elsewhere, Riviera line is a good shout. WCL had great potential but Rivet seriously did a right job of messing things up and then never looking back after the fact. A shame really given the attention JT has since had with their releases which just highlights the popularity and profitability of BR era routes when done right.
I had that in TSC quite a good route Exeter to Plymouth I wouldn’t mind though if it was Paignton to Exmouth via Exeter either. Trains should be 800 GWR voyager XC HST GWR. If a license comes for SWR then as ai traffic at Exeter St David’s or playable if Exeter Central is included
No doubt the Cornish main line needs doing in its entirity but modern era with near silent overpowered IET's would be dull as dishwater. Done properly in the era Rivet set their version would give Paxman HST's and various Sprinter classes maybe even Class 142 Pacer. BR Classic even better with many of the classes already in the game, just need a Class 50 and a DMU more suited to the Western than the 101.
Agreed. It's already started in 1990s era. Redoing all of that for no reason would be silly. If someone wants to do the whole bit from St Austell to Paignon and include the Riviera line... that'd be ambitious but doable (for a price) The issue I could see would be that it'd immediately be a fight between the "era" fans over when to set Riviera. And then being the forum people will randomly start complaining about routes in totally unrelated places they want to see and "why are you wasting all your time in Cornwall? No one likes Cornwall! Do X, Y and Z places instead because I live near them or worked near them or my cousin once had a wedding near one of them!" =-)
Island Line had multiple changes beyond the Class 484 units as it was rebuilt to reflect all of the infrastructure changes that took place after the retirement of the Class 483s. As for the original subject of the post, it would be nice to have a version without the flaws of the WCL route. However, it really should include the St Ives Branch as well as the ignored Falmouth branch for completeness.
While it would be a massive undertaking, for completion sake any Cornish main line ought to include all the branch lines, including Gunnislake.
I understand WCL is a (quite frankly) terrible route, but as a baseplate how workable is it? Is it a case of ripping up everything and starting fresh, or could the main tracks and stations be used - thus only requiring a scenery upgrade to a smaller extent and allowing the route to be extended to Plymouth on the master copy. Would ideally like to see a full Plymouth to Penzance rather than it being cut off, but I also understand that it would result in some really long runs. I'd also hope whatever HST they use (be it modern day MTU or yesteryear Valenta) they update the physics to a similar standard to the AP 43 pack. I especially would like the brakes to be redone as I feel they are the best bit when driving the 43.
In other words. A remaster of the west Cornwall local. I like the idea. Plus it would be better as a modern route.
While yes I believe it would be better as modern image (and I think rivet did a botched job of the original). WCL is the only 90s era UK route in the game currently, and I’m still begging for another sectorisation route. A remaster (if done) should keep the era. There’s plenty of other areas for modern image GWR representation.
If this was done or a modernised up-to-date route I'd prefer if the branch routes on this are included. Not that the route is terrible or anything but when I was playing this on West Cornwall local it's fun of some extent but I believe if we had more possibilities to explore the branch launch lines at; Newquay, Falmouth, Looe & keep St.Ives. Gunnislake is far too much ask for, but without the branch lines it wouldn't be "amazing in my eyes" I honestly believe it would be work creating with the branch lines and it develops a new element of adventure as we've as had west Cornwall before but I think it's a good suggestion but the line personally needs more areas to explore as it isn't that busy (I've played the modern timetable mod too for this it's okayyy) but to get more fun and use out of the DLC I strongly believe that this route would be a great benefit for DTG to adventure off branch lines off a mainline route. It might be a lot to ask for but this might give that wow factor to players with the branch lines attached to this line (Gunnislake branch is far too much to include though) But it would be great to explore the GWR network by use this route to explore the Cornwall!
The original WCL seemed to be a rather half hearted affair. If I recall correctly, it was originally planned as a GWR era route but the licence had expired, hence the 90s throwback with Regional Railways 150s. It was and still is a common theme to leave out branch lines. This creates the problem that we will likely never be able to explore these interesting sections of lines as many are too short to be a standalone route. In WCLs case, Falmouth was ignored, just as the Thames Valley branches were left out of GWE. St Albans branch on last year's WCML South proves that old habits die hard. As for WCL, the fact that no additional dlc was ever created is disgraceful with no Class 50s for regional services and no InterCity services using the correct Valenta HSTs. WCL should be started again from scratch.
Maybe that was their plan all along with extending Riviera line to Plymouth. If DT don’t do this route in the foreseeable future it will be a wasted opportunity, no excuses now that they have the GWR brand.
I wouldn't rule it out as it is a similar length to the ECML and probably the Riviera Line too, and in TSC the Woodhead Route was made in 2 different eras being the 1950s and the late 70s/early 80s.
I honestly love this idea but what would make it even better is just adding the Cornish Branch Lines too to St Ives, Falmouth, Newquay, Looe and Gunnislake, and even the freight only line to Fowey. That may be a bit of a stretch though but it's wishful thinking and I'd absolutely adore having the entire Cornish rail network in TSW.
You must also consider that station count also plays a part, the longer routes have less stations as they take more memory, I believe Matt said an added station can cost about a mile of route coverage. So let’s take a look shall we… ECML is 80 miles with only 5 stations. Riviera is 60 miles with 14 stations Penzance to Plymouth (+ st Ives) is 84 miles with 25 stations. The math isn’t mathing.
Would be a great opportunity to revive something of a forgotten dlc. Maybe include some China Clay wagons and the XC 221. The station count is a consideration, however many of the stops on this route would consist of 2 platforms and a canopy (perhaps).
This is maybe a personal preference but I’d much rather see the 221 in an area away from the south west where it can get up to speed. Something like Birmingham to Sheffield or Edinburgh to Newcastle. The difference in driving experience between Riviera line and Cornish mainline wouldn’t change much. On your thought of stations being fairly basic detail wise. I should also mention wcmls was 50 miles with 28 stations, over half of which were short platforms without station buildings along the Watford dc line.
The 221 was more of a way of getting an appropriate and desired train into the sim (this dlc plus the layer possibilities) without taking up too much time and resources. Reworking the Penzance-StAustell section and extending east to Plymouth would be enough of a job. My only concern is DTG might have made this option very difficult given we are about to get Riviera and other routes featuring 4 and 8 car. Which would exclude 5,9 and 10 car consists, in the absence of a 2nd timetable option.
I would love to see the Plymouth to St Austell route added to link Penzance to Exeter into the game. Plus a remake of Penzance station and working on the St. lves line to make the scenery look realistic, especially the town of St. Ives. The only places that look a Joke to the game!! l feel that DTG missed a trick with the Riviera by not including the Dartmouth Steam Railway at Paignton. Perhaps they have already planned to include this in some expansion pack for the Penzance to Plymouth line in the future, to also include the extension lines to Falmouth, Looe and Newquay. Now that would be something but please don’t allow Rivet to do it!
Why wouldn’t DTG remake an existing route. DTG are remaking Dresden to Riesa and extending it to Leipzig aren’t they. So if they can do that, why not Penzance to Plymouth.
As far as I know that's an extension, not redoing it for a completely different time period. Much like Southeast High Speed was. While it's a substantial extension, it's still not entirely changing the core route. Moving all of West Cornwall forward in time 30 years is a much bigger project involving licensing as well as timetables and assets. The reason they did the 1990s was to avoid some of those issues. It's just not worth the investment needed for the return given the redundancy. On a related note, I'm all for adding a route from St Austell to Exeter. That makes perfect sense with the new Riviera route coming out. However, that's maybe 70 miles or so... it's more than long enough to be it's own route, it is too big for an extension. Now adding Plymouth to that would be nice.... but a LOT more work. Given how much there is to build around a city like Plymouth, you're talking this is beyond a simple DTG level route. You're talking more a Just Trains level of detail and length needed. Again, I think that'd be a very nice route from St Austell to Exeter with a side branch to Plymouth. However, that's a lot of work. It's more likely now that Riviera line exists since there's that connection to be made. It's just a big project so it'll be a while before we saw it happen. The "whole Cornish mainline" is not going to happen because of both era and length issues. It's technically not feasbile nor advisable, especially when if that middle route is added you'd have de facto what you want...just with 2 "changeovers" in the middle. If the issue is just not wanting layovers and that part of it is 1990s.... it seems like you're missing the forest for the trees.
Okay. But Exeter is further, and that's where it connects to the Riviera line. That's where it makes sense to go to, with Plymouth as a side branch. Otherwise you'd have to do another under-40 mile route to connect Plymouth to Exeter.
You can't get from Penzance to Exeter without going through Plymouth. Plymouth isn't on a branch between Exeter and Penzance. We're already getting Plymouth to Exeter anyway. So where's all this extra work around Plymouth?
Huh, looks like it does extend to Plymouth. Then that's a very small addition then to complete the Cornish Mainline. Then all that's left is any branches like Falmouth.
